Breeder Problem

[Digdug83]

Hello again folks. I seem to have stumbled across a rather odd problem. My breeder, or perhaps the pigs themselves, are just flat refusing to breed. These are brand new pigs, fresh from the wild (and I spawned two to test) so I know they can breed and aren't just 'exhausted'. The breeder has wheat, power and is facing the correct direction.

I was using this exact pen for sheep earlier but decided to change it to pigs since I didn't need to move sheep babies and it worked just fine for the sheep. I'm completely lost at this point but then again I'm exhausted so hopefully it's something stupid. This is vanilla v1.1.8 Tekkit by the way.

[Gorian]

I found this out the hard way. Fill your breeder with carrots, not wheat. Yes, the wiki says to use wheat in spite of the changes to vanilla breeding, but do it anyway. Also, I could never get the breeder to work with chickens, no matter what I put in it.

[CharlieChop]

pigs use carrots.

Damn it i got ninja'd

[Digdug83]

*shakes fist* DAMN YOU WIKI. Actually now that I think of it the official MFR thread says wheat too. Bah, now I have to expand my carrot farm to compensate.

Thanks guys, you're the best.

[Lethosos]

Try seeds for chickens. Again, it's the same issue you were having for pigs.

[weirleader]

Now that you remind me, I think I ran into this too. I believe I directly copied over from the official MFR thread when making that wiki page, so my apologies. It's a constant struggle with putting as much info as possible and putting only what I know about and have verified. I just updated the wiki to reflect the foods that I know. According to the Minecraft wiki you can also breed wolves using meat, but since I've not tried that in a breeder I didn't want to mention it.

[Digdug83]

Mmm, delicious chicken farm.

Anyone got a solution for phasing mobs? My cows, not pigs strangely enough, keep killing themselves phasing into the wall. This is doubly strange since their numbers only seem to go up and not down. I've turned the breeder off for now as I have a stupid amount of beef/leather but I don't understand why the chronotyper isn't pulling them into the grinder pen before they mature. It works fine when I'm there but when I leave the pocket dimension or server (dimensional anchor is in place to cover a 3x3 area) they apparently multiply out of control. My sheep were doing this too which is what prompted me to double wall the pens as they kept phasing out into my power grid and trampling on my generators lol.

[weirleader]

I'm not sure about the overbreeding, other than it's possible that the chronotyper isn't pulling them correctly when they're clipping through walls. I was having similar problems and somebody (can't remember who) had the excellent suggestion to throw conveyor belts around the border that push all animals back in towards the middle. Once I did this all my troubles seemed to be resolved.

[Gorian]

Try seeds for chickens. Again, it's the same issue you were having for pigs.

tried seeds. Wheat seeds, pumpkin seeds, melon seeds, even nether wart (mentioned as breeding them in the minecraft wiki). Even posted a thread in the forums here asking about it, and couldn't get it working (and didn't really get any replies either ). the breeder didn't use any of them at all, and when I did it manually I could breed all the chickens. Guess they just don't like me.

as for animals: keep the chunks loaded (dimensional anchor) and, I had the same issue, came back after leaving the world on over night, and I was swimming in animals. Added an outer layer of fence to the pens, and haven't had a single one escape. They still trample each other, but that's their problem

[Digdug83]

I'm not sure about the overbreeding, other than it's possible that the chronotyper isn't pulling them correctly when they're clipping through walls. I was having similar problems and somebody (can't remember who) had the excellent suggestion to throw conveyor belts around the border that push all animals back in towards the middle. Once I did this all my troubles seemed to be resolved.

That...is an excellent suggestion. Thanks a ton.

[jakalth]

Convayer belts can sometimes cause some issues with lag when your near by... But they usually do the job nicely. And they look more factory like.

Found another good solution for breeder farms and mob wall glitching. This one has a little less possibility of lag. Make the cage the normal size with a 5x5 area inside for the animals you want to breed. Make it at least 2 blocks high, or 1 block high with a fence on top. Then just add a water source blocks to the 4 inside corners of your animal pen. The mfr farming machines ignore water so it will still function as normal. And all the animals will be contained near the center of the pen with no shoving each other into the walls.

With cows, this works for about 6 cows per breeding pen. Might work with more, have not tested. You might have to add a 5th water block to the baby pen to keep the young ones in line though. Place this 5th water source in front of the cronotyper.

With pens intended just for sewage, not breeding, you can fit at least 20 cows in a 9x9 pen with water sources just in the 4 corners.

note: even with this, you might have 1 or 2 glitch out of the pens if the server is shut down and restarted, so keep an eye on the number of animals in your breeder pen.

[Norman1346]

It seems like the issue of mobs dieing from crowding is a newer problem.

In games past I could cram like 100 mobs together in the same spot so they were over-lapping, but I have not been able to recently.

It seems like now mobs now bounce off each other rather than getting smushed into the same spot like they used to..

It has definitely hurt the efficiency of my mob grinders.

[Digdug83]

I thought I'd post up what I ended up doing for my animal farms. You might be able to tell I have a bit of a symmetry obsession lol.

http://imgur.com/PXTlCLh

http://imgur.com/qfvtlaF

I'm rather happy with how it came out, especially since it conforms to the empty space from one of my plant farms so well (I had two 25x25 areas left over). As you can see I have pigs, cows and chickens with their own pens which are then chronotyped onto conveyor belts (thanks for that idea Weir) where they futilely try to get to their parents. Once they mature they make their way to the grinder pens and are slaughtered for science. After I made those three I noticed a bunch of space in the two middle areas so I put two sheep pens in there to gather wool, with ranchers on either end of the pen so they're always covered. All areas where the animals can walk are covered by a sewer that are linked to tesseracts (removing the flow problem with pipes) that goes back to my liquid management dimension (thanks again for that Charlie). Liquid/item tesseracts cover the grinders/ranchers outputs and energy tesseracts power everything since I didn't want to run conduit everywhere.

[Norman1346]

I thought I'd post up what I ended up doing for my animal farms. You might be able to tell I have a bit of a symmetry obsession lol.

http://imgur.com/PXTlCLh

http://imgur.com/qfvtlaF

I'm rather happy with how it came out, especially since it conforms to the empty space from one of my plant farms so well (I had two 25x25 areas left over). As you can see I have pigs, cows and chickens with their own pens which are then chronotyped onto conveyor belts (thanks for that idea Weir) where they futilely try to get to their parents. Once they mature they make their way to the grinder pens and are slaughtered for science. After I made those three I noticed a b.unch of space in the two middle areas so I put two sheep pens in there to gather wool, with ranchers on either end of the pen so they're always covered. All areas where the animals can walk are covered by a sewer that are linked to tesseracts (removing the flow problem with pipes) that goes back to my liquid management dimension (thanks again for that Charlie). Liquid/item tesseracts cover the grinders/ranchers outputs and energy tesseracts power everything since I didn't want to run conduit everywhere.

Awesome design. I will have to copy much from it. I especially like how you covey the babies away. I have a recurring problem where the babies smash up against the fence they share with the adults and if I log out and in while they are in that pen, they are mixed with the adults and outside the animal area when I log back.

Did you use blocks to keep the animals in their pens? Perhaps I should stop using fences to keep my animals in better....

Is there a number of blocks that babies won't detect their parents after?

[Digdug83]

Yeah I just use solid blocks rather than stuff like fencing or slabs, preferably 2 meters thick so they can't easily phase out. Typically as long as there aren't a ton in there (I keep 10 in the adult pens) they won't try it anyway. That's another benefit of using tesseracts for everything, no pipes/conduits that only take up part of a block so nowhere for them to phase to.

As for parent detection I honestly don't know but I would imagine it would have to be at least a chunk.

[weirleader]

I'll second the suggestion to stay away from fencing and use solid blocks (possibly even 2 blocks thick). When I had fencing I ALWAYS had leakage in both directions and it never worked out well. Once I went to solid block walls and conveyors life got much easier.

[Digdug83]

I ended up doubling the walls as cows and pigs were leaking into the sheep pens. I also put up a layer of glass on top just to seal them in further. Lastly I coated the adult chicken floor with item collectors to grab their eggs.

[Kotja]

Farm looks cool. But is better Grinder or slaughterhouse?

Grinder makes essence, leather (or other things) but food is less saturating and more spacous

Slaughterhause makes most spacous food (make it into block and store it in DSU), pinkslime, but no xp nor leather.

What is machines in sheep pens? ranchers? Have sheeps differnet colors?

[Digdug83]

I'm using Grinders for now because I don't need pink slime anymore (I have over a stack of pink slime balls). I don't think one is better than the other really as they have different functions.

I use steaks as my food source, as do most of the guys who play with me, with porkchops as a back up so I don't need meat ingots or whatever they're called. I will need lots of mob essence though for when I eventually make auto-spawners for mobs that don't have natural spawners that I can simply move.

The two sheep pens just have ranchers in them. One of the sheep I think was black but the rest are white. I have all the minium stone recipes for wool color set in my ME network so when I need a specific color wool it just goes through the rotation until I get the one I want.

[Kotja]

I thought I'd post up what I ended up doing for my animal farms. You might be able to tell I have a bit of a symmetry obsession lol.

http://imgur.com/PXTlCLh

http://imgur.com/qfvtlaF

I'm rather happy with how it came out, especially since it conforms to the empty space from one of my plant farms so well (I had two 25x25 areas left over). As you can see I have pigs, cows and chickens with their own pens which are then chronotyped onto conveyor belts (thanks for that idea Weir) where they futilely try to get to their parents. Once they mature they make their way to the grinder pens and are slaughtered for science. After I made those three I noticed a bunch of space in the two middle areas so I put two sheep pens in there to gather wool, with ranchers on either end of the pen so they're always covered. All areas where the animals can walk are covered by a sewer that are linked to tesseracts (removing the flow problem with pipes) that goes back to my liquid management dimension (thanks again for that Charlie). Liquid/item tesseracts cover the grinders/ranchers outputs and energy tesseracts power everything since I didn't want to run conduit everywhere.

I've got too many animals on belt even adults. How many animals are breeding pens? Pictures are no longer there.

[Digdug83]

Yeah that farming method didn't work out for me in the end unfortunately. It seemed like it was working for a time. The current method I have is just a veterinary station in a baby pen that immediately grows them to adults, that way they don't bunch up and cause problems. I set the veterinary station with an import and export bus set to put growth syringes in and only take empty syringes out so it doesn't have to make more. A shame though, I really liked the conveyor belt idea too.

[Kotja]

picture pls

And i need to build zombie pigmen farm, or only two parents

[Digdug83]

I'm not in a position to do screenshots at the moment, but there's not much to tell really. It's a standard pair of 5x5 pens (double thick walls to prevent phasing), with adults being in one pen and babies moved to another via chronotyper. The adults are bred using a breeder and then the babies are injected with a growth syringe from a veterinary station and then killed with a grinder. My ME system feeds them all and tesseracts handle all outputs. If you really need to see an example I'll try and get around to it at some point.

[Kotja]

I dont need picture.

[weirleader]

I just revised my farm and ended up going with a few extra chronotypers to quickly pull babies something like 20 blocks or more away from adults... I found the conveyors didn't effectively pull them as far because they'd walk against them. So there's three (5x5) rooms between babies and adults and conveyors to keep the babies at the center of the final room where I use a grinder. I find the mob essence to be the most important part of the grinder, with food a close second. I figure I'll make a slaughterhouse at some point so I can gather some pink slime, but that's the only reason, as regular grinding of animals provides plenty of meat and the slaughterhouse magnifies that to a level that is beyond necessary.