Regarding animal farming post-Animageddon (and Endermen)

[Battosay]

So, with Animageddon, we have to keep our animals in big pens, and we can only use grass for the floor.

To keep Endermen from getting in the pens and steal the grass, we can make the pens only 2 block high, and that kinda works.

We can use water to gather our free-range animals in a spot to breed them, but then it means that we can't have designs where the floor isn't on the same y=lvl (because if you have a drop then it's 3 blocks high and Endermen can spawn).

Then comes a problem specific with cows : if you put them in a 2 high space and try to move them with water, they'll fight the water stream, bump in the ceiling, and barely move. I've seen one cow fight the water and take more than 3min to move 16 blocks downstream.
But water kills the grass, and it'll take less than a minute to kill 90+ % of the grass.

So you have no other option than to make it 3 high, and pray an Endermen won't get in there. Because a single grass block missing will screw up any kind of water system used to gather the cows, or make a hole in which a baby will fall and starve to death. And given how many grass blocks you need to keep a cow alive (let alone two + a baby), it's a lot more likely to happen.

tl;dr : Endermen picking up grass is the bane of my Steve's existence.

[FlowerChild]

Hmmm... sounds like you may have finally answered my lingering question "do we really need grass planters anymore?" :)

Will think on it further, but that, or something similar may be the optimal solution. Sounds like what's needed is a theft proof grass block.

[Battosay]

Since there's a big NOT SUGGESTIONS in the name of this section I was careful not to mention anything, so I'm glad that's where your mind is going on this matter, because that's precisely what I was hoping for :D

[FlowerChild]