Ranching

Ranching lets you tame and raise critters so they lay more eggs and (in some cases) produce more materials.

Mechanics

• All ranching related errands require a duplicant with the Critter Ranching skill, including Grooming, Shearing, Wrangling and Relocating critters.
• Wild critters do not need to be fed, same for Pacus and Jawbos, who are tamed via feeding. However, feeding wild critters will cause them to create material, and with certain species of critter you can influence the sub-species type of their children by feeding them specific foods.
• Assuming a critter never has the "Miserable" debuff, a wild critter will lay one egg from birth to death, while a tame critter will lay fifteen eggs from birth to death via old age. Critters can become Miserable when confined in a small space, or too crowded.
• Tame critters are meant to be kept in a Stable, which requires a Ranching Building. A stable requires 12 squares of space for most critters, and 16 for some critters such as Pufts, meaning at most 8 non-Pufts or 6 Pufts can fit into a maximally sized stable.
  • If there is at least one egg in a stable and the number of eggs plus the number of critters is larger than the stable's maximum capacity then the critters will receive the Cramped debuff, preventing them from generating more eggs; eggs inside any container inside the stable count towards this limit. The Cramped debuff will only go away once enough eggs hatch or are removed from the stable.
• Critters (except for Pacus and Jawbos) are tamed by grooming them at a Grooming Station. Keeping a wild critter in Groomed status for two consecutive cycles will make it tame. Once tamed, a critter stays tamed.
  • Eggs maintain the wild/tame status of their parent upon hatching. That is, the eggs of tame critters will hatch into tame babies, and the eggs of partially tamed wild critters will hatch into partially tamed babies.
• An egg will take 20% of the critter's lifespan to hatch if left outside, or 4% if "lullabied" in an incubator.