Sheep

Sheep are easily tameable herbivores with a medium movement speed. Males of the species are referred to as Rams and can be distinguished by their rounded horns, while females are referred to as Ewes and lack horns. Babies of either gender appear identical to ewes and are referred to as Lambs.

Obtaining

Sheep can join the player in a random event, or bought from faction bases and from bulk goods traders. Sheep purchased from traders will be already tamed.

Summary

Sheep are pen animals. Once tamed, pen animals cannot and do not need to be trained any further. But if left outside of a pen or caravan hitching spot, pen animals will eventually roam outside your colony. Making a caravan is not required to tie animals to a caravan hitching spot.

Sheep can be sheared for 45 sheep wool ( 121.5) every 10 days for 1,700 ticks (28.33 secs) of work. Note that yield and shearing time are modified by the shearer's Animal Gather Yield and Animal Gather Speed respectively.

Analysis

Wool

Sheep have the highest wool / nutrition ratio of all animals. Sheep produce as much wool as alpacas, but have a lower hunger rate.

An adult sheep eats 7.2 hay per day, which would require 5.2 tiles of haygrass to sustain. Sheep produce 4.5 wool per day. The same 5.2 tiles of cotton plant would produce 3.54 units of cloth per day. Sheep wool is 80% more valuable per unit, making wool more profitable. This becomes further profitable if sheep are allowed to graze.

However, textile supply usually isn't a problem. Cotton can be grown as long as its warm outside and there's soil around. Sheep are more efficient, but you'll have to buy (or otherwise get) sheep, which is an opportunity cost on its own. In the early game, cloth is usually "good enough" for all your textile needs. Sheep must also be sheared by an Animals handler, while cloth can be sown normally. If you don't have anyone good at Animals, sheep produce much less wool.

Nutrition

When slaughtered, a sheep yields 26 meat and 15 leather as a baby; 53 meat and 21 as a juvenile; or 105 meat and 33 leather as an adult. 1 meat is equal to 0.05 nutrition.

An adult sheep consumes 0.36 nutrition per day, and creates up to 0.23 offspring per day.

When offspring are slaughtered as babies, a female sheep will produce 0.3 nutrition of meat per day, giving a nutrition efficiency of 84.1%.
If the offspring are allowed to grow to adulthood, offspring will consume an additional 0.82 nutrition per day, but will instead yield 1.22 nutrition per day as they are slaughtered, resulting in a nutrition efficiency of 103.8%.

When considering a population of equal numbers of males and females, these nutrition efficiencies fall to 42% for baby slaughter and 79.5% for adult slaughter.

Training

This animal can be trained as follows:

Guard:
Attack:
Rescue:
Haul:

*As of version 1.1.2610, all animals can be tamed. The percentage of likelihood of success depends on factors such as the Animals Wildness Percentage, Pawn Handling Skill, and others. More information can be found on the animals page.

Health

Body part	Health
Head	18
Skull	18
Brain	7
Nose	7
Neck	18
Jaw	14
Eye ^[1] (left, right)	7
Ear (left, right)	7
Body	28
Kidney^[2] (left, right)	11
Lung^[2] (left, right)	11
Liver^[2]	14
Heart^[2]	11
Spine^[2]	18
Stomach^[2]	14
Limbs (left, right, fore, hind)	21
Appendage (left, right, fore, hind)	14