The disappearing sheep

[lianina 5]

This might seem odd, but is there any reason why a domesticated animal would just disappear?

 

I had three sheep in a paddock, a ram and ewe and their offspring, an almost full-grown looking animal. Suddenly, after being down in my mine, I came back to find only two sheep in the paddock. The gate was and remained closed, it doesn't seem to have any spot where a sheep could get out, and my map plugin does not show any additional sheep in the surrounding area. Is there any reason why a big lamb like that might die/disappear that I couldn't come up with? I believe they don't need to be fed grain if they are on grass, correct? Both mother and father seem well, and mother has been pregnant again for some time.

 

All my other animals seem present and correct, although I have so many piglets of all sizes that I can't make an accurate count.

 

ETA: I'm not playing on a multiplayer server, so it wasn't a sheep rustler either.

[TheCocoaMan 6]

I've heard of such thing happen on the server I'm playing too. Pretty sure there were no sheepnaps there.

[Xen 4]

In my SSP I had this happen with a pig.  I had 1 male 3 females all pregnant, shortly after they popped 1 of the female pigs and her entire litter disappeared.  It was weird.  I've had other pigs disappear but with them I'd find their bones and hide so they most likely suffocated in a block.  More recently 2 female cows vanished without a trace.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

It's possible that with all of the piglets you have, the game has reached the mob cap for that area, so it despawned some animals to lower the number of mobs in the area to be under the cap.

[lianina 5]

Oh dear. All in all, I'd estimate there are around 35 domesticated animals around the house. What is the relevant area in this case? A chunk, or something larger? Several animals are pregnant, so in order to avoid losing any existing ones, I'd probably best move them if that is practical.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

It's a vanilla mechanic, so I don't know the exact way it works, but I would assume that there is a limit per chunk, as well as a limit for the entire server.

[lianina 5]

Ah, thanks! I'll see if Google has something about the vanilla rules then. Server shouldn't be a problem, as it's a single-player game, and if it's chunk, I will make a pigsty somewhere away. Just glad I know what likely happened, as it was a very mysterious thing.

[Xen 4]

It's possible that with all of the piglets you have, the game has reached the mob cap for that area, so it despawned some animals to lower the number of mobs in the area to be under the cap.

 

Suddenly it makes sense.  Yeah when it happened I figured there was a reason for it and had 2 other pigs and their litter so wasn't the end of the world.