Automation of animal farms [need help]

[Noshery]

I just got to being able to automate my animal farms, but I don't know how to design an automated farm that is efficient. Though I don't think there is much difference between automating cow, pig and sheep farms, I would like to start out with a cow farm.

[BlackCat]

Have you ever designed an auto cow farm before? Usually what I do is I will set up a 5 minute timer that dispenses wheat into either a cow pit or a cow tower, I would recommend taking a look over Six's thread, IIRC there are quite a few cow farms posted there.

Edit: I can't access my desktop computer right now so I can't post a picture of what I mean by "cow tower" sorry about that.

Also if you want an auto wool farm for sheep (not an auto breeder) I have one in my thread, but that's about all I can do to help at the moment.

[Noshery]

Yes, I have created an automated farm before, yet it takes at least 15 minutes for a cow to get processed and sometimes the cows get stuck
I know that sounds a bit dumb, but I can't find a way to make it more efficient :( I'm just not that good at this technical stuff.

also, I am checking out Six's thread :) I didn't notice it before! thanks!

[embirrim]

There's a few ways you can get creative with building cow farms. I'm sure there's more, but that's for you to come up with.
What you have to know, and always comes into your builds, is that cows can breed every 5 mins, and babies grow up in 20 mins. This is exact, but I think due to tick slowing down and that kind of stuff, it might fuck up if you have an exact 5 minute timer.
Now the easiest timer to make is an item decay timer. You drop an item on a pressure plate, 5 minutes later it disappears. That's for the breeding timer, this is pretty standard, I suppose you can get a little creative but the gist of it is that you have some kind of 5 or 6 minute timer feeding food to cows or pigs, whether it be from a water stream (Check out BAttosay's youtube channel) or just by dropping it at their feet.
As for the killing mechanism, and the timing, there are many different ways. I can give you three distinct processes.
1 - rely on cows jumping into saws themselves, you use vine traps and they will eventually jump over, and then you can either push them over with pistons or just wait for them to walk into the pit. Basically, random cow pathing takes them there.
2 - Use the same timer from the wheat to make the babies "advance" every 5 minutes, and after 4 stages 20 mins have passed so they're grown and you can kill them. Again, look at battosay's channel.
3 - Use a 20 minute timer to make the cows wait, and then kill them. There are a few ways you can do this, you can even have the saws off for 20 mins, and turn them on for a few seconds to kill off the animals, and then re-breed them.

So, be creative, come up with your own solutions and designs first, then watch some videos and read some threads, and them work on some more contraptions, and in the end you'll have a new building to show off to all of us in the forum =)

[Rawny]

I've had a horizontal automated cow mulcher where babies could not get up the last step until they were grown cows but even when they were grown they wouldn't wonder up and into death. With lostsa tries I figured out animals seem to have a pathing AI and they won't bother walking to an obvious dead end.
What I did to remedy this was give them a short hall way (2 wide) that literally led to freedom but once they reached a certain point they would trigger block detectors on either sde, opening up the floor bellow them and into a guaranteed mulchificator.

[FlowerChild]

What I did to remedy this was give them a short hall way (2 wide) that literally led to freedom but once they reached a certain point they would trigger block detectors on either sde, opening up the floor bellow them and into a guaranteed mulchificator.

Vine traps of course being a much easier way to get them to fall to their doom :)

[tom_savage]

It also depends on how automated you want it. It's a lot easier to make an auto breeding farm vs autobreeding + autoslaughterhouse. It's amazing how much extra work and design goes into each part. So what exactly are you looking for? Keep in mind that quantity is also a factor. Large operations usually require different frameworks and designs than the smaller operations.

[BlackCat]

http://puu.sh/1EDEh This is a pretty basic setup for a "tower"

Every 5 minutes wheat will be dispensed to cows in harnesses and the babies will drop down, flip the lever that controls the trapdoor to let a new batch in, flip the lever that controls the hibachi pulse to cook matured cows.

Hope that helps some, it's pretty basic but it gets the job done nicely considering how easy it is to make.

Edit: Might want to replace the trapdoor with a fence gate, there are some hitbox issues when using the trapdoors.

[The great randomo]

Just as a note on the 20 min grow time on cows: cobwebs can slow down the fall of a cow until it is ready to be killed.

[finite8]

Here is my design. Unfortunately, I'm at work and i don't have any screenshots so you will have to live with this poorly hand-drawn diagram i scanned in.

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I think the image mostly explains it but i will elaborate anyway. The central wooden pressure plate is where the food will land. The torch and repeater configuration allows for a drop between the cows and for the baby cow to spawn. Place a cow in a breeding harness on each of the slabs. The 1/2 elevation is essential otherwise the cows will not eat the wheat on the pressure plate. Rig the output up to turntable so that the turntable will only rotate when there isn't an item on the pressure plate. Use the turntable as a timer to dispense food from a item dispenser that will drop the food on the pressure plate.

remember to seal the edges so the cows cannot be accidentally pushed off, as well as give some air above the cows else they won't breed.

The one problem i have encountered is if two cows on opposite edges enter love mode, the cow will be spawned on the pressure plate thus messing the whole system up. To counteract this, combine the timer with a piston that pushes a block above the pressure plate and fills in the gap. While this does mess up the adjacent cows a little bit (the block on the piston gets in the way of the when they enter love mode, but seems okay when extended) it will both reduce the likelihood of cows on opposite corners trying to mate with eachother, as well as prevent AND push the baby cow off the piston should it end up there. I combined this with the dispenser so that the food lands on a block and then it drops down onto the pressure plate when the piston retracts. This also helps prevent the food from being fired and not landing on the pressure plate (as it will be at rest by the time it is dropped).

Pros:
- Very compact
- So far, reliable
- reasonabally Simple design
- easy to combine into farms
- with constant wheat input, has constant cow output.
- Other than food, no maintenence
- Low resource requirement

Cons:
- The only resource intensive component is the breeding harness
- The piston component can add a bit of complexity.
- Bit of a pain to insert cows.

[odranoel]

so i spent the last week building and gather resources for my pig farm, and finally today i turned it on and to my horror it dosnt work! D:

i have two rows of 2x1 stalls with a gimped pig in each stall. the stalls are seperated by 1 block where water runs down. i used this same set up for my cow famr in my previous world and it seemed to work fine. does the pigs hight have anything to do with it? because as far as i can tell this should work if it works for cows, in fact very seldomly one pig will give birth. but fo the most part they jsut each the carrot but dont reproduce. ill put pics as my that makes things clearer. does this kind of farm simply not work for pigs?

pics

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here i took the roof off one of the pairs of stalls so you can see it better.

Edit: never mind, i got it working :) as said below i had not pushed the first pig properly against the fence, so they kept eating the first carrots and the chain never got going, fixed now, silly me.

[Ryukaa]

so i spent the last week building and gather resources for my pig farm, and finally today i turned it on and to my horror it dosnt work! D:

i have two rows of 2x1 stalls with a gimped pig in each stall. the stalls are seperated by 1 block where water runs down. i used this same set up for my cow famr in my previous world and it seemed to work fine. does the pigs hight have anything to do with it? because as far as i can tell this should work if it works for cows, in fact very seldomly one pig will give birth. but fo the most part they jsut each the carrot but dont reproduce. ill put pics as my that makes things clearer. does this kind of farm simply not work for pigs?

-snip-

Hrmm... my guess would be that the gaps between pigs are b bit too large, try pushing them all against the iron fence, so that the distace gets smaller.
I assume that cows may be seen as larger by the game and thus amking this work better

[greezoo117]

"automation of animal farms" so "animal farm" include chicken farm, right? I'd like to know how your chicken farm work! Mine don't produce anything at all.

[Benanov]

You'll have to feed them seeds to get them to lay eggs.

Malatose/Shinxy built a rather nice feedback-triggered chicken farm on my wasteland server. I can provide screenshots a little later today.

[BlackCat]

I've got a pretty nice chicken farm design on my thread, I'll just leave the screenshot here.

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[greezoo117]

Thank you ! It's working ! I love the fact that it's fully automatic. If the eggs in the hopper fall in a dispenser, it would be a egg/meat chicken farm ?

[BlackCat]

Thank you ! It's working ! I love the fact that it's fully automatic. If the eggs in the hopper fall in a dispenser, it would be a egg/meat chicken farm ?

And here is my egg cracker, yes :)

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[ExpHP]

I thought I had a nice setup for an animal farm, but it's currently facing a similar problem to odranoel's.

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Breeding area
Just 2x2 cows now. It can be expanded if the ageing pit is appropriately modified.

Ageing area
Baby cows fall onto the 3x3 stone sections after birth. Next to them lay a bountiful, hilly paradise, but tragically, they cannot jump high enough to reach it. 20 minutes after birth, they become adults, and attempt to use their newfound jumping ability to visit the plains... and fall through the vine traps.

After some testing, I've found that the issue in my case wasn't that they aren't close enough to breed. The issue was that they're trying to breed with the wrong partners.

In fact, I've come across a couple of odd mechanics that you might want to check in case your animal farm doesn't seem to work quite as expected.

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1. In any group of sufficiently nearby animals, partner selection depends on order fed.
The first two animals fed will try to mate with each other. The next two animals fed will try to mate with each other. etc.
This happens with complete disregard to walls or distance.

2. Animals can eat anything in a 5x5 area centered around them.
If you have breeding couples separated by a single space, you will frequently find them stealing wheat meant for other cows. They can do this even through walls, which is problematic when combined with #1 as you do not have direct control over who gets to eat first.

3. Animals only reassess their chosen partner when the partner exits love mode.
As long as a cow's love is requited, it will ignore everyone else. Doesn't matter if their partner is too far away, or even through a wall. Even if they can't make love, they'll be satisfied enough just to stare.
In this image, when fed in the order middle, right, left, the two cows on the left will not mate.

Long story short: For animal farms to work reliably, (1) your feeding mechanism should not feed multiple couples at the same time, and (2) separate couples should be separated by at least 2 spaces. Otherwise, you'll just have a Staring Contest Factory.



For Chickens, what I like to do is give each Chicken a dedicated melon/pumpkin plant. About 20 blocks above it. Preferably poised to land on something other than the chicken itself.