How to dung farm?

[Elred]

Hey there,

We've setup a BTW server a few weeks ago. We're 4/5 players, just reached crucible, hibachis and basically all bellows tech thanks to a lovely blaze-infested fortress.

Right now we had wolves in two separate occasions.

* Once we had two of them back when we didn't have all explored extensively. But we didn't have enough found to get them fed enough and they ended up going feral, it was too early.
* To make the bellows we had to make a wolf trip at one of the surrounding islands. it was annoying because the only wolf we found would get unloaded and wouldn't teleport the whole ocean accross. We set him up in a hopper-covered hole and basically fed him until we got our 4 bellows.

Now the problem is; we have a very good chicken coop with around 40 chickens in there, and that is after slaughtering another 60 because it was way inconvenient to get them all from their hole into the new coop. So we have meat. We also have access to kibble, a few pigs that we can farm, a few cows waiting for us to get renewable wheat to make baby cows. But the only wolf we had turned feral yesterday because everyone was so busy in a building/exploration project (it's an economic boom for us right now, and finding villages is very high priority) that we forgot him. So we're out of dung now. And not because we can't feed wolves...

So I'm wondering how to automate this the best I can, so we can setup the wolf in his hole and forget him (at least leave him a good food stockpile) while it produces the dung we need. What are your setups so I can take some inspiration from them? How do you keep them properly fed?

[dawnraider]

What I've done in the past is set up a water flow that goes past all my wolves that I dump all my food into, and the dung ends up in the same water. Then I use a hopper to collect both the dung and excess food. It can be a little finicky to get the wolves in the right spot so the water doesn't make them stand up, but it works pretty well (so long as you have enough food, of course).

Pros:
-Easy food delivery (can be done from a single dispenser if you set up something to pulse multiple times), so it's much easier to fully automate if you have an automatic food source coming in
-High density of wolves
-Food will never despawn
Cons:
-Harder to set up properly (Done wrong the wolves will get wet and teleport)
-If a wolf is not ready to eat, the food passes by without being eaten at all

Example pic (companion cubes are where wolves would go):

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And in an actual world (wolves are gone because I forgot to keep the food stocked, oops)

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Another option is to have each wolf have its own dispenser, and have it on a single block above water that collects the dung and have the food sit on the block with the wolf. This can be tiled over a larger area as well.

Pros:
-Simpler to set up
-More reliable (No danger of wolves getting wet and teleporting)
-If a wolf isn't immediately hungry, the food will be there for five minutes
Cons:
-More difficult/annoying food distribution (either manually fill all dispensers, or create a complicated item splitter)
-Food will despawn if not eaten in five minutes
-Takes up more space for the same number of wolves

Example pic:

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It's been a while since I've built this setup, so no survival screenshots.

Hope this helps!

EDIT: Make sure everything has a non-solid top (glass, slabs, etc) to make sure mobs don't spawn in the dark (wolves like their privacy when pooping)

[mc_isaac]

What I generally do early game is A dispenser block, two spider webs underneath it, a wolf sitting on a hopper with 8 other hoppers surrounding.

side view:
D
S
S
W
H

Top View of bottom layer:(wolf on center)
HHH
HHH
HHH

I then hook the top dispenser up to an item despawn timer using whatever I have a ton of (usually dirt piles at the early start) Then takes 1 pressure plate and 1 other dispenser to do.
Every time a dirt pile despawns (5 minutes) it shoots a food into the webs, the webs take (I can't remember if it's 15 seconds or 30 seconds for the food to fall through each web), 30/60 seconds for the food to fall through. Dung and extra food are collected in the hoppers.
I've done this setup many times and as long as you keep items in the despawn timer and food in the dispenser (16 food would last 16x5minutes= 80 minutes, so you'd only have to check it once every 4 days with 16 food), your wolf will never go feral. I usually add a button to reset the timer in case I do run out of food or dirt piles and catch it in time.

Hope this helps.

[jackatthekilns]

My method may not be the most efficient, but it has been the most reliable for me. I use a despawn timer that is tied to a turntable. I set it up in suc a way that the turntable spins and activates the dispenser as long as the despawn pressure plate is not activated. this keeps the system running without any issue. In the past, I have had despawn timers fail because of chunk loads or because the sawdust or dirt pile misses the pressure plate, breaking the circuit.I don't have a save right now that I can take a screenshot of, but the only problems I have with this system is the wolf teleporting to me in the rain. The actual timer system has not broken as long as I keep the dispenser filled.

[razar51]

One method you could try:
- Surround a wolf with a waterflow.
- Place a dispenser above the wolf pointing down and fill it with food (when activated shoots food onto the platform the wolf sits on).
- At the end of the waterflow, place a hopper with a chest underneath.
- Place 1 piece of dung in the chest
- fill the chest and the hopper with the same item so that only 1 space is available in both the hopper and the chest
- Attach mechanical power to the hopper, but use redstone to stop the gearbox powering it.
- Wire the hopper up such that when a piece of dung enters and the hopper is 'full' the redstone signal causes the gearbox powering the hopper to transfer mechanical power again.
-- Dual purpose the signal from the hopper to trigger the food dispenser
-- Since the chest only has the 1 space open for dung, it only transfers the dung to the chest. Once transfer is complete the hopper is no longer 'full' and stops emitting a redstone signal, so the gearbox stops again.

[Sockthing]

I made a tutorial ages ago on youtube. It should still work, after the changes of wolves hunger behavior, since it feeds the wolves every 5 min.

Tutorial

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You can feed even 4 wolves with this setup. I havn't tested if it can keep up, keeping 4 wolves fed, with food being dispensed every 5 min.

W A W
A S A
W A W

W - Wolf
A - Air
S - Spiderweb

Hope that helps!

[Yhetti]

Yes, I have the same design as sockthing. It's the only dung farm I have ever needed. We have STACKS AND STACKS OF SHIT. If we ever make it back from our current journey (taking a priest back to base). I'll post a picture of it.

Of course it does break every now and then, and that usually happens when two doggos become hungry at the same time...so after we got further in the game, I added a small mechanism to mine that makes sure the wolves always have food, its basically just a timer that only goes off if there's no food on the pressure plate. Ever since I did that the machine has never stopped working, I just have to fill it with food every now and then.

[Whuppee]

I worry that this may be unintended as it is rather too easy, if clever. Credit to a friend:

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Put the fox wolves in the henhouse. Let them go feral. Enjoy a low-tech, auto-feeding, zero-waste dung farm that as a bonus produces feathers.

Start with enough chickens that this predation won't endanger your supply. Continue breeding them. And floor it in appropriately filtered hoppers. Connect a hatching room such that only adults can enter the combined enclosure, while being inaccessible to those within.


The constant growling and what must be terrified, then inured but still fairly tormented chickens are a wonderful bonus. Build a prominent viewing window to benefit from this ambiance.

[dawnraider]

I worry that this may be unintended as it is rather too easy, if clever. Credit to a friend:

Spoiler

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Put the fox wolves in the henhouse. Let them go feral. Enjoy a low-tech, auto-feeding, zero-waste dung farm that as a bonus produces feathers.

Start with enough chickens that this predation won't endanger your supply. Continue breeding them. And floor it in appropriately filtered hoppers. Connect a hatching room such that only adults can enter the combined enclosure, while being inaccessible to those within.


The constant growling and what must be terrified, then inured but still fairly tormented chickens are a wonderful bonus. Build a prominent viewing window to benefit from this ambiance.

That definitely seems incredibly exploity. The entire point of wolves going feral is having to maintain a food supply and this basically mitigates that (beyond needing food for dung). I wouldn't rely on anything based on this as I would not expect this to be guaranteed to work always.

[RalphKastro]

I haven't yet gotten around to this, but I believe you can also use the new chicken egg times as timers for food each day. That may not work well, though, so you might want to stick to Sockthing's design

[kazerima]

I worry that this may be unintended as it is rather too easy, if clever. Credit to a friend:

Spoiler

Show

Put the fox wolves in the henhouse. Let them go feral. Enjoy a low-tech, auto-feeding, zero-waste dung farm that as a bonus produces feathers.

Start with enough chickens that this predation won't endanger your supply. Continue breeding them. And floor it in appropriately filtered hoppers. Connect a hatching room such that only adults can enter the combined enclosure, while being inaccessible to those within.


The constant growling and what must be terrified, then inured but still fairly tormented chickens are a wonderful bonus. Build a prominent viewing window to benefit from this ambiance.

That definitely seems incredibly exploity. The entire point of wolves going feral is having to maintain a food supply and this basically mitigates that (beyond needing food for dung). I wouldn't rely on anything based on this as I would not expect this to be guaranteed to work always.

Regardless of whether this produces dung, I may have to build this anyway if only for a beautiful centerpiece once I get a dispenser.

[Yhetti]

Essentially this is sock's design, but with a timer(it ticks every few seconds or so, I want it to tick less often) The timer is connected to the wolves' food dispenser. Whenever there is food on the pressure plate, the timers' signal is cut off(via piston). What this means is that when a doggo eats food, the timer is enabled, and it dispenses food until there is food on the pressure plate. This design will never ever fail as long as there is food in the dispenser/hopper. Make sense?

Note that you cant see the water flow in the picture because of the orange stained glass is in front of it.

The problem right now is that it often dispenses two food because it takes a while for the food to fall from the web, so I am waiting for us to get block dispensers so I can make the timer tick less frequently. Two food doesn't seem to be wasteful though.

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[Elred]

Hey,

I had started typing a reply a few days ago but my browser blew in my face and I put it off. I wanted to thank you all for your input. Especially interested in the item despawn clock design, and I have yet to find the time for the video (or for Minecraft for that matter) since then, but I'll take a very close look at it.

All your suggestions answer exactly what we need (a low-maintenance wolf farm that doesn't try to eat us), and it's very cool to have a lot of helpful people around this community :) Thanks a lot! :D