what the heck is wrong with my flamingos?

[sandelwood16]

I have a flamingo and peafowl garden which is a walkthrough habitat. For a while they did just fine, but after the rest of my zoo grew and i got to over 1500 guests, my flamingos are constantly going through a cycle where they all stress out at the same time. They eventually find their hiding places and calm down, but it keeps doing this over and over, giving me protesters. Also, the habitat specs are telling me there is not enough feeders or bedding, when there are multiple buildings with bedding and tons of feeders, far more than like 5-10 animals would need. I feel like that part is totally bugged because no matter how many more I add, it doesn't correct.

I've gotten rid of some animals, I've limited the number of guests in the park to 1000, etc. The Peafowl in the same habitat are just fine! The habitat is way bigger than either animal requires, and there are plenty of places for the animals to get away from the people. I've used the quiet signs all over the whole place since the beginning. I don't know what else to do.

[Kajsa_Kavat]

I guess a screenshot might help.

[XrystalBelle]

I've had more than 10 flamingos in my habitat with only 1 of each enrichment/food item in the habitat and never had a complaint on feeder count.

You can't stop stress, all you can do is make sure there is an area they can run away to . With a walk through habitat all you can do is make sure that the guest pathing doesn't go near the destressing area and that there are blocked views to that area ( just make sure the zoo keeper can still get there )


This is one of my current flamingo habitats... 6 adults 2 babies now. 2 Large Food Bowls and 1 Food Enrichment and 1 medium sized sheltered area.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2044251781


These are some other ones
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2044257816
10 Flamingos - Sheltered Area - 1 Enrichment 1 Feeder


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2044258929
10 Flamingos - Sheltered Areas - 2 Enrichment 3 Feeders




The first zoo above has the following welfare/habitat/enrichment status for one of the animals.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2044264384
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2044264416
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2044264448

[sandelwood16]

Originally posted by chasbar:

I found that when you select a habitat and check it's contents, the feeder is in the red if it does not have food in it. I too was flustered about that when I put multiple feeders and it stayed red. Then as I observed the feeder get filled, the bar turned green. As far as the shelter and bedding goes, I encountered the same problem in my last zoo with salt water crocodiles. I never did figure that one out. In my current zoo, I have a cheetah with low welfare because its last drink was dirty. That habitat has the water pipe so I do not know why it would be dirty. I did not think the water pipes need to be treated by a water treatment plant, but maybe they do. Concerning stress, maybe more plants or rocks in the habitat will help.

Interesting, that's good to know about the feeders. Unfortunately, the habitat is a garden already, it's planted at 36%, and the Flamingos don't like that either, they want LESS foliage, lol. I have seen them go and hide in the plants rather than in their shelters, which doesn't seem to help much. Flamingos at my RL local zoo live in a very foliage heavy garden, so I don't really think PZ is very accurate on that point.

I've also seen guests in that habitat say "This habitat is pretty barren." Uh, what? My zoo is tropical, so there's a ton of foliage everywhere that is finished. Seems like some of the algorithms are a bit off.

[XrystalBelle]

You could use construction items to create an enclosed sleeping area ( put bedding in this area to encourage them to use it as a sleeping/runawayto area ) with enough opening for the animals and zoo keeper to use but out of view from the guests.

I have used this tactic quite often recently and it does seem to minimize the stress alerts. I still get some, especially if the habitat is a fair size and the animal is at one end and the shelter is another end. So, I have smaller shelters at various key areas so that they don't have far to go wherever they are.