Animal Husbandry

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This page contains content on features that will be included in a future update. These features are confirmed, but not yet added to the game.

Livestock

Chickens, Cows, Horses, Pigs and Sheep are all livestock.

Food

Barley

Oat

Rice

Rye

Wheat

Maize

Livestock will follow any type of refined grain, as well as maize ears in a similar way that vanilla animals will follow wheat, carrots and seeds. Rope also behaves the same way as the vanilla leads in wrangling up livestock.

Pets

Wolves are initially familiarized through the vanilla method of giving bones until heart particles appear. After initial familiarization, the animal will recognize the player as its owner and follow it around, but it is not completely obedient, and therefore will not accept commands to sit or stand, and will continue to kill livestock when it is hungry. Disobedient dogs can be forced to sit by tying them to a fence using rope, and forced to stand by tying them to a player. If a dog is angry, the owner can calm it through leashing with a rope. When a dog has reached a high enough familiarization level through petting, it will become fully tame and obedient, signified by the addition of a collar.

Food

Beef

Horse Meat

Mutton

Pork

Dog food is only used for breeding, and fulfilling the animals hunger so that it can regenerate health. Wolves and dogs will not follow non-owner players who are holding food.

Ownership

Ownership of dogs can be transferred to another player using the command /transfer <username> when the player is near a tamed animal. If no characters are entered after the command (i.e. "/transfer" verbatim), the animal will be set free. Players cannot transfer animals to themselves, transfer animals they do not own, or if they have more than one transferrable animal within range.

Wild Animals

Bear, Deer, and Pheasants are wild, and cannot be bred. Wild animals will spawn and despawn in the world, with the exception of animals that have been named, or roped at least once, which won't despawn.

Familiarization

All animals have a familiarity value which needs to be increased in order to interact in certain ways such as milking cows, shearing sheep, riding horses, breeding animals, and naming animals. The specific values for each of these interactions varies from species to species, with some requiring more work than others. Familiarity can be increased by performing a particular action at least once every 24 in-game hours. For animals that are familiarized through feeding, the player must offer the food while sneaking (Default: ⇧ Shift) as to not spook the animal.

Animal		Action
	Bear	Feed Fish
	Chicken	Feed Grain
	Cow	Milk (Female Only) or Feed Grain
	Deer	Feed Salt
	Horse	Feed Grain until ridable, then ride for at least 30 seconds.
	Pig	Feed Grain
	Sheep	Shear or Feed Grain
	Wolf/Dog	Feed Bones until claimed, then right click while sneaking to pet	⇧ Shift+ Right Click

Familiarity will decrease slightly each day if it hasn't reached at least 30% and the animal hasn't been interacted with in the past 24 hours. Adult animals have a limit of how tame they can become through familiarization, with only baby animals having the ability to become fully domesticated, gaining familiarity much faster than adults. Baby animals retain 50% of their mother’s familiarity when born, unless she is close to maximum familiarity, in which case they will retain 90% of it.

Familiarity Indicator

Sneaking and looking directly at an animal will display a familiarity indicator. The indicator will fill with red as familiarity increases, turning gold when it has reached 100%. A white border around the indicator means that the animal has reached at least 30%, and that the familiarity will no longer decrease.

Indicator
Percentage	0 - 8	9 - 16	17 - 25	26 - 29	30 - 33	34 - 41	42 - 50	51 - 58	59 - 66	67 - 75	76 - 83	84 - 91	92 - 99	100

Gender

Animals (excluding squid) have different genders (male or female), which is determined randomly at the time that the animals spawns. Other than bears, horses and wolves, these animals have visual cues to easily determine the gender such as antlers, horns, tusks, udders and different feather colors. For mobs that do not have visual cues, the animal can be right-clicked on for a chat message stating the gender.

Animal		Male Traits	Female Traits
	Bear¹	N/A
	Chicken	Red Feathers, Stands Upright	White Feathers, Vanilla Posture
	Cow	Long Horns, No Udder	Shorter Horns, Udder
	Deer¹	Long Antlers	No Antlers
	Horse	N/A
	Pheasant¹	Brightly Colored Feathers	Brownish Colored Feathers
	Pig	Long Tusks	No Tusks
	Sheep	Large Horns	No Horns
	Wolf/Dog	N/A

¹While Bears, Deer, and Pheasants have different genders, they cannot be bred.

Breeding

All breedable animals with the exception of chickens are bred by bringing two of the same familiarized animal of opposite genders relatively close together, and feeding both of them until they are full, and heart particles start appearing. The animals will consume 5 ounces of grain each time they are fed, until they are full. If both animals have heart particles, they will move to be close together for a few seconds, before the particles disappear. A successful breeding can be confirmed by right-clicking on the female animal, which will result in a chat message stating, "Pregnant".

Chickens

Chickens are bred through the use of a Nest Box. Hens will lay eggs once a day, and if there's a rooster within 5 blocks of the nest box, the egg will be fertilized. A fertilized egg is noted with a "Fertilized" tool-tip on the item.

Pregnancy and Babies

For all breedable animals other than chickens, the female will become pregnant directly after breeding. Once a female animal has become pregnant, the gestation time must pass before she is able to give birth. Note: This calculation is based on months, not days. So a world with a longer yearLength configuration will result in longer pregnancies, because there are more days in each month.

When the pregnancy time is complete, the female will give birth. The gestation time, age until adulthood, and the number of offspring that are born is dependent on the type of animal.

Animal		Gestation Time	Babies	Adult Age
	Chicken	0.75 Months	1	4.14 Months
	Cow	9 Months	1	36 Months
	Horse	11.17 Months	1	30 Months
	Pig	3.7 Months	8 to 12	15 Months
	Sheep	5 Months	1 to 3	12 Months
	Wolf/Dog	2.25 Months	1 to 2	9 Months

Baby Chicks

After a fertilized egg has been sitting in a nest box for 3/4th of a month, the egg will hatch into a baby chick. Note: This calculation is based on months, not days. So a world with a longer yearLength configuration will result in longer incubation, because there are more days in each month.

Genetic Traits

Each animal has a size modifier which is randomized when they spawn into the world, that determines how big it is. The size of an animal is inheritable, and determines how much meat and the size of the hide that is dropped on death. When two animals mate, the resulting offspring have a size which is partially randomized, but also affected by the sizes of its parents (specifically, how its parent's sizes compare to the average for the species). In other words, breeding two animals which are larger than average will produce babies that have a statistically larger average size, and could possibly be larger in size than any animal that could spawn in the wild naturally.

Other genetic traits that are currently in the code, but not fully implemented include: strength, aggression, obedience, color, climate and hard. It is currently unknown what is planned for the use of these trait modifiers.

Resources

Animal		Butchery Products	Harvestable Products	Notes
	Bear	Raw Hide, Bones
	Chicken	Raw Poultry, Feathers, Bones	Eggs, Feathers	If the hens have a Nest Box nearby, they will lay eggs once a day. Right click while sneaking with an open hand to pluck feathers. Plucking hurts the bird, and too much can kill it.
	Cow	Raw Beef, Raw Hide, Bones	Milk	Female Cows can be milked once a day.¹
	Deer	Venison, Raw Hide, Bones
	Horse	Raw Horse Meat, Raw Hide, Bones
	Pheasant	Raw Poultry, Feathers, Bones	Feathers	Right click while sneaking with an open hand to pluck feathers. Plucking hurts the bird, and too much can kill it.
	Pig	Raw Pork, Raw Hide, Bones
	Sheep	Raw Mutton, Sheepskin, Bones	Wool	Right click with shears or a knife on adult sheep to get Wool.¹ Use a knife on the Sheepskin to get Wool and Raw Hide.

¹Requires high familiarity.

History

Beta
v2 Build 48f		Animals give birth to the correct number of animals as they would in real life. This should give more incentive to breed animals.
0.78.11		Breeding animals consumes 5 oz of the specific food, not the entire item.
0.79.0		Removed chat gender message for all animals with visual gender differences.
		All animals now have a familiarity value.
		Added command to transfer ownership of an animal to another player.
		Adjusted pregnancy times for animals and the length of time for them to reach adulthood.
		Deer, bears, and wolves are considered wild, and will despawn and respawn.
		Any animal that has been roped at least once will not despawn.
0.79.9		Deer no longer run from players if familiarized enough.
		Bears no longer attack players if familiarized enough. Bears should still attack players if attacked first.
		Added familiarity indicator to animals.
0.79.11		Tweaked wolf litter sizes to be one to two puppies.
0.79.13		The owner of a wolf can now leash it to remove its anger toward a target. Note: This is still wonky when wolves are angry at other wolves.
0.79.14		Chickens will follow all livestock food instead of just wheat grain.
		Livestock will follow maize ears in addition to grains.
		Adjusted familiarity indicator display to better indicate progress.