Baby Animals Not Spawning?

[Saeriva]

Howdy, y'all.

I'm 60+ hours into my current 1.19.8 game and, exactly as it says in the title, I've seen hardly any baby animals. In over 60 hours, I've seen exactly one wolf pup and one kit. That's it. No chicks, no kids and no baby hares. I've seen plenty of adult animals: roosters and hens, moose, bears, whitetail deer, goats, hares and two bighorn rams (although no ewes to be seen). Is this a bug, or is this a spawn rate change that came with the animal update? Or am I just catastrophically unlucky? 

Edited June 30, 2024 by Saeriva

[Yaroslav_76]

I think it's just bad luck, because I've already come across chicks or baby rams

[Thorfinn]

Yep. Baby pigs are omnipresent. As evidenced by adults attacking all the time.

[TamTroll]

So what i learned you can do:

Build a Trough (maybe a few, some animals need to eat a lot) and place it in the wild near some animals you want to breed. Fill it with food and check back every so often. the animals will breed even if not contained. They just need to eat enough portions.

Got a pregnant bighorn sheep out there somewhere.

[Maelstrom]

Additionally, animals will naturally migrate towards a trough with food.  You can chain troughs to lead them into an animal pen where you can have a more controlled animal husbandry program.

[Thorfinn]

It's a pretty small attraction distance, though, and they only eat so much. If you find a large herd of does, you can lead them away with the trough chain, as only one of the herd gets to eat at each stop, but it's still a pretty slow, tedious process. If you like cozy builder style, sure, why not, you are already committing to the long game anyway, which you are going to need to get more than 2nd gen or so.

When I try to bring sheep home, I tend to lead the buck into a temporary enclosure with basic rock spears so I don't accidentally kill him before I get home. It's kind of like the process of eluding brown bears, enabling the over the shoulder cam, except you aren't trying to give him the slip.

[EDIT]

Doesn't an appropriately-baited basket trap catch the babies, though? Never actually tried, but that's the impression I got reading the entry in the Handbook. Granted, you have to let them grow to maturity, but if the herd is some distance away, that might be a better use of your time.

[/EDIT]

Edited July 23, 2024 by Thorfinn

[Maelstrom]

the basket trap has a chance of catching a baby.

Capturing wild animals for breeding depends on the situation.  Agro and run for longer distances, passive migration if they're relatively close by.  I've even seen making animal runs with fences to assist in those two options.

No comment on the basket trap as I haven't attempted that one yet.

[TamTroll]

i always moved rams around by throwing a rock at it and then running like hell until it stopped chasing me.

Usually take some damage on the way, but it's much less likely to kill the ram then a spear, and it gets them pretty far.

Haven't tried penning any in yet though. I only have Chickens and Boars. Chickens i penned in by chasing some hens and a rooster into a U-shaped enclosure connected to a larger fully-enclosed pen. i just broke the fences leading into the pen itself, and they ran right in.


The Boars i just built a fence around while they were sleeping, they'd been loading in that one area for a long time already.

[Alder]

I usually just punch the animal, then depending on whether it runs from me or tries to attack, I lure/herd it to my wanted location.

You can also do a trench to trap them, and then slowly lure them with troughs.

Also if you're trying to lure a duo, the females usually follow the males, so give those bighorns a nice bonk to the schnoz and their mate will follow.

[Maelstrom]

I once watched a streamer playing.  He was digging for some surface copper and threw a rock into the distance.  It "dinged" and the streamer commented "Ding?" but went back to clearing brush around the desired mining site.  About 5 seconds later a ram comes charging out of the bush and head butts him into next week.