Ranching Guide: Animal Care & Setups

Ranching is the structured capture, domestication and maintenance of critters to harvest resources (meat, eggs, eggs-as-ingredient, byproducts, decor, materials like lime/bleach/coal, and specialised outputs). Successful ranching turns local fauna into renewable factories — but each species has unique diets, atmosphere/temperature needs, space rules and husbandry mechanics you must satisfy to get predictable output.

Core ranching mechanics

• Taming: A critter becomes tamed when its wildness reaches 0%. Wildness starts at 100% for all naturally spawned critters and eggs. Wild critters gain +5% wildness per cycle; tamed critters never regain wildness. Most critters can be tamed; some (Morb, Beeta, Mimika, Gnit) cannot.
• How to reduce wildness:
  • Land/flying critters: grooming by a duplicant gives a "Groomed" status that reduces wildness by −50% per cycle while active.
  • Aquatic critters: eating from a Fish Feeder gives "Ate From Feeder", reducing wildness by −20% per cycle.
• Eggs: eggs inherit the parent’s wildness at time of laying — tame parents lay tame eggs.
• Reproduction and eggs-per-life:
  • Wild critters (if never glum) lay one egg over their life; tame critters lay up to sixteen eggs across their lifespan if kept happy and groomed.
• Stable rules:
  • Critters require grooming and food once tamed. The Grooming Station automates grooming; Critter Feeders and Fish Feeders supply food.
  • Stable capacity is calculated from per-critter personal space (typical: 12 tiles per critter; Pufts need 16; Cuddle Pips use only 4). If critters + eggs collectively exceed room space they gain the Cramped debuff which reduces reproduction rate. Crowded/Overcrowded are related but separate debuffs.
  • Duplicants need the Critter Ranching skill to perform ranching errands (feeding feeders, operating Milking/Milking Station, moving critters/eggs between enclosures).

General setup tips

• Always plan for eggs: eggs count against cramped calculation. Use incubators or separate incubator rooms to avoid cramped penalties.
• Groomed but unfed starvation ranches: some critters (e.g., Pokeshells, Shove Voles, Pacu) can be kept groomed and survive long enough to lay eggs without continuous feeding, enabling low-input strategies — but variants like Delecta Voles may be born with insufficient calories and slowly degrade such systems unless compensated.
• Overflow/harvest rooms: keeping extra, unproductive critters in overflow rooms (sometimes filled with a specific atmosphere like hydrogen for scale growth or carbon dioxide for dry hatch) can be used to postpone death or harvest resources (e.g., shearing dreckos).
• Automation: conveyor chutes, auto-dispensers and Critter Drop-Offs / Fish Releases let you move eggs and harvested products with minimal dupe time, critical for high-volume farms (pufts, pips, puft eggs).

Species-focused summaries and common ranch goals

Pips and Cuddle Pips (plant help, food & dirt)

• Use: plant seeding, dirt production, eggs/meat for food.
• Space & support:
  • Regular Pip: 12 tiles personal space; max 8 per stable. Requires ~0.325 wild or ~0.09 domestic Arbor Trees per Pip to stay fed (values reported vary slightly by source; use the domestic requirement when using planted Arbor Trees).
  • Cuddle Pip: consumes 25% more food, uses 4 tiles personal space (allowing 3× the population), produces 5/8 the dirt of a regular Pip. Use Thimble Reed to breed Cuddle Pips.
• Production:
  • Pip eggs can be cracked for Raw Egg (1 kg) or hatched then butchered for meat. Lifetime calorie yields make Pips a viable midgame food supplement.
• Tricks:
  • Pips can plant seeds on Farm Tiles that dupes cannot reach; use them to automate dense arbor or farm tile seeding.
  • Convert regular pip ranches to cuddle pips when your design benefits from higher food output per stable area, but recalculate dirt needs.

Hatches (coal production, refined-carbon variants, trash disposal)

• Use: eat raw materials (rock, dirt, spoiled food) and excrete fuel (coal or refined carbon with Dry Hatches); Sage Hatches eat spoiled/undesirable food and produce eggs and meat and some coal; Stone Hatches can be used for coal-herding.
• Setup:
  • Feed with abundant rock/dirt/organic waste. Sage Hatch setups pair with a hatchery and incubators; ~7 tame hatches roughly supply one Coal Generator continuously (coal consumption and uptime assumptions vary).
• Notes:
  • Dry Hatches require solid CO2 and very cold climate; they output Refined Carbon instead of coal.
  • Sage Hatches convert a very high percentage of consumed calories into BBQ and eggs, making them ideal for trash-to-food pipelines.

Pufts (gas conversion to solids; variants for Oxylite/Bleach Stone)

• Use: convert gas into solids (Slime -> Algae, Polluted Oxygen -> Slime via Sublimation path; specific puft variants produce Bleach Stone or Oxylite).
• Requirements:
  • Pufts need a gas source (Polluted Oxygen, Oxygen, Chlorine) and a liquid floor in enclosures so their excreted solids are produced in solid form. Keep liquid to maintain solid outputs and offgassing management.
• Variants:
  • Squeaky Puft consumes Chlorine and makes Bleach Stone (95% efficiency).
  • Dense Puft produces Oxylite (useful for rockets).
• Management:
  • Puft Prince can influence egg morph distribution and keeps ranch productive; a small prince sub-stable is often useful.

Pokeshells / Oakshell / Sanishell (sand, lime/lumber, sanitation)

• Use: Pokeshell default produces Sand and Pokeshell Molt (crush into Lime); Oakshells produce molts processable into Lumber via Ethanol Loop; Sanishells remove germs and produce seafood on death.
• Feeding:
  • Pokeshells eat Polluted Dirt, Rot Piles or Slime. They can be messy because those inputs offgas Polluted Oxygen — design filtration/deodorizers accordingly.
• Morph mechanics:
  • Submerging Pokeshell variants in specific liquids changes egg morph chances: Ethanol encourages Oakshell offspring; Water encourages Sanishells. Liquid mass threshold for biasing reproduction is about 350 kg (the flood level), and specific time submerged during the first adult cycles affects morph chance.
  • Even with continuous immersion, there is a nonzero chance to lay the default Pinch Roe — automated systems must handle occasional unwanted morphs.
• Special uses:
  • Oakshells support Ethanol Distillery loops: their molts can be crushed and distilled to produce Ethanol, Petroleum, and byproducts; this can help make arbor tree ethanol loops water-positive.
  • Sanishells provide large seafood yields on death (comparable to multiple Pacu) and remove germs from polluted water.
• Practical notes:
  • Grooming stations must be placed out of liquid; ensure Pokeshells can reach groomers without leaving required liquid conditions excessively.
  • Unfed-but-groomed Pokeshell ranches can be used for molt harvesting, but growth and automation must account for occasional aggression around eggs.

Pacu and aquatic chains (meat, eggs, algae loops)

• Use: food (raw fish/seafood), eggs for omelettes; also source of Polluted Dirt when fed seeds.
• Feeding/Taming:
  • Pacu tame by being fed (Fish Feeder); wild Pacu will reproduce once in life if left unfed but can be used in starvation ranches with tight density constraints.
• Integration:
  • Pacu can be integrated with Pokeshells as a second-stage processor (Pokeshells eating Pacu offal or molts), but watch algae consumption.
• Calorie economics:
  • Tame Pacu produce eggs rapidly when fed and groomed; cooked eggs are high-calorie foods, and butchering strategies can yield continuous kcal output per dupe if scaled.

Shove Voles (high meat yields, starvation ranching)

• Use: large meat drops on death and eggs; effective for early/midgame food.
• Strategies:
  • Starvation ranch: groomed but unfed voles will live long enough to lay eggs; incubate and rotate to produce sustained meat supply. Delecta Vole variant has insufficient starting calories and will die without feeding, so plan replacement mechanics.
  • Incubation: using incubators accelerates cycles and reduces total space/time.
• Handling:
  • Voles can burrow and escape; use steel airlocks or pneumatic doors and mineral/obsidian/steel tiles where necessary.

Dreckos (phosphorite/plastic/reed fiber, shearing)

• Use: produce phosphorite, reed fiber or plastic depending on atmosphere and diet; provide wool-like scales that can be sheared for materials (shearing interval depends on immersion in hydrogen for some morphs).
• Requirements:
  • Dreckos eat growing plants (Pincha Pepper, Balm Lily, Mealwood). Domestic plant ratios: roughly 3 plants : 4 Drecko (regular) or 1:1 for Glossy variants, depending on domestication and plant type.
  • Shearing: tame dreckos regenerate scales; glossy dreckos shear faster than regular.
• Tricks:
  • You can dump excess dreckos into overflow rooms filled with certain atmospheres to delay starvation and harvest shearing opportunistically.

Shine / Radiant / Abyss Bugs (decor & light)

• Use: decor boosting and light (some morphs), phosphorite-eating progression chain where feeding specific foods gives small chances to produce the next morph. Shine bugs reproduce extremely fast; feeding phosphorite gives low but steady chance to progress morphs.
• Breeding tips:
  • Specialized diets raise progression chances dramatically; phosphorite-only breeding is slow but workable due to fast egg rate (roughly 2 eggs every 3 cycles for shine bugs).
  • Keep stables cleared of eggs to avoid Cramped debuff slowing reproduction.

Gassy Moos and Milking

• Use: Brackene production (milk), natural gas generation; can be milked at a Milking Station for Brackene (Milking Station produces 50 kg Brackene per milk).
• Notes:
  • Gassy Moos have reproduction mechanics tied to viewing space and "accu-moo-lation" counters; grazing Gas Grass or Plant Husk and keeping them Well-Fed leads to milkable state after several cycles.
  • They are flying 2×2 critters—room design must consider reachability (they cannot access the right-most tile in a room) and light absorption for Gas Grass optimization.

Atmosphere and temperature considerations

• Many critters require specific atmospheres or temperatures:
  • Dreckos and Glossy Dreckos have temperature interactions with Mealwood farms and may warm surroundings.
  • Dry Hatches require solid CO2 and extreme cold.
  • Pokeshell morph bias depends on immersion in liquids (Ethanol vs Water) and liquid mass thresholds.
  • Pufts require the gas they refine (Polluted Oxygen, Chlorine or Oxygen) to be present in their enclosure.
• Some critters produce or consume gases (Slicksters consume CO2 and excrete crude oil; Pufts consume Polluted Oxygen etc.) — use these for integrated cycles (e.g., CO2 sinks for Dusk Cap farms).

Resource & production loops (examples)

• Ethanol Loop (Oakshell):
  • Oakshell molts -> crush -> Ethanol Distiller -> Ethanol + Polluted Dirt -> Oakshells consume Polluted Dirt -> molts again. Oakshells can offset polluted water demand for Arbor Tree ethanol loops and produce lumber when processed appropriately.
• Puft-Slime-Algae:
  • Pufts convert gas to Slime/solid outputs; Slime -> Algae Distiller -> Algae -> Oxygen/Algae Terrariums; combined with Deodorizers/Carbon Skimmers you can close gas cycles.
• Hatch Coal Herding:
  • Feed Hatches rock/dirt to generate coal; ~8–9 Stone Hatches produce enough coal to run a single Coal Generator continuously (scale and margins vary; coal generator consumes significant coal per cycle).
• Sage Hatch (trash-to-food):
  • Send spoiled food/slime/polluted dirt to Sage Hatches to produce coal, eggs and BBQ. Useful for waste recycling.

Practical pitfalls and cautions

• Eggs count for cramped: a room that looks large enough when empty can become cramped once eggs accumulate; always design incubator capacity and egg routing.
• Unwanted morphs: morph-bias mechanics are probabilistic; any setup that tries to generate a specific morph must handle occasional default morph eggs and include sorting/automation.
• Offgassing inputs: feeding critters with materials like Rot Piles, Slime, Polluted Dirt creates Polluted Oxygen and other gases; include Deodorizers, airflow control or gas capture to protect farms and dupes.
• Escapees: burrowing/flying critters can escape through lighter doors or non-steel airlocks (Shove Voles will pass copper/aluminum/iron airlocks). Use proper materials and 2-tile buffer platforms for burrowers.
• Variant-specific lifecycle quirks: some morphs (Delecta Voles, certain Pokeshell morphs) have different starting calories or reproduction quirks — check variant notes before relying on a starvation strategy.

Useful buildings & automation

• Grooming Station: required for taming land critters and to maintain tame critter happiness.
• Critter Feeder / Fish Feeder: required for taming aquatic critters and maintaining tame animals.
• Milking Station: requires Critter Ranching II; used to milk Gassy Moos (produces 50 kg Brackene).
• Incubators: accelerate egg incubation and control hatch timing.
• Critter Drop-Off / Fish Release: move critters/eggs between rooms for breed selection or to prevent cramped.
• Conveyors / Auto-Dispenser / Critter Traps: automate food input and product routing; important for large farms like pufts or pips.

Keep species goals focused: choose critters that synergize with local resources (pips with arbor trees for dirt/food, pufts with polluted oxygen sources, hatches for coal from rock/dirt, puft/puft variants for Oxylite/Bleach Stone) and design stable, automated sorting for eggs and morph control. Ranching transforms local nuisances into reliable production; plan space, atmosphere, grooming and egg-handling before scaling for steady long-term yields.