Animal Pens in FTB Evolution 2

Animal Pens is all about taming laggy animal farms. Instead of letting dozens of animals roam around, you store them in single-block pens, aquariums and aviaries. They keep working like normal: you can still breed them, shear them, milk them and collect their drops. This pack ships version 2.5.1.^[1][2]

The three blocks

• Animal Pen: lets you interact with land animals within a single block of space.^[3]
• Aquarium: the same idea for water animals.^[4]
• Aviary: the same idea for flying animals.^[5]

All three work with dispensers and give off a redstone signal through a comparator, so you can automate your farm.^[3][4][5]

Getting animals in

You move animals with a catching tool. The Animal Cage picks up land animals, the Water Animal Container picks up water animals, and the Bird Catcher picks up flying ones. You cannot pick up tamed or baby animals with the cage or the Bird Catcher. Crouch clicking an empty tool on a pen gives you half of its animals back, and crouch clicking on the ground releases animals.^[6][7][8]

Once animals are inside, feeding them counts as breeding, so you never need free-roaming animals. Which food each animal wants is covered in the in-game guide entries for each animal.^[1]

• Use a bucket on a pen with a cow inside to get a bucket of milk.^[9]
• Use shears on a pen with sheep inside to shear them and drop wool.^[10]
• Use a bucket on a chicken pen to collect eggs. More chickens mean more eggs.^[11]

Where it sits in the quest book

Unverified The quest sources provided here do not show a chapter, group or position for this mod, and they do not show whether the ATM Star path uses it. Check the pack's quest book in game for any placement.

Welcome to Animal Pens! The idea is simple: instead of a massive animal farm that causes lag, you store your animals in specialized pens and still get most of the usual interactions. The mod's own guide says it supports all interactions with animals and helps reduce server lag. Here is what to make first, and why.^[1][12]

Step 1: An Animal Pen

The Animal Pen is the block everything else builds on. It lets you interact with animals within a single block of space, works with dispensers, and gives a redstone signal from a comparator. There is one Animal Pen recipe for every wood type in this pack, so you can match your base. Oak is shown here.^[3][13]

Animal PenMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Empty slot	Empty slot	Empty slot
Oak Fence	Empty slot	Oak Fence
Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab

Recipe id: animal_pen:animal_pen_oak

The oak version. The other wood types have their own recipes with the same result.

Step 2: An Animal Cage

A pen is empty until you fill it, and that is the job of the Animal Cage. With it you can pick up any Minecraft animal and deposit it into Animal Pens. Tamed and baby animals can't be picked up.^[6][14]

Animal CageMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

any bar	any bar	any bar
any bar	Glass	any bar
any bar	any bar	any bar

Recipe id: animal_pen:animal_cage

Make this right after your first pen.

A couple of handy habits to learn early. Clicking an empty cage on a pen while crouching gives you half of the animals in it. Crouch clicking on the ground releases animals.^[6]

Step 3: Breed by feeding

Inside a pen, feeding an animal acts as breeding, so there is no need for free-roaming animals. Each animal has its own food. Cows take wheat, for example, and a bucket used on a pen with a cow in it gives you a bucket of milk.^[1][9]

Using a sword or axe on the pen kills the animal and drops its loot, so be careful with that swing.^[9]

Water animals: Aquarium and Aquatic Jar

Fish and other water creatures need their own setup. The Aquarium does the same job as the pen but for water animals. You fill it with the Aquatic Jar, which this pack calls the Aquatic Jar.^{[4][8][13][14]}

AquariumMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Glass	Empty slot	Glass
Glass	Water Bucket	Glass
Empty slot	Stone	Empty slot

Recipe id: animal_pen:aquarium_block

Aquatic JarMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Glass Pane	Iron Ingot	Glass Pane
Glass Pane	Empty slot	Glass Pane
Glass Pane	Glass Pane	Glass Pane

Recipe id: animal_pen:water_animal_container

The Aquatic Jar picks up water animals and deposits them into Aquariums.

Flying animals: Aviary and Avian Net

Flying animals go in an aviary. The Iron Aviary (the Iron Aviary) holds flying animals in a single block, and the Avian Net (the Avian Net) catches them. As with the cage, you can't pick up tamed or baby animals. This pack also has Copper, Gold, Exposed Copper, Weathered Copper and Oxidized Copper aviaries, each with its own recipe.^[5][7][13]

Iron AviaryMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Iron Chain	Iron Chain	Iron Chain
Iron Chain	Empty slot	Iron Chain
Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab

Recipe id: animal_pen:aviary

Avian NetMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Empty slot	String	String
Empty slot	Stick	String
Stick	Empty slot	Empty slot

Recipe id: animal_pen:bird_catcher

That's the starting loop: pen, cage, catch, feed. Once it feels natural, move on to the redstone and dispenser tricks, which work on pens, aquariums and aviaries alike.^[1]

The Animal Pens mod is all about one idea: you keep your animals inside a single block. The mod's own guide says this supports all interactions with animals and helps reduce server lag. Each block shows the animals it holds, and you farm them by clicking it.^[3][12]

The three kinds of block

• The Animal Pen (for example Animal Pen) holds land animals. It comes in wood variants such as oak, birch, bamboo, cherry, crimson and warped.^[3][16]
• The Aquarium holds water animals.^[4]
• The Aviary holds flying animals. It comes as the Iron Aviary (Iron), the Gold Aviary, and the Copper Aviary in its exposed, weathered and oxidized stages, which also have waxed versions.^[5][15][17]

All three work the same way: they hold animals in a single block of space, they work with dispensers, and they output a redstone signal through a comparator.^{[3][4][5][18][19][20]}

Animal PenMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Empty slot	Empty slot	Empty slot
Oak Fence	Empty slot	Oak Fence
Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab

Recipe id: animal_pen:animal_pen_oak

Every wood variant of the pen has its own recipe in the pack, with the oak one shown here.

AquariumMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Glass	Empty slot	Glass
Glass	Water Bucket	Glass
Empty slot	Stone	Empty slot

Recipe id: animal_pen:aquarium_block

The Aquarium recipe.

Iron AviaryMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Iron Chain	Iron Chain	Iron Chain
Iron Chain	Empty slot	Iron Chain
Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab

Recipe id: animal_pen:aviary

The Iron Aviary recipe. Gold and the copper stages each have their own recipe too.

Copper AviaryMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Copper Chain or Waxed Copper Chain	Copper Chain or Waxed Copper Chain	Copper Chain or Waxed Copper Chain
Copper Chain or Waxed Copper Chain	Empty slot	Copper Chain or Waxed Copper Chain
Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab

Recipe id: animal_pen:copper_aviary

The Copper Aviary recipe.

Catching and releasing animals

You fill a block using a catching tool, and each block type has its own tool. The Animal Cage picks up land animals and puts them into a pen. The Aquatic Jar (the Aquatic Jar) does the same for water animals and aquariums. The Avian Net (the Avian Net) handles flying animals and aviaries.^{[6][7][8][14][15]}

1. Right-click an animal with the tool to catch it.^[15]
2. Put the animals into the matching block.^[7][14]
3. To take animals back out, click the block with an empty tool while crouching. You get half of the animals in it.^[6][7][8]
4. To let animals go, crouch and click on the ground (sneak and right-click on a block).^[6][15]

There are limits. Tamed animals and baby animals cannot be picked up, and neither can animals carrying chests. A tool can also be full, and a tool holding one kind of animal will refuse a different one. Picking up an animal saves its variant inside the tool, and there is a cap on how many variants one tool can store.^[1][6][15]

Which mobs each tool accepts is set by entity tags. The Avian Net takes allays, bees, bats, happy ghasts and parrots. The Aquatic Jar accepts axolotls, cod, frogs, pufferfish, salmon, tropical fish, dolphins, squids, glow squids, tadpoles, nautiluses, zombie nautiluses and turtles.^[21][22]

Animal CageMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

any bar	any bar	any bar
any bar	Glass	any bar
any bar	any bar	any bar

Recipe id: animal_pen:animal_cage

The Animal Cage recipe.

Aquatic JarMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Glass Pane	Iron Ingot	Glass Pane
Glass Pane	Empty slot	Glass Pane
Glass Pane	Glass Pane	Glass Pane

Recipe id: animal_pen:water_animal_container

The Aquatic Jar recipe.

Avian NetMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Empty slot	String	String
Empty slot	Stick	String
Stick	Empty slot	Empty slot

Recipe id: animal_pen:bird_catcher

The Avian Net recipe.

Unverified Which mobs the Animal Cage can pick up is decided by the animal_cage_pickable entity tag, and the sources here do not show that file, so check it in the pack's data files.

Breeding by feeding

Inside a block there is no free-roaming breeding. Feeding the animals their breeding item increases their number in the block. Cows, sheep, goats and horses take wheat, chickens take wheat seeds, and pigs take carrots or potatoes. Cod, salmon and tropical fish take seagrass or kelp, while dolphins and squids take any fish. Each animal's own guide page lists its food.^{[9][10][11][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]}

Axolotls are the odd one out: they eat only tropical fish buckets that you provide to the pen.^[31]

Farming interactions

Using a sword or axe on a block kills an animal and drops its loot. Beyond that, the tool you click with decides what you get.^[9][10]

• Bucket on a pen with a cow, goat or mooshroom gives a bucket of milk.^{[9][23][32][33]}
• Bucket on a pen with chickens collects eggs, and more chickens mean more eggs.^[11]
• Bucket on a turtle pen collects turtle eggs, and the loot table gives 1 to 4 per use. Feeding turtles seagrass also drops turtle scutes.^[34][35]
• Sniffers need a bowl to give ancient seeds and a bucket to give eggs.^[36]
• Shears on sheep drop wool, and any dye changes the sheep's wool color.^[10]
• Bowl on a mooshroom gives mushroom stew. Using a small flower on a brown mooshroom makes the next stew a Suspicious Stew.^[32][37]
• Bees collect pollen over time. Shears remove it and drop honeycombs (3 per use in the loot table), and a glass bottle removes it and gives honey.^[38][39][40]
• Brush on an armadillo pen drops armadillo scute.^[41][42]
• Frogs drop froglights when fed a magma item. The guide page says magma block, while the advancement text and the data file name say magma cube, so test it in your world. The froglight type depends on the frog's variant.^[15][43][44]
• Fish, axolotls and tadpoles can be picked back out of an aquarium with a water bucket.^[26][31][45]

Unverified The exact list of weapons that can attack a pen, aquarium or aviary comes from the can_attack_pen, can_attack_aquarium and can_attack_aviary item tags. The sources here do not show those files, so only the sword and axe behaviour from the in-game guide is confirmed.

Dispensers

Dispensers can use some tools on a block for you. They can use shears on a pen with sheep or bees, a bucket on a pen with chickens, cows, goats or turtles, a bowl on a pen with a mooshroom, and a glass bottle on a pen with bees.^[46][47][48]

Redstone comparator output

Put a comparator next to a pen, aquarium or aviary and it reports the block's status. The signal is read as a binary value, [0000], and the three block types all use the same layout.^[18][19][20]

• First bit: whether the block is empty. The signal is 0 only when it is empty.^[18]
• Second bit: whether the animals can be bred. Breeding is available at 3, 7, 11 or 15, and on cooldown at 0, 1, 5, 9 or 13.^[18]
• Third bit: whether the first interaction is ready. It is available at 5, 7, 13 or 15, and on cooldown at 0, 1, 3, 9 or 11.^[18]
• Fourth bit: whether the second interaction is ready. It is available at 9, 11, 13 or 15, and on cooldown at 0, 1, 3, 5 or 7.^[18]

The guide pages mark which tool use counts as the first or second interaction. For a sniffer pen, the bowl is the first interaction and the bucket is the second. For a mooshroom, the bucket is the first and the bowl is the second.^[32][36]

Per-block settings

Click a block with an empty hand to open its variant screen, which shows the stored variants. From there you can open the Configure screen. It lets you turn on Block Protection, which stops other players from interacting with the block or its animals. It also sets Min Animals, the number that must always stay in the block so you cannot harvest below it by accident. Display Size changes how large the animals look inside the block.^[1][15]

Unverified The mod's config file controls the attack cooldown, the optional animal growth display and how many variants a block can store, and the Display Size option can be disabled there. The sources here do not show the pack's values, since no config file for this mod was provided.

Server moderators also have two commands: /animal_pen reload reloads the config file without a restart, and /animal_pen reset puts it back to default values. Animal interactions are data driven too, so a datapack can add or change what each animal does.^[1]

Animal Pens doesn't have a power ladder like a tech mod does. The progression is by animal type: land animals go in a pen, water animals go in an aquarium and flying animals go in an aviary. Each home has its own matching tool for catching animals, so you can move through them in whatever order suits your base.^{[3][4][5][7][14]}

Unverified The sources here show no quests for Animal Pens, so there is no quest-book order to follow. Whether the quest chapters point you to this mod anywhere is told in the pack's quest book, not in the sources here. The path below follows the items instead.

Step 1: Land animals

The Animal Pen is the starting point. It lets you interact with animals within a single block of space, works with dispensers and outputs a redstone signal through a comparator. To fill it you need the Animal Cage, which picks up any Minecraft animal. It can't pick up tamed or baby animals.^[3][6][14]

Animal PenMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Empty slot	Empty slot	Empty slot
Oak Fence	Empty slot	Oak Fence
Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab

Recipe id: animal_pen:animal_pen_oak

The oak Animal Pen. Every wood type has its own recipe, and the Animal Pen guide page treats them all the same.

Animal CageMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

any bar	any bar	any bar
any bar	Glass	any bar
any bar	any bar	any bar

Recipe id: animal_pen:animal_cage

The Animal Cage is how you carry animals into a pen.

• Animal Pen^[13]
• Animal Pen^[13]
• Animal Pen^[13]
• Animal Pen^[13]
• Animal Pen^[13]
• Animal Pen^[13]
• Animal Pen^[13]
• Animal Pen^[13]
• Animal Pen^[13]
• Animal Pen^[13]
• Animal Pen^[13]
• Animal Pen^[13]

Step 2: Water animals

The Aquarium does the same job for water animals. You catch them with the Aquatic Jar and deposit them into the aquarium.^{[4][8][13][14]}

AquariumMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Glass	Empty slot	Glass
Glass	Water Bucket	Glass
Empty slot	Stone	Empty slot

Recipe id: animal_pen:aquarium_block

The Aquarium, for squid, dolphins and other water animals.

Aquatic JarMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Glass Pane	Iron Ingot	Glass Pane
Glass Pane	Empty slot	Glass Pane
Glass Pane	Glass Pane	Glass Pane

Recipe id: animal_pen:water_animal_container

The Aquatic Jar (Water Animal Container) picks up water animals.

Step 3: Flying animals

Flying animals live in an aviary and are caught with the Avian Net. In this pack the aviary comes in these versions:^[5][7][13]

• Iron Aviary^[13]
• Gold Aviary^[13]
• Copper Aviary^[13]
• Exposed Copper Aviary^[13]
• Weathered Copper Aviary^[13]
• Oxidized Copper Aviary^[13]

The animals the catcher can pick up are listed in a tag: allay, bee, bat, happy ghast and parrot. Like the cage, it can't pick up tamed or baby animals.^[7][21]

Avian NetMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Empty slot	String	String
Empty slot	Stick	String
Stick	Empty slot	Empty slot

Recipe id: animal_pen:bird_catcher

The Avian Net (Bird Catcher) is the aviary's capture tool.

Iron AviaryMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Iron Chain	Iron Chain	Iron Chain
Iron Chain	Empty slot	Iron Chain
Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab

Recipe id: animal_pen:aviary

The Iron Aviary.

Gold AviaryMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Gold Nugget	Gold Ingot	Gold Nugget
Gold Ingot	Empty slot	Gold Ingot
Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab

Recipe id: animal_pen:gold_aviary

The Gold Aviary has its own separate recipe.

Copper AviaryMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Copper Chain or Waxed Copper Chain	Copper Chain or Waxed Copper Chain	Copper Chain or Waxed Copper Chain
Copper Chain or Waxed Copper Chain	Empty slot	Copper Chain or Waxed Copper Chain
Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab

Recipe id: animal_pen:copper_aviary

The Copper Aviary. The exposed, weathered and oxidized copper aviaries each have a separate recipe too.

Exposed Copper AviaryMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Exposed Copper Chain or Waxed Exposed Copper Chain	Exposed Copper Chain or Waxed Exposed Copper Chain	Exposed Copper Chain or Waxed Exposed Copper Chain
Exposed Copper Chain or Waxed Exposed Copper Chain	Empty slot	Exposed Copper Chain or Waxed Exposed Copper Chain
Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab	Smooth Stone Slab

Recipe id: animal_pen:exposed_copper_aviary

The Exposed Copper Aviary, the next stage of the copper line.

Step 4: Breed, harvest and automate

1. Put animals in with the cage, net or jar. Crouch-clicking an empty cage on a pen gives you half of its animals back, and crouch-clicking on the ground releases animals.^[6][7][8]
2. Feed them to breed them and grow their number. Cows and sheep take wheat, chickens take wheat seeds and pigs take carrots or potatoes.^{[9][10][11][25]}
3. Harvest by using a tool on the pen. A bucket on a cow pen gives milk, and shears on a sheep pen shear the sheep and drop wool.^[9][10]
4. Automate with dispensers. They can use shears on a pen with sheep, a bucket on a pen with chicken, cow or goat, and a bowl on a pen with a mooshroom.^[46]
5. Read the pen's state with a redstone comparator. It reports whether the pen is empty, whether breeding is ready and whether the interactions are ready.^[18]

FTB Evolution 2 1.1.0 ships Animal Pens version 2.5.1. The mod was already in the pack in 1.0.2 or earlier, so it isn't a new addition in this release.^[2]

Animal Pens 2.5.1

• Fixes a server side crash. If you run the pack on a server, this is the fix to know about.^[49]