Animal Husbandry: Grazing

[TomatoThief 53]

Suggestions to enhance the challenge of animal husbandry, coming from a guy who has yet to even ask a TFC animal out on a date, much less husband one:

• Animals have a minimum and maximum weight. Bonus points for separating by gender.
• Animals lose 2.5% of their body weight per day. Thus it becomes harder to support heavier animals. Excess pounds eaten directly increases their weight up to the max.
• One block of grassed dirt provides 1/2 lb. One block of tall grass provides 2 lb. One placed block of hay (thatch, maybe) provides 4 lb.
• Every time a block of dirt tries to become grassed, it checks for grazing animals nearby (10,5,10). For each animal found, the chance of re-grass failure increases by a quarter again (25%, 44, 58, 68, 76...). This simulates loss of field productivity due to manure coverage, which is a very real thing, without having to actually have manure in game... which is apparently forbidden. Same goes for spawning grass blocks over grassed dirt. This makes it essential to either have large grazing areas, or move your herd to allow fields to recover, or supplement with hay (thatch)
• Cows will absolutely eat your thatch house.
• Animals will target hay first, tall grass second, and grassed dirt last. So by diligently feeding them, the grass can recover by not being consumed, but still suffers from regrowth penalties due to proximity to the animals.
• Grass blocks and grassed dirt do not proc in winter. Better save up your feed.
• When an animal falls below 75% of maximum weight, it becomes impoverished, possibly gaining a new slim appearance. Penalties to output (milk, wool, meat) are based on weight, either in terms of quantity given, or frequency given.
• At 50-60% weight, animals becomes starved, and do not produce. Animals cannot die due to starvation.
• Animals must have access to water, or else an 80% penalty to lb gain from eating is applied. Either graze near water, or consider a new placed trough item that holds a large amount of water.
• Females will refuse to become pregnant if impoverished.
• Males are udderly unphased by the previous bullet point.

This is roughly based on real world numbers. Real grazing calculations get more complicated than TFC should be, but it is estimated that animals require 2.5% of body weight of feed to maintain that body weight. Most cow weigh 1,000 lbs. Let's call that the max, with the min being 500. Thus a fattened cow requires 25 pounds per day just to maintain that weight. To support that, one fattened cow requires more than 50 grassed dirt blocks. If we assume dirt recovers to grassed dirt once per day, and assume you only have one cow, then on day two only 37 of those blocks will have recovered. Thus a more stable grazing range would be 50/0.75 = 67. If you want two cows together, you'd want 100 / 0.56 = 178 grassed blocks, about 10x18. This doesn't count any tall grass that may have grown, or extra hay provided. Just a few of these extras will drastically reduce the required size of pasture. 

 

Thanks for reading.

 

Regards,

TT

 

 

[lightningtiger88 19]

Hmm, i like this idea, but I'mn pretty sure Minecraft isn't exactly suited to large pastures for animals, as only certain chunks are loaded most of the time. Anything in here might have to be trimmed down to allow for smaller spaces, or it might just not work with Minecraft mechanics. Although i'm not a coder, but my gut instinct tells me that this might be bothersome to figure out if you need 50 blocks of space for one cow.