Do hungry animals *actively* seek out grown grass plots?

[Kerulon]

Hi all!

I'm in the process of compartmentalising my animal pen.
Mainly because i'm tired of 'hunting eggs' in the high grass! ^^
But also to be able to see at a glance, whether all my animals are still there (none lost/bugged).

Years ago, when farm animals were introduced, their 'pet pathing' was horrible!
There were stories about hungry animals *not* taking one step back to graze on a grown grass plot behind them,
but it's 'wandering algorithm' constantly trying to get at a tile in front of them,
that was barred by a fence or wall, thus couldn't be accessed...

My question now is, whether someone has information, that the algorithm for a hungry pet is different to that of a nonhungry one?

For me (at least after watching them for a few minutes) it seems to be the same.
An animal with a 'drooped head' (=hungry) won't head straight towards a grown plot of grass, but seems to wander around aimlessly like when not hungry, until it eventually 'lands' on a tile with grown grass...

Now it would be important to know, whether the devs at least fixed the pathing in a way, that the animals don't try to wander where they can't (fenced/walled off area).
I (obviously) don't want to loose my animals!

Any info/ideas/suggestions?

TIA, regards, Kerulon

P.S.: Yes, i know about the sprinklers, but am 'too cheap' to waste tons of batteries on them!
At the moment, my field of grass is big enough to last at least about 1.5 ingame days
(meaning i am out diving for resources, nightfall comes und i'm harvesting through the night before getting back)
with enough grown plots left to feed the animals until my newly watered tiles will be grown.
If i experience rainfall, i am of course sure, that my grass feed is/will be secured by itself... ^^

[roses46]

Last I heard, animals will only search for food a certain distance away. I think it was 6 squares.

[Kerulon]

Yeah, i read it's about 4 tiles... anyway, their 'reaction' when getting hungry doesn't seem to reflect that, as their behavior doesn't visibly changes (e.g.no change in 'wandering speed' and no straight walk towards the next grown plot of grass)...

My Animal 'garden' is 13x11 tiles big (the max for my raft design) and i want to separate it into 3 pens size 4x11+4, 4x11+4 and 5x11-8 grass plots...
So a hungry animal would need to be on the far end of the pen without grown grass plots in about 4 tiles reach to not be able to 'detect' grass and thus starve.

From the official wiki:
The Goat must be fed from a watered Grass Plot. It will check in a radius of 7 meters (translates to roughly four foundations).
-> if the animal is in the center of my pen it would 'check' within 9 of the 11 grass plot tiles... .oO(hope that works!)

In my current world i got pretty lucky regarding the farm animals:
- both rare cluckers twice (left more on their islands)
- both rare goats twice (didn't catch a 3rd here either)
- got the orange'ish big Llama (plus an additional normal one)

Thus i'm at 10 out of 12 farm animals i want to keep in the end.

So i only lack the 'striped Llama' (or 1 orange'ish and 2 striped to complete my 'rare couples' menagerie (ok, ok the goats & cluckers *obviously* aren't male ^^)

Regards, Kerulon