One other thing. If you are spending a lot of time away from your base, and long distances, you will probably have more problems. I lost far less when I was just leaveing on spelunking and mining expeditions, than when I was spending a lot of time on a project across the map. If you are gone most of the time you will most likely lose your critters. This is probably by design.
I've had a time with Sheep. I don't seem to have many problems on my outside farm, even when going away to my underground farm halfway across my map. I come back and they are still there. Now at the underground, I trapped a black sheep. went outside and came back to find him gone. Trapped a gray sheep. Mated and had another gray. Led them down to my pens with the other white sheep. Dyed a couple blue, and had a blue baby. Found a mineshaft close by in a cave, came back to find all the gray sheep gone, and the baby blue. Seems the wild sheep seem to want to despawn more so than the ones you have bred, but I've had both despawn on me. It's annoying, but I can find far better things to get upset over.
No, have never had this discussion. Our previous discussion involved the nether.
Now, I've seen animals glitch through fences on ocassion and they may sometimes spawn upon loading on the wrong side of fences, but they do also despawn. A friend and I have tried many different methods of trying to contain them, and nothing works. Some worlds have less problems than others. I don't know why. The point is, when somebody asks an honest question about the game, I am not going to blow smoke up their a55 and tell them to go through a bunch of steps that don't work. At this point, there isn't much point in building an animal farm unless you're prepared to tend it constantly.
tried it. Two deep keeps the wolves from killing through them, but two high still doesn't help. Feel free to experiment.
I use two deep with a block space in between. So, when viewed in profile it's fence - grass block - fence; rather than fence - fence. I found that fence - fence increased the chances of the animal spawning upon re-entry into the game on top of the fence, even when the fence is 2 high. With the space in between, if they do respawn outside the inner fence, they spawn on the grass block between the two of them and then still can't just wander away. However, a two high fence does make it less likely that another animal will bump and launch an animal onto the top of the fence. I prefer not to bother with the 2 high fences and just keep the number of animals in each pen down to 3 maximum (2 parents and a baby).
Again, I do apologize for believing it was you I had this conversation with before. I now see that my previous post on this issue yesterday was not even on this same thread. Pitfall of there being so many threads started on the same issues by different OPs and an aging memory (mine). I really don't expect you or anyone else to blow smoke anywhere, just don't expect me to say that something doesn't work when it has worked for me.
PS: On two of my maps where I have animal farms, I am currently spending long periods mining in completely different quandrants of the map - cutting tunnels at level 12 that literally go from one end of the map to the other. Even so, there is still no evidence of any of them randomly despawning. I come back and they are all still there - plus usually a few other wild ones that have spawned inside the pens.
I use two deep with a block space in between. So, when viewed in profile it's fence - grass block - fence; rather than fence - fence. I found that fence - fence increased the chances of the animal spawning upon re-entry into the game on top of the fence, even when the fence is 2 high. With the space in between, if they do respawn outside the inner fence, they spawn on the grass block between the two of them and then still can't just wander away. However, a two high fence does make it less likely that another animal will bump and launch an animal onto the top of the fence. I prefer not to bother with the 2 high fences and just keep the number of animals in each pen down to 3 maximum (2 parents and a baby).
Again, I do apologize for believing it was you I had this conversation with before. I now see that my previous post on this issue yesterday was not even on this same thread. Pitfall of there being so many threads started on the same issues by different OPs and an aging memory (mine). I really don't expect you or anyone else to blow smoke anywhere, just don't expect me to say that something doesn't work when it has worked for me.
PS: On two of my maps where I have animal farms, I am currently spending long periods mining in completely different quandrants of the map - cutting tunnels at level 12 that literally go from one end of the map to the other. Even so, there is still no evidence of any of them randomly despawning. I come back and they are all still there - plus usually a few other wild ones that have spawned inside the pens.