Shove Vole

Shove Voles are burrowing critters that can be found in the asteroid and are primarily valued as an extremely efficient meat source. Unlike most ranchable critters, they do not need to be fed to remain productive, and a groomed population can be turned into a near self-sustaining source of eggs and barbecue. They produce more meat than Delecta Voles and have no special production ability beyond that.

Their main behavior is to consume debris and excrete it as a solid tile, losing 50% of the consumed mass in the process. This makes them useful for renewing damaged terrain after meteor impacts and can even help rebuild surfaced areas over time. When meteor showers begin, they automatically burrow and remain underground until bombardment ends, which keeps them safe from dangerous meteors. A wild Shove Vole can also be used to reveal the map when its navigation is viewed.

Shove Voles have no personal space requirement, do not become crowded, and do not suffer from the overcrowded debuff. That makes them unusually easy to stack in a small ranch, although the practical limit becomes duplicant grooming time and performance impact rather than critter stress. They also cannot be confined once they escape into open terrain, so building and access control matter much more than with ordinary ranch animals.

A standard ranch setup keeps them inside a sealed stable and uses grooming to maintain egg production. Because they eat debris, a ranch can be run as a starvation ranch for meat, but long-term sustainability depends on replacing losses from Delecta Vole eggs. Since there is a small chance that a Shove Vole lays a Delecta Vole egg, a fully starved ranch will eventually shrink unless at least one breeder is kept alive with a trickle of food. A common approach is to feed one Shove Vole just enough to keep it alive so it can replenish the herd with eggs.

Useful practical notes:

• A Shove Vole drops 16,000 kcal of meat on death.
• With grooming and egg incubation, one Vole can average 1075 kcal/cycle of meat, or 1344 kcal/cycle as barbecue.
• A domesticated Vole hatches with 43,200 kcal.
• One incubator can support about 1.5 fed voles or 3.75 unfed voles.
• Without incubators, the egg cycle is much slower, so production efficiency drops sharply.
• For containment, steel airlocks or pneumatic doors are recommended, and any missing abyssalite should be replaced with solid tile such as metal or obsidian.
• They can burrow through most tiles and doors, so ordinary construction materials are not reliable barriers.
• If space allows, a platform with a two-tile gap from other walls can help prevent escapes, though dropped eggs still need to be recovered.

Shove Voles are best kept in hot, insulated ranches if the goal is to maximize their own eggs and minimize Delecta Vole births. Warm body temperatures increase the chance of Delecta Vole eggs, which can be useful if you want Delecta Voles, but it works against pure meat production.