Cattle not breeding

[Moogie]

It's been about 5 RL days since I saw my bull, er... do his thang, and I've yet to get any calves from it, despite these beasts eating about 200 of my finest (Q30) carrots every day.

The bull is penned in with three cows in a 7x9 area. He was the last one to join my little herd.

What's the beef?

[KoE]

Well, uh, I didn't have the privilege of seeing jorb's no doubt splendidly animated cow humping, but my calf took a relatively similar amount of time. The announcement says they take 14 in-game days (or 4 and 2/3 real days) to be born.

I'm 95% certain that game time doesn't progress while the server has crashed, so it's possible your estimate is off by a handful of hours and you'll have your calf soon.

Another irritating possibility...



(pardon the JPEG'd-ness and the subsequently illegible scrawling )

It seems that calves are also susceptible to the 'boat bug', so it's possible you've got a little Bessie wandering off by itself outside of your enclosure.

[Moogie]

Thanks for the tips. I'll keep my eyes peeled.

[Potjeh]

No, there's definitely something wonky going on. I have two cows that should've given birth five days ago, and there's no calves. No chance that the calves escaped since I doubled up my wall for that very reason. And when they had their first calves they gave birth on the same day even though one was impregnated four days after the other.

[KoE]

Well, it's definitely not a global thing because I've had two calves now go off without a hitch. Apart from that, sounds like we have a somewhat difficult to replicate bug.

[Ethan]

my cow is giving birth like a rabbit... :s

[Moogie]

Still no calves here, but I'll give it a couple more days.

Could they be affected if they run out of food? Every morning I find their trough empty. I just have such a difficult time keeping it filled, it takes at least 50 carrots to push the bar up 1/4, and that's gone within half a day. My chickens, on the other hand, have not required a refill for an entire week, and I never filled their coop beyond 3/4 to begin with.

I try to fill it up as much as possible before I go to sleep, but I can't always immediately rush back to feed them again the next day.

In this space of time, I've milked about 20l of decent quality milk from the nearby plains herds using clovers. I'm beginning to think that is a much more reliable way of obtaining milk, without my game becoming a 24/7 struggle against keeping the trough* full!


*Edit: Not troughs, it's hard enough with just one. xD

[Potjeh]

Use pumpkins.

[Ethan]

Pumpkins take forever and a day to grow =/
recently (up untill I discovered you can use carrots) I had been using grape seeds, since after you eat or make wine, you keep the seeds, and after you replant theres nothing else to use them for...

Of topic a bit, but does trough/coop quality have an effect?

[KoE]

Personally, I use my excess hemp seeds (I don't need gobs of linen cloth and my 5x10 field is enough of a pain), a few carrots, and my grape seeds when I don't have a need for raisins. But I've only been dealing with about three animals (six now, but the drain still seems to be manageable).

Also I believe the reason pumpkin are popular is because for one tile you get 16 units of fodder... so if you have a sizable pumpkin field you can pick one up after they've ripened and use it whenever you need it.

Of course, the problem I can see here is that the quality is rather difficult to get up. I don't use them because I started with a Q1 seed (whoops!)