Stockbreeding Labor Output

It’s not a confusing question. I find it an interesting question but my answer may be a bit confusing. Maybe Tom or someone else can answer clearer.

You don’t need to assign a herdsman to get wool, milk, eggs; those things produced continuously. The animals “drop” it and if there’s no herdsman, labourers pick it up. Although if the little store is full, there’s no new “drop” so if you have few labourers with a lot of other work to do, the production gets down. And of course, without a herdsman, no animal will be slaughtered and there are no meat and skin.

So far, it’s clear but the most interesting question is: Do the animals breed faster with a herdsman? In some mods I have seen that they do and if you never assign a herdsman the animals die, but I’m not sure it’s like that in the North. I have tested with and without herdsmen but come to no conclusion. Sometimes it looks like it’s faster with a herdsman, sometimes not. If I’m short of workers, I let one work from time to time to better pick up wool/milk (I seldom breed chicken) and maybe speed the breeding up but when I’m very short of workers (or forget) they breed as well.

I am sure that in some mods animals don´t breed without a herdsman and that they breed faster when one is present a lot but as I´ve said: I havn´t seen it that obvious in the North but very clear in my present game.

I like many unique things in the RKEd, like the fodder-fertilizer-chain, the canals, the corner buildings and 3 store NMT houses but I have one issue; the survivning aspects that I like so much in the North is missing, so I decided to make a try with RKEd and Ironman. There´s one start option Shepherds where you have 2 different animals from the start. I found a map I liked very much that had sheep that I wanted but with one disadvantage; 10 children from the start. I can tell the first years were very tough, I didn´t survive the first attempt but after waiting to build a school it worked.

Anyway, as you may understand there was a constant lack of workers from the start so the animals weren´t tended very well. I had 6 sheep and 6 pigs and bult a small pasture where I put the sheep to get wool for clothes early. I had in mind that you need to assign a herdsman in RKEd so I had one assigned from time to time. After a while the number of sheep had grown to the maximum 8 and I built a bigger pasture for the sheep and put the pigs in the first small one. Now I didn´t assign a herdsman. Soon I had only 4 pigs. That made me send a herdman to the pigs and soon a couple of piglets were born but the herd didn´t grow. I think all of the initial pigs died before the herd reached the maximal 8.

Now my settlement have grown and I also breed ducks. In one corner of the map I have 3 duck pasture that happend to hold 20 ducks each. One is very close to a barn and quite close to the herdsman´s house, the second a bit further away and the third even further. I´ve followed the output of meat in these pastures from the beginning and it very much depends on the time the herdsman spend there.

I will probably play this afternoon and will make a screenshot. I also have two pastures with bisons about the same size and distance from barns and housing. I think I will assign a second herdsman to one of them and see what happens.

I did some testing, too. Vanilla gameplay, easy start 8 chicken.

No herdsman ever; chicken don’t breed and start to die late winter 2, all dead early winter 3.
Same start but herdsman assigned when the first dies, late winter 2. More chicken die, early spring only 4 left, early summer 2 new chicken born but another 2 dead, early winter all initial chicken dead but one more born. Summer 5 pasture (9×9) full with 13 chicken.

Chicken split into 2 9×9 pastures. One with and one without herdsman. Chicken breed in both pastures, early spring, 7 chicken start to die without herdsman, all dead summer 9.

Same split, now I let the herdsman visit the empty pasture as soon as the number of chicken reaches 15, let him slaughter and unassign. Numbers from 13 chicken during 4 years:

With herdsman. Without herdsman
Eggs Meat Eggs Meat
132 24. 126. 30
150. 72. 162. 30
150. 66. 156. 42
132. 72. 144. 24

I also restarted the game and let a herdsman work for about a month at the beginning and the chicken started to breed after some time.

Conclusion: Chicken (and I guess all other animals) breed faster if a herdsman is at the pasture but they survive and breed also if you only assign one from time to time. If you never assign a herdsman they all die but you can let the herd survive by temporarily letting one work. But of course, if you primarily want wool from sheep, you can get more if you only assign one from time to time. But of course, in this case you need enough labourers to pick it up.

As I’ve seen in my present game, a good located pasture give more meat than a bad located where the herdsman is absent longer. Here is the screenshot I promised with the output from the 3 pastures. You can also see some of my favourite RKEd things I talked about above.

How fast animals breed can be set in livestock file via offspringTerm and ..Tolerance, the higher the slower. So that’s specific to species but nothing to setup a dependency on worker.

I also made my testing with lots of chickens and it’s basically the same result as in Nillas test: If they never see a worker, animals don’t start breeding at all. If there was a worker assigned just for a moment and then removed, they breed with the same speed as with a full-time worker until the pasture is filled. It seems there is no hidden function that makes livestock breeding faster with a worker present. So micromanaging pastures is a nice option in early game with only a few people. It just needs a worker to start breeding which is a tricky detail and probably unintended. That was new to me.

But that’s the effect of higher output with a full-time worker who makes sure animals are slaughtered as soon as possible, no? There is no loss then due to stopped breeding at max capacity or sometimes lower population in micromanaged pastures.

Also, there is a variation due to offspring term tolerance and different ages of animals. Some pastures without a worker were even faster in my test than worked ones, just because of this randomness. If there would be any function or modifier in game that makes breeding faster with a worker, this could not happen.

It did not run long and was only to check if the game calculates any shorter offspring term which it does not. I agree that a constantly worked pasture has a higher output because what we said and if the stockbreeder is not much present due to bad location than the pasture probably pauses breeding sometimes at max capacity.

So that’s the conclusion I think, that pastures can be micromanaged but with a full-time worker it will produce more in long term.