Problem with fully automatic dung farm

[JaNi_95]

I have recently slain the Ender Dragon and decided to fully automate my dung production with detectors and dispensers.

Here is a pic:

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Basically, the detector detects the dung, and a dispenser above the wolf instantly feeds it.
Am I doing that wrong, because the wolf doesn't always eat after pooping and when it becomes hungry, the food already despawns, so after a while, it goes feral.

Got any suggestions for me to update my design?

[jackatthekilns]

My understanding is that pooping and hunger are no longer directly related. A dog may need to be fed several times between poops. I think a five minute timer would still be best. I know there are more sophisticated timing circuits that can be done with block dispensers, but I haven't gotten there yet. I use a despawning timer which uses a turntable to ensure the pressure plate gets activated each time. This is the longest lasting feeding system I have ever used..

[JaNi_95]

Well joke's on me then, I already had a setup with a despawning timer before, but I thought it consumed way too much food, so I decided to make this "efficient" design.

[Magick_Miner]

I personally use a timer based off a light detector. The wolves get fed at sunrise and sunset, some kibble is not eaten but not much.

For example in the collection hopper I had 49 dung and 13 excess kibble. Although some kibble could have landed on the block and de-spawned.

[mc_isaac]

I had a setup of 2 dispensers on a 5 minute despawn timer with 6 wolves (2 food every 5 minutes shot into a pack of 6 wolves). None of them ever went feral. And no food was ever wasted.

This setup was not meant for dung collection, it was meant to keep extra wolves alive in case the ones in my dung production went feral or starved.
I played for at least 30 hours or so in that area without a single wolf transforming. I took a break from the server for a few months and the wolves were all dead when I came back (due to starvation) but when I was upkeeping the timers and food there was no issue. I kind of just fell on the 2 to 6 ratio and thought some of the wolves would go feral from hunger, but they never did.

[JaNi_95]

I just realized that I could dispense the food in a cobweb next to the wolves and there would be no losses.

[Gilberreke]

Yeah, feeding should almost always be done with a cobweb, so you can avoid waste. Setting up a fully auto, long-lasting dung farm is hard, so most people don't bother.

[Ethinolicbob]

I dispense food directly onto a pressure plate that refills food when nothing is on it. That way there is always food available

[abculatter_2]

I dispense food directly onto a pressure plate that refills food when nothing is on it. That way there is always food available

I also do this, and set it up so there are as many dogs close enough to the pressure plate as I can fit. I believe the max is 8, though I usually go with just four because that's easier to set up. I find that even with four, I make way more dung then I really need.

[jackatthekilns]

Using a single dog and my despawning timer I have almost 2 and half stacks of dung. The 2 cow breeding and killing pit that is hooked to the same timer provides me with enough meat for the dog and all the leather I could ever want. In a single player game, I find it difficult to imagine a need for a system that is significantly more productive.

[Fret]

Yeah, feeding should almost always be done with a cobweb, so you can avoid waste. Setting up a fully auto, long-lasting dung farm is hard, so most people don't bother.

So cobwebs increase the despawntime of items?

[jackatthekilns]

So cobwebs increase the despawntime of items?

No, if you dispense into a cobweb directly above a mob, it ensures that the food stays close to the mob until it despawans, as opposed to flying off into a water stream or in to a hopper where the dog my start to go hungry, or at best food is wasted.

[Gilberreke]

Yeah, with a cobweb, you can drop the food into a hopper, so it doesn't despawn, but by hanging around the dog for a few seconds in the cobweb, it still gets eaten if the dog is hungry.

[Ethinolicbob]

Here is my low tech feeder layout

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Pretty basic, food itself is the timer with a pressure plate on the dispenser. When food gets eaten (or despawns) another piece of food takes its place.

I used a similar layout in a fully auto kibble line however that has its own set of problems.
If the hopper above the dispenser gets full the resulting redstone signal locks the dispenser stopping it from feeding the wolf.

[Gilberreke]

The problem is that you didn't read the thread :p. He's specifically looking for a build that doesn't despawn his food and he HAS a low-tech feeder, but now he's looking for a high tech one that works better.

[Ethinolicbob]

I think you missed the whole point of this build.
With it there is always a piece of food available to the dog 100% of the time if used as a low tech or high tech solution. The instant a piece of food is missing (eaten or not) it pops another one.

The only drawback with using dispensers is that a hopper will disable it if the hopper gets full.
I tried 2 ways to get around this:
-Use a hopper and piston to dispense, But the minimum quantity you can get is 8 which was too heavy for my kibble machine.
-Have a secondary dispenser set up to a second hopper that the kibble will move to when the first gets full. I ended up doing this and was going to run redstone from the first hopper to a lamp so I could be notified when I needed to empty the first.

Not that any of this helped because I ended up doing a lot of work somewhere that was in range of my dogs but not of my mobfarm and the kibble machine, the dogs food supply ended up going dry. By then I had more than enough poop that I never ended up replacing the dogs

[Gilberreke]

Again, the OP was asking about a build where food doesn't ever despawn. Unless I'm wrong, food despawns with your build?

[Ethinolicbob]

Food will always despawn no matter if its on a web or on a pressure plate.
Difference is that food despawning on the pressure plate will pop a new one out, I know of no way to detect food despawning off a cobweb

[Gilberreke]

Food will always despawn no matter if its on a web or on a pressure plate.
Difference is that food despawning on the pressure plate will pop a new one out, I know of no way to detect food despawning off a cobweb

You put water under the cobweb, water runs into a hopper. Dung and kibble collect in the hopper. No a single piece of food ever despawns.