Domestic Animal Reproduction

[Enorats]

After playing through the game several times, I'm noticing a problem with domestic animals. I'm typically only keeping a couple dozen different animals at a time, at least until my town gets to a much larger size and can support more.

The problem is that when you've only got 10 or 20 animals, and those animals are separated into male/female.. and further separated into young, adult, and old, with adult females being the only ones capable of reproducing (and only in the presence of adult/old males).. well, there's just not enough reproduction in a lot of cases.

I currently have 14 sheep in my town of 70 people. My last town basically had a work overload and crashed after I ended up with double the town's population in animals (goats/pigs only, sheep went extinct.. due to this problem).. so I'm trying to keep it lower this time to see how that goes.

Young Female: 0
Adult Female: 2
Old Female:5

Young Male: 4
Adult Male: 0
Old Male: 3

As you can see, only a whopping 2 of my sheep are going to be reproducing, and my next generation won't have any reproduction at all.

I can buy sheep a couple at a time occasionally from traders, for a whopping price (my linen clothing production lets me afford it).. but I have no idea regarding their age or sex. For all I know i'm getting more old females, which won't do me any good at all.

To fix this problem, first, we need to know what we're buying. Much like Rimworld shows you what you're getting from a trader, this game needs to as well. Second, we need females to either stay in the "adult" phase longer, perhaps produce more offspring, or maybe even simply be more likely to occur. Yes, this isn't realistic.. but it's extremely hard (down to luck really) to maintain a viable breeding herd with such a small population otherwise.

[Brutalist Ape]

I found animal breeding a bit of a rollercoaster too. At one point my population of pigs increased from like 3 tamed animals to a population of about 26. The town was totally overloaded, with more animals than people (I also had a lot of goats and sheep) and we were running out of food. So I ordered the villagers to slaughter all pigs on sight. This brought the population down to around 10... but then the number gradually declined until eventually some hours later the last pig died out!

In retrospect I was too zealous killing them off but I figured 10 pigs should be OK - I guess not! Definitely agree we should see the gender an animal before we buy it from the trader. I wouldn't want to pay 75 units just to get a sheep, goat, pig or other animal that is the wrong gender.

[Draken]

I set my sheep and goat limit to 10, and the pig limit to 15.
At the start I had a bit of a problem getting the sheep and pigs to breed, but since then I have no trouble with the population. I don't manage anything and my worker slaughter the overflow.
The worker always kill the oldest animals first, so the ones left are normally young enought to breed.

[Enorats]

Originally posted by Draken:

I set my sheep and goat limit to 10, and the pig limit to 15.
At the start I had a bit of a problem getting the sheep and pigs to breed, but since then I have no trouble with the population. I don't manage anything and my worker slaughter the overflow.
The worker always kill the oldest animals first, so the ones left are normally young enought to breed.

That works great, until you get a generation were your two or three new animals are all male. Then the entire population dies out in two generation's time.

I just bought 3 sheep from the trader and got lucky enough to get 3 adult females. Two generations later my 14 sheep turned into 26 and the population is exploding. When the population is that tiny a couple of females is the difference between extinction and overpopulation.

[MrFailSauce]

I've found that populations are pretty stable if you keep 15 of a type. You can always supplement with new captures if a disease knocks the numbers down.

[Draken]

And just as I post this, my 15+ year streak of no problems comes to an end.....
Well, I guess I'll rise the limit of my sheep and goats to 15 and check if thats enought.

As I'm no longer really hunting, there are at least dotzends of animals for me to tame.

Btw.: I'm also for a gender display in the trader window.

[Rhia]

I think it depends on the animal, first time I played through before I realized you could set pop limits for each type of animal my goats were breeding like rabbits, I had like 40 goats, 20 sheep, dozens of pigs and only a few cows/donkeys, could not keep them fed and my buildings repaired even with 5 large fields producing straw.

[Nimu]

Originally posted by Rhia:

I think it depends on the animal, first time I played through before I realized you could set pop limits for each type of animal my goats were breeding like rabbits, I had like 40 goats, 20 sheep, dozens of pigs and only a few cows/donkeys, could not keep them fed and my buildings repaired even with 5 large fields producing straw.

Yes it seems it depends on that a little.

I went for a limit of 10 on all the first time and noticed pigs, cattle and donkeys to not breeding enough to be sure to have at least one adult male and female at all times, while 10 worked perfectly fine for goats and sheeop.

I raised the limits for everything that's not a goat or sheep to 15 and it played out well.

Since I use the 10/10/15/15/15/15 setting I didn't experience any problems with the reproduction.

[Enorats]

Do pop limits even DO anything? Since buying those 3 female sheep and seeing my population explode to 26, I limited it to 20.. and the population is currently sitting at 46. I'm manually booting sheep out of the stables and marking them for slaughter because the game isn't even paying attention to the limits and animals are beginning to starve because I can't support such a large herd.

Maintaining a herd in this game feels like you're either drowning in animals or you're buying them to prevent extinction. There's no in between.

[janfo]

normally if you set a limit it will work, sometimes of course it will get over the limit but then they should be slaughtered.

I found out that ~20 individuals works very well. And its better to just catch/domesticate the animals instead of buying them

[timc_456]

wait..... how do you set the limits on animals? I've got a goat problem and winter is not killing them off (like 100 goats with only 50 stable space I'm also using for sheep and horses)

[stacy_19201325]

Originally posted by timc_456:

wait..... how do you set the limits on animals? I've got a goat problem and winter is not killing them off (like 100 goats with only 50 stable space I'm also using for sheep and horses)

F4. Set the limit there.

[JeZuShOrTe]

i have been overflowed by pigs and sheeps, since i didn't set a limit (56 goats, 45 sheeps, 54 pigs) i slaughteed a lot, and fixed the limit at 20 for every animal, never had to look at the breed again, i guess the balance is between 15/20 species. I tamed 10 donkey and around 10 horses later, and the populaion is collapsing after 3 years, i'll try to go for 20 and see how it goes. My cows are around 12/13 and stable, so maybe the growing point is 15.