Ranch Simulator – Tips to Manage Livestock

How to Manage Livestock

I’ve found the best way to separate out piglets and goat kids is to do it at night when they all bed down. You do have to have a large enough pen that they start in so they won’t get hung up on other ones, but it is far easier to do it that way than during the day. Be aware though, once pigs or goats are awake at night they will not bed back down like chickens will.

I have always utilized the night time. It’s the best time to move animals around.

On top of that, I’d recommend…

1. Keeping one or two pairs of breeding pigs in a separate pen from the others.
2. Move piglets away from the breeders on their first night.
3. Ear tag them as you do this. My system will have ten colors, one for each number from 0 to 9. This number correlates to the day the piglet was born. So, say a litter of five was born on Day 253. I’d give them the ear tag for 3. In this case, mint green.
4. Yes this is important, because the birth day also correlates to the slaughter day. Pigs are fully grown at roughly ten days so all adult piggies with mint green ear tags will be slaughtered on day 263.
5. I’m in the process of building a multilevel custom facility/barn wherein all of the other animals, the processing room, and the pig breeders are on the ground floor. On the second floor is one huge pen where day-old piglets go to mature a bit. Yes, expect some breeding here as pigs can breed from Day Two. But they’re hard to identify before Day Three or Four so the best you can do is ear tag every piglet and move a pig the night you can identify its sex. Then it gets moved once more. The maturation pen is on the second floor. Floor Three holds females only while the fourth holds only males. Doing this allows you maximize the space with loads of stalls without worrying about the breeding because the other gender is on a separate floor. There should be no more breeding once the pig gets to this stage but if there is then something isn’t as far away as first thought.
6. Pigs are immediately placed into a colored stall pig enough for an adult pig, both troughs, and a fence gate. Each gate is colored – you guessed it! – the same color as the ear tag.

This is not a foolproof system. I’m starting to get into pigs for the first time so I’ve read a lot of guides and learned from a lot of player’s problems and this currently is my best solution. But I have not been able to implement it yet. I’ve got a brand new game save so I’ve got a long way to go.