Animals and homestead

Animals are food that keeps itself fresh, as long as you keep them fed and watered. A day here means a game day, which is about two hours of real time.

Rabbits and hens

Build a Rabbit Hutch or a Hen House. Each holds six animals. Catch them live in a cage trap (see Traps and live capture) and look at the house to Put an animal in. Keep the feed box and the water trough filled: one feed item covers two animal-days and one liter of water covers four.

• Rabbits eat carrots, cabbage, lettuce, oats, wheat, apples and berries. Hens eat wheat, oats, corn, berries, potatoes, barley and spent grain from brewing.
• A hutch within a few meters of a pen uses half the feed, because the animals graze.
• A full day without feed or water kills an animal.
• Hens lay an egg each a day while they're fed and watered. Collect the eggs from the nest, which holds twelve, and eat them within two days.
• A fed and watered doe and buck breed. A litter of three to six arrives in about two hours, and the young are grown in five or six.

Sheep

Buy a ewe or a ram from the trader at Haven, or catch a feral one: carry a rope and choose Get a rope on the sheep. It works far more often when you carry grain or an apple to tempt it. You can lead two at a time, and one left more than about sixty meters behind wanders off. Build a Rail Pen (six sheep) or a Small Pen (three) and Turn your sheep into the pen.

• Fork feed into the hay rack: one wheat sheaf feeds a sheep for a day. Grass covers half of it, except in the cold or under snow.
• Fill the water trough: two liters a sheep a day. Rain tops it up.
• A sheep dies after four days without food or two without water, and a hungry sheep grows a weak fleece.
• A ram with a ewe gives lambs in about nineteen hours, often twins.

Shearing and slaughter

When a fleece has fully grown back, which takes nearly two real days, choose Shear it with a Shearing Handpiece for a Raw Fleece. One charge shears six sheep, and a battery or power bank charges it again. With a knife you can Slaughter a sheep and butcher it for mutton and a sheepskin. See Cloth, wool and leather.

Water is what kills livestock first. Fill the troughs before you set out on a long trip.