Jump to content

Pigs are "Ready to mate" but won't.

mattk2003

By mattk2003
in Questions

 Share

Recommended Posts

mattk2003 Wolf Bait

mattk2003

Posted
Posted

I have generation 1 pigs and they have all eaten 7+ portions and are "Ready to mate", but won't. Only one of the pigs is pregnant and the others have said "ready to mate" for more than 7 in-game days. I have been feeding them and they still won't. It is currently December 8 in my game, would that be the reason why? 

  • 1 month later...
Faerador Berry Picker

Faerador

Posted
Posted

I know this is now a month-plus old, but I'm having the same problem on version 1.21.1.  My sow is also stuck on "ready to mate," and has been for months in-game, now.  She has the full 10 portions in her belly, and the boar is placed in a pen in the center of their barn so that he is always within 10 blocks of the sow no matter where she roams.  Why isn't she getting pregnant?  What am I doing wrong?

LadyWYT Historian

LadyWYT

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, SeaWarriorSon said:

Are we sure the male doesn't need to eat?

 

10 hours ago, Faerador said:

I know this is now a month-plus old, but I'm having the same problem on version 1.21.1.  My sow is also stuck on "ready to mate," and has been for months in-game, now.  She has the full 10 portions in her belly, and the boar is placed in a pen in the center of their barn so that he is always within 10 blocks of the sow no matter where she roams.  Why isn't she getting pregnant?  What am I doing wrong?

To my knowledge, the male needs to eat a portion in order to breed. I would try feeding him a bit to see if that helps.

Likewise, I would also check to make sure there's not mod interference, if you're using mods. Sometimes mods are bugged and break parts of the base game, and sometimes the mod itself intentionally changes vanilla gameplay loops. If you have a mod that modifies creature behavior, this might be the case.

If you've fed all the animals and are otherwise playing vanilla/have thoroughly investigated your modlist, then it sounds like you may have found a bug. In which case, time to go report over on the github bug tracker.

  • Like 1
Maelstrom Historian

Maelstrom

Posted
Posted

Consider that the male doesn't even have an indicator whether he's eaten or not.  I'm not including the weight indicator in this as it does not provide info about breeding and is used to determine resource yield.

Thorfinn Historian

Thorfinn

Posted
Posted

I haven't done animal husbandry in the new version yet, but I know as recently as 1.19, the male did not have to eat. He was fenced into in his own 1x1 enclosure in the middle of the pen with no access at all to the troughs.

Faerador Berry Picker

Faerador

Posted
Posted

I got the sow after the 1.21.1 update, so it's not from 1.21.0 or any other earlier versions.  This world was started in 1.21.0, however.  I do have some mods installed, but nothing major or anything that touches animals, as far as I know: a firewood into sticks mod, the popular HUD mod that shows a calendar and oncoming storms, Buzzwords for bee indication, and a flower planting mod.  I'll see if any of them is the culprit, but I doubt it.  I can only try to free the male from his pen and let him eat, then see if that has an effect.  In watching gameplay from others, it doesn't seem like that should have affected the breeding potential, but maybe something got changed in 1.21.1?  I'm starting to think this sow is just bugged out.  I'll try to find another, but it's a real pain catching pigs in my world, as they're extremely far from spawn, and I've had to catch piglets and wait for them to grow.  Regardless, thanks for the advice.

Faerador Berry Picker

Faerador

Posted
Posted

As a conclusion to my breeding dilemma, I broke the fence and allowed the boar out with the sow. At the time, the sow was still "ready to mate." I watched as the boar wandered over within a minute and ate a bit of food. On my way out, I saw that the sow was pregnant.  I'm not sure if it was due to allowing the boar to roam free, him getting some food, or if the entire thing was a coincidence. However, it is highly doubtful the sow stayed "ready to mate" for so long only to coincidentally become pregnant right at the time I released the boar and he got food. As such, I think there must be more to getting pigs to breed than the wiki currently states.  Whether it was him just being free or getting a meal, I'm not sure.  I'll try to pen him again but with trough access and see if the sow (or the upcoming gen-1 sows) has the same problems mating.

This wasn't an issue with my chickens.  My rooster has been stuck in his own little pen-within-a-pen, and the hens have been able to brood over fertilized eggs without him running free or eating.  They're already a couple generations deep now.  Thanks again for all the suggestions.

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 2
Raine Gu Wolf Bait

Raine Gu

Posted
Posted
On 9/18/2025 at 1:57 PM, Faerador said:

As a conclusion to my breeding dilemma, I broke the fence and allowed the boar out with the sow. At the time, the sow was still "ready to mate." I watched as the boar wandered over within a minute and ate a bit of food. On my way out, I saw that the sow was pregnant.  I'm not sure if it was due to allowing the boar to roam free, him getting some food, or if the entire thing was a coincidence. However, it is highly doubtful the sow stayed "ready to mate" for so long only to coincidentally become pregnant right at the time I released the boar and he got food. As such, I think there must be more to getting pigs to breed than the wiki currently states.  Whether it was him just being free or getting a meal, I'm not sure.  I'll try to pen him again but with trough access and see if the sow (or the upcoming gen-1 sows) has the same problems mating.

This wasn't an issue with my chickens.  My rooster has been stuck in his own little pen-within-a-pen, and the hens have been able to brood over fertilized eggs without him running free or eating.  They're already a couple generations deep now.  Thanks again for all the suggestions.

I can confirm that it's eating! I just had the same problem. After reading your post, fed my (fenced off) boar one portion of food and instantly the sow next door got pregnant. Mystery solved!

  • Thanks 2
Echo Weaver Historian

Echo Weaver

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, Raine Gu said:

I can confirm that it's eating! I just had the same problem. After reading your post, fed my (fenced off) boar one portion of food and instantly the sow next door got pregnant. Mystery solved!

This is how I thought it worked. I swear I read it someplace, but when I read this thread and looked for it, it wasn't where I thought it was. A lot of documentation does imply that you don't have to feed the male at all.

Thorfinn Historian

Thorfinn

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Echo Weaver said:

A lot of documentation does imply that you don't have to feed the male at all.

Must have been a stealth change that didn't make it into the changelog. Because, yeah, I've seen that a lot in the past, and know from personal experience it used to work that way. Don't know I could pin down exactly when it happened, because my animal husbandry efforts are purely opportunistic. Some family wanders into my immediate vicinity and I fence them in, otherwise it does not happen.

Wouldn't surprise me at all if the authors of those guides drifted away, before the changes, or maybe even, like me, quit bothering because it was such a long time horizon.

  • Like 1
Echo Weaver Historian

Echo Weaver

Posted
Posted
38 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Wouldn't surprise me at all if the authors of those guides drifted away, before the changes, or maybe even, like me, quit bothering because it was such a long time horizon.

Yeah, I like long time horizons 😄

The one that nailed me was that hens need to be fed in order to sit eggs as well as lay them because the other domesticatable animals do not work this way. Since they also won't sit eggs when stressed by too many seraph visits, I assumed they were stressed and kept avoiding them for a good 6 months of game time before I realized that wasn't the problem.

So, yeah, plenty of pitfalls. 

Thorfinn Historian

Thorfinn

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Echo Weaver said:

The one that nailed me was that hens need to be fed in order to sit eggs

Huh. How do you deal with that? Build a coop big enough that you can feed them without getting close to their nesting boxes?

I just quit bothering to try to get chickens to level up. Have enough to get an egg from time to time and call it a day. Or skip the whole egg thing entirely. There's plenty of protein just from wolves that you have to thin out anyway. 

Echo Weaver Historian

Echo Weaver

Posted
Posted
18 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Huh. How do you deal with that? Build a coop big enough that you can feed them without getting close to their nesting boxes?

I just quit bothering to try to get chickens to level up. Have enough to get an egg from time to time and call it a day. Or skip the whole egg thing entirely. There's plenty of protein just from wolves that you have to thin out anyway. 

Every time you visit, it stirs them up off the nest and pauses the egg incubation until they settle down again. So you visit once per day to feed them and take the hit. Keep the henhouse far enough away that you don't walk by it while you're doing other things. 

I'm more interested in leveling the chickens as an intellectual exercise. I could live off eggs if I had no other source of protein at this point. It would also be nice to make chicken stew because I actually like to eat it irl.

  • Like 1
Thorfinn Historian

Thorfinn

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Echo Weaver said:

Yeah, I like long time horizons 😄

So long as there's something else to do, I like them, too. But, for example, I can't just sit and fish. If I can read while fishing, that's fine. That's what I run into with VS.

"Well, I have the two chapters knocked off, I've got a homestead I'd never have to leave if I didn't want to, I can wait a full year for the fruit trees to start bearing fruit, and while I'm waiting, I can level up my livestock, which is also mostly waiting, and make compost, which is mostly waiting, too. Or... Squirrel!"

Echo Weaver Historian

Echo Weaver

Posted
Posted
24 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

So long as there's something else to do, I like them, too. But, for example, I can't just sit and fish. If I can read while fishing, that's fine. That's what I run into with VS.

"Well, I have the two chapters knocked off, I've got a homestead I'd never have to leave if I didn't want to, I can wait a full year for the fruit trees to start bearing fruit, and while I'm waiting, I can level up my livestock, which is also mostly waiting, and make compost, which is mostly waiting, too. Or... Squirrel!"

Yeah, it may just be that I haven't done All the Things as much as you have. Also, you mostly play Wilderness Survival? Apparently I just really dig homesteading. For me, it's more like: "Gotta feed the animals. Collect the eggs. Milk the ewes, look I have enough milk to start cheese, look my other barrel of cottage cheese just finished, so let's make some cheese wheels. Need more salt, let's go mining. Gotta cycle the leather. Need more limestone, let's go mining. Need a bigger grove of oak trees to make leather because those saplings take forever to grow. Slaughtered some pigs, and I need to so something with all this meat because it rots fast. It'd be really cool if I had stone paths to all the places I want to go on this base. Now I want to build a fruit press but I'm out of resin, so let's go exploring. I was supposed to do something.... oh, right, I'm looking for a Treasure Hunter so I can start the story, and it's winter now. Whoops."

  • 3 weeks later...
BMiBudzYT Copper Caster

BMiBudzYT

Posted
Posted
On 7/27/2025 at 10:24 AM, mattk2003 said:

I have generation 1 pigs and they have all eaten 7+ portions and are "Ready to mate", but won't. Only one of the pigs is pregnant and the others have said "ready to mate" for more than 7 in-game days. I have been feeding them and they still won't. It is currently December 8 in my game, would that be the reason why? 

NAH BRUH ITS INTENDED GAMEPLAY FACEPALM!!!! this is yet another unreally bad thing they did for this... i have 6 + pigs 2 sows pregnant for almost 9 months and still no baby pig... how do people still do stuff like this at 2025 blows my mind.... how do they even classify this as "intended" 

just a complete joke

  • Like 1
  • Wolf Bait 2
hstone32 Ironsmith

hstone32

Posted
Posted

I wonder, does VS provide a way of addressing objects in-game? Either an loaded object browser, or by clicking on it while the command prompt is open, like with source engine games? If so, I wonder if it's possible to force set a pig to pregnant.

  • 2 months later...
RangerRider Wolf Bait

RangerRider

Posted
Posted

I had a sow go in game months staying ready to mate, within minutes of feeding the boar a portion she is pregnant...... all the people saying the boar does not need to eat are completely incorrect... maybe it is a bug or new or whatever but the boar absolutely needs a portion

  • Like 3
Zane Mordien Steel Worker

Zane Mordien

Posted
Posted
14 hours ago, RangerRider said:

I had a sow go in game months staying ready to mate, within minutes of feeding the boar a portion she is pregnant...... all the people saying the boar does not need to eat are completely incorrect... maybe it is a bug or new or whatever but the boar absolutely needs a portion

That is my understanding as well. The Boar has to eat a portion.

 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.