Protecting livestock from wild animals.

[NWCtim]

Currently the only way to do this reliably is to wall in your livestock, which is kind of an ugly solution for a lot of reasons.

Option 1:  Fences.  An easy and cheap impassable barrier to animals.  Attackers and manhunters would probably just be able to knock it down, but the average hungry animal won't.  Also possible is barbed wire, which will act like fences, but also damage whatever tries to melee attack it.

Option 2:  Tamed pets can be put on guard duty.  Most common choice would be dogs, but also other tamed but battle capable animals (wolves, lynxes, bears, rhinos, elephants, thrumbos).  This could be a trainable toggle, like hauling or rescue, but only requires intermediate intelligence.  Guard animals would more or less hang out with other animals, but would automatically attack any wild animals that attacked your own animals.

Option 3:  Change wild animal behavior.  Specifically, they should naturally avoid areas with lots of human activity (or recently built structures), and also be able to be scared off (as an interaction in and off itself), without also provoking a fight.  This could tie into Option 2, with guard animals also being able to scare off wild animals that get too close other tamed animals.

Some of these would also help protect crops from being eaten by wandering wild animals (though still won't protect them from a trade caravan's animals).

[CathDubh]

Bump.
Guardian behaviour/task please

[b0rsuk]

Really, they should protect themselves. They have superior senses. Dogs should bark.

[Nuss]

Very sensible suggestions, all three are must haves before the game leaves early access.

[Thyme]

That means farmers don't box in their livestock because it's ugly? My parents are doing it wrong.
Also, hungry animals do get close to human settlements (in some cases even make a living that way)

Barking dogs are a good idea. Buffs dogs and is a neat solution to the no-notification-when-pawn-gets-mauled problem.

[b0rsuk]

You might not know, but llamas are trained and used as guard animals too, they do a good job protecting livestock from predators. They have a natural tendency to such behavior anyway. Alpacas are closely related to llamas.

[PiggyBacon]

I always use a wooden farm fence or chain link fence. Can't quite remember the mod that adds them but it makes animal protection a breeze. Same with keeping animals out of your fields.