My sheep farm's despawned a few times (in the last 3 or 4 days) and my chicken farm despawned once (at the same time my sheep farm did, first time. A kindly mod repopulated the sheep, but I didn't realise about the chooks until much later. No worries, though - I had a spare 10 dozen eggs. Used half, save the rest in case it happened again.)

After this first occurred, chicken farming appeared broken, and every day I would log on and my 15-18 birds would be back down to around a dozen the next time I logged on (I would then work to repopulate during my session).

This now appears fixed, however, and the chooks were laying much more frequently tonight and the population really picked up.

Any clues? I'm wondering if there had been a buggy animal mod installed / reinstalled the last few days....

Oh yeah, i would love my several dozen sheep back, but I now have a few in a new location, and I'm not too fussed. Plenty of wheat with which to breed them. As long as the despawning no longer occurs, I should be back in wool-city in no time!

- elissaf

Me deepest condolences for the loss of your chickens.

If you ever need more eggs you can visit /warp slurthshop and acquire more <object class="emojione" data="https://resources.enjin.com/1489581540/themes/core/images/emojione/svg/1f44d.svg?0" type="image/svg+xml" standby=":thumb:">:thumb:</object>

I think animals are meant to despawn when an area isn't loaded onto memory for a certain amount of time (nobody around)

However I have noticed on a couple occasions my chickens despawning as well. Even when I'm present.

It's a known issue, I believe. I remember seeing this shortly after the official MC release, on this server. It hasn't happened on my single player map, yet. So it might just be a small server bug. I noticed that once you exceed a certain amount of animals (for me I had about 50 sheep and 10 chickens) they despawned. I did it again, and at the same numbers they despawned again. Now I have my sheep building and chicken farm empty, until the issue is solved.

If I were you, I'd see about buying spawners. Make sure you have a stack of diamonds (as that's the highest price spawner I've seen, being a sheep spawner). Just ask on /ch t every once in a while.

Also, slurth: How much are you selling eggs for?

Currently doing 8eggs per gold.

I was doing 16 per gold but I was selling out too quickly. So I raised the price to improve retention for a short while.

I always noticed all my chickens were gone after a plugin reload, I figured that's what was killing them

The plugin gods demand sacrifice

If you have to many animals in one place they can start suffocating in the walls. A good way to prevent this is to make coops and corrals out of glass as glass cant cause suffocation.

Animal Farm didn't have bugs, it had communist mammals and avians. But if I recall correctly, the pigs ate your chickens... That's what happens when you let them in the bed.

rokitchikin is right about the suffocation thing. Have first level of wall dirt, for example, to conserve the glass. Then you'll need 2-3 units high of glass, so they don't magically hop out. I also found you need the wall to be two units thick (because I've had some glitch through the wall somehow, even after I put a roof above them).

Anagatha, now that you mention it I think that may be one part of it, plus rollbacks (for some reason it doesn't register any of them? So weird). I've done a search online and there is nothing (that I found) about this issue, so it might just be a server thing (probably pluggins rest, roll backs, and whatever else affects the server on a large scale). During this search, I even found out that using fences can make them suffocate, strange huh?

I do know, like I've said before, that getting a spawner is the easy way to farm animals. After some investigation, however, sheep spawners and chicken spawners are rare to find... aka I couldn't find anyone who owned any, of the ten ish people I asked. We can probably bet that it'll be fixed once all the pluggins are up to date and all the bugs fixed. Good news is that they're making progress. I'd expect in the next few weeks most of everything will be fixed, so hopefully we can go back to breeding.

Also, Slurth: I found out that the minecraft program freezes any data that no one is in. Animals won't despawn if you're not there. When I had my farm, I'd log out for a couple weeks (like when I just went to China over winter break) and my animals were still there, but then they disappeared after a server kidies attack. <object class="emojione" data="https://resources.enjin.com/1489581540/themes/core/images/emojione/svg/2639.svg?0" type="image/svg+xml" standby=":(">:(</object>

yeah, that's not it. Thanks though <object class="emojione" data="https://resources.enjin.com/1489581540/themes/core/images/emojione/svg/1f642.svg?0" type="image/svg+xml" standby=":-)">:-)</object>

As an aside, fences are good for chickens (for the reason you listed_ as they are considered 'air walls'. Blocks of wood WILL cause them to suffocate.

Sheep appear to be able to jump any number of fences (and they can die when they plummet back down), so yes - glass panes and a (lowish) glass ceiling prevent both issues.

And this is why I know that suffocating was not the cause of a massive despawn.

By the way, the server is meant to NOT despawn animals. The lfirst two despawns happened while I was watching, and within 45 minutes of each other. The third sheep-go-bye-bye was after a standard 12 hour away time, which is rather typical for me, and has not presented other problems.

Thanks all for writing. I like the plugin assumption best, but I wish they would fix it.

I think it is partially a spawn issue and partially a staff issue as well

Mobs do not always save location and if we have to do any kind of rollback or plugin modification, their data may get scrambled back into the world at random.

When Staff do a mob spawn or slaughter, it can occasionally act in areas in the entire world, not just the location of the spawn/slaughter.

Mob Spawners are your best bet as they insure more will come for you. Chicken spawners cost 75k MTC and sheep are up at 175k MTC, hence they are very RARELY sold for gold or diamonds.

Also, all mobs do despawn in MC. the rates vary depending on they type of mob.