Rancher starting workflow

Setup

The Rat Wrangler starting branch supplies a prepared cage with a dispenser, rats, food and ranching supplies. Check the animals and their housing before opening the shop. A prepared starting cage is not the same as buying an empty cage and assuming its feeding arrangement is already installed.

How it works

Use the rat guide for feeding, growth, breeding and meat production. Keep those rules separate from aquaculture: fish diets, water needs and stages do not describe rats. A Marking Pen helps distinguish stock; inspect individual animals before choosing breeders or animals to process.

Checks before committing

The retired rancher can offer cages, feed dispensers, an Auto-Butcher, marking supplies and the red and green serums. Check the actual offer and each serum’s description before using it. Add automation only when you understand the inputs and outputs, and reserve feed and space instead of selling the entire breeding stock.

Breeding and meat stock

1. Keep prospective mates in the same enclosure: they must be the same species and opposite sexes. Both must be mature, alive, not starving, not pregnant or neutered, and below their mating-count limit. Eligible pairing still does not guarantee pregnancy.
2. Separate breeders before butchering. The reviewed cutting routine handles rats; disease reduces the rounded weight to 75% before portions are allocated, and prion status carries into the meat. Butchering is not a way to make diseased stock safe.

Plan feed and space for growth and litters

1. Watch weight as well as age. Daily weight change uses the species’ growth-stage curve and the animal’s current growth-rate genetics. Low food reserves reduce growth; starvation reverses it into weight loss. A fixed age does not guarantee the same weight in every animal.
2. Pregnancy advances one progress step per day-end handling until the animal’s gestation value is reached. Starvation makes a separate 75% miscarriage roll during that handling. Keep feed accessible through pregnancy instead of waiting for the cage to look empty.
3. Litter size is based on the current genetic litter-size stat: round down, roll the fractional part for one extra, then add the configured random variance and clamp to at least one. It is not a fixed count. Reserve cage space and food for the newborns; inherited genetics are applied to each child, not copied as an identical adult.

Know which operation the tool will perform

1. Use the animal surgery tool on a living animal. A pregnant animal takes the miscarriage branch; this operation is not the same as neutering it. A non-pregnant animal can be neutered only if it is not already neutered.
2. Keep breeding animals apart if you want to prevent pregnancy without surgery. The surgery action is not a health treatment, and the animal routine is separate from fish egg surgery. Inspect pregnancy and neutered status before using the tool.

Reference

Item	Effect
Animal Cage
Auto Butcher	A configurable auto butcher. It needs to be installed inside an Animal Cage or a RAS. Every night it harvests the animals that match its settings into its tray. It always ignores animals marked with the Marking Pen.
Marking Pen	Marks an animal or a fish with a colour. The Auto Butcher never touches a marked animal.
Serum Red
Serum Green

Related guides

• Raising rats — feeding, breeding & harvesting
• Animals & husbandry — rat care and breeding
• Specialists and production supplies

Sources

Steam PC · 26274380 · Assembly-CSharp.dll · 52f11980b737. Sources: NewGameData; AnimalCage; StoreClientListSpec; HusbandryHelper. Artwork: Steam PC 26284217. Sources · Wiki-authored table translations

Leave room for growing animals

Crowding counts animal footprint cells divided by the enclosure’s width×height, not just headcount or food objects. The thresholds are strictly above 55%, 70% and 90%; a growing animal can cross one without a new birth. Each crowding level removes 20% of expressed fertility; disease and old age add their own penalties. Above 70%, an eligible animal has a 5% crowding attack check; above 90%, 15%. A successful check can kill the lightest smaller living animal, so separate large stock from newborns. Feed before starvation: low food already slows growth. The growth examples use the default 1,000-point reserve and multiply the normal stage/genetic weight change; they are not fixed meat yields. Starvation changes weight gain into loss. During starvation the loss is half the magnitude of the normal weight change, even if that normal change is negative.

Animal cells in a 4 × 4 grid	Crowding level	Crowding fertility penalty	Attack check
0–8	0	0%	0%
9–11	1	20%	0%
12–14	2	40%	5%
15–16	3	60%	15%

Food reserve (default 1, 000 maximum)	Factor for normal positive growth
1000	×1
400	×1
200	×0.75
Starving	−0.5 × |Δ|

Sources

Assembly-CSharp.dll · husbandry