So I've made a nice and straightforward Habitat for the Peafowls and decided to just max out the number of adults with a nice amount of space.
This Habitat is well over the minimum criteria, with a bit over 100m² extra.
However, even though, yes, 20 birds is a lot, I started getting warnings that all their excrement is causing a disease-risk.
Now, I know that birds just poop a lot. I've seen it, cause almost every time I see a bird sitting on a fence in my own backyard, I see them make a drop. And there's just a lot of it on roofs and windows and so on. - But to manage it in this game seems problematic.
At the time it was still the only Habitat in the area and there were 3 Keepers, of which one did all tasks, one didn't clean (intentionally), but the last one only cleaned.
And it's not a big area, everything is pretty much around this Habitat, so they're around.
So I kept track of what happened. First, the Keeper that does all tasks cleaned things up, but there already were droppings as they were leaving.
About one and a half minutes in real time later, the Keeper that only cleans came to inspect, and there was already plenty of excrement, so they cleaned up, but probably kept going a good few minutes as the Peafowls just dropped more and more.
The Keeper left it clean, so it worked out fine, that time. Though, they were completely drained from Energy, so they went to rest immediately. - Not that strange, one could need a break in real life after cleaning a lot, but it just goes to show how intensive the task is within the game.
This is to one of the worst points it can get, which can happen in no time.
Surely, if they'd be trained more they might do it more quickly, though I wouldn't say they're slow at it even when they're Trainees, they're actually very swift.
The thing is, even if one of them cleans everything out all at once, the Peafowls poop as it happens, so really it would need a Keeper to just clean after them continuously and permanently. They just can't keep up. - Really, as soon as it's clean, there are multiple drops before the Keeper that cleaned the entire Habitat has left.
This is right after a Keeper cleaned everything and walked out of the Habitat.
Sure, another one could walk in to continue cleaning, but even if that would happen (and it doesn't, cause it takes a while for them to show up), the whole "shift" between two Keepers takes long enough to "over-soil" the Habitat too much. - Besides, who wants to see a Keeper walk around with a vacuum in a Habitat at all times?
I'd even added two more Keepers to the task of cleaning, making it four in total, but it remained almost just as unmanageable.
I know the "real" answer is probably a few less birds and/or an even larger Habitat, but if both are within the requirements, a maximum of 20 adults on like 500m² (and I even have about 100 extra), and 4 Keepers can't keep up with the cleaning, that's not right.
Perhaps, if it even helps, the minimum requirement for space should be larger then, so that the droppings are more spread out and it won't be as much of a risk as quickly. But then, still, the Keepers will have a hard time cleaning after them, possibly even more so because of the greater spread, especially if there would be more Habitats to tend to which in this case there weren't.
Ironically, looking into this when I wrote this up, I also had an outbreak of a disease, but I'll cover another issue I have with this in another topic.
I sorted out the outbreak, which was a hassle (for the wrong reasons), but while I was minding some other business later, I once again received a warning that there was a risk of disease in the Peafowls-Habitat. - This all happened with 4 Keepers on this one Habitat.
On top of that, when I called a Keeper to come urgently, it picked the one that was already bringing food, and of course they were serving the food first before cleaning. The Keeper rushed, but the urgency was completely negated, while a Keeper that was nearest and doing nothing could and should have gone to clean or check.
In the end, I'd just turn down the pooping-rate (
) to about two-thirds or half of what it is, to be honest, because it's just too much too quickly.Since this has to do with the mechanics of population and space, I also have to add that something seems off about their Social Welfare.
As I got the population to more than the 4 recommended maximum of male adults, they didn't seem to be bothered at all. At least their Social statistic didn't seem to go down with no warning of overcrowding either. - However, unless it's meant to be "playing", they seemed to do fighting-animations, but again there was no warning of stress, fighting, or any injuries.
While I find it mostly annoying how quickly/instantaneously animals get stressed, and thus I was prepared to take care of it with the Peafowls, it didn't seem to matter.
I still removed the excess males as a precaution, but it seems you can get away with leaving them.
I'm not sure if I'm looking at it the wrong way, but I think I did see warnings about too many males before, as well as fighting with actual consequences rather than just animations.
But at some point I guess it stopped being a problem to the game, as in a bug.
Last edited:
