Hello.
Intro
There's some time since the last preview, but it doesn't mean the progress is slower. Just the opposite - the biggest programming part is almost ready. It will definitely take much time and effort until we'll have animal domestication in the game, but you can learn about it just now.
Feeding animals
Ok, do you remember first preview? Let's imagine we already have a few domesticated cows. What can we do with them? Of course some people want have cows as pets, but others probably want to get milk without using a battle axe.
There's nothing for free, however. Cows wouldn't be happy to give you its milk without getting something in return. You must feed them and giving old pizza might not work.
All domesticated animals must be fed, otherwise they'll prefer to run wild. There are three types of animal feed: hay (made of grass or grains), vegetable (made of... vegetables) and meat (just meat). Of course not all animals eat all of these, usually only one or two.
Human food can be converted into animal feed by different projects on different machines, but the details are unknown.
When we have enough feed then we must think how to give it to animals. Animals are quite similar to humans in terms of eating, so they prefer to eat once a day. But they demand more than a regular newspawn - feed must be provided in a suitable container, like trough. You should build one before taming your first animal, otherwise it will leave you quite soon.
Ok, we have trough and feed, so we store it like in every container and wait.
When eating turn comes then food disappears from a container and instead you can find dung on the ground. Also animals' hunger level decreases, and less hunger means more milk production.
What happens when there's not enough food for all animals? They get hungry and there's growing percent chance of animal running away. If it finds wild animals of its species then it joins the pack and you must tame them again. If it doesn't find any then it can't remember how to live alone and dies.
Milking cows! Yes, yes, yes, yes!
But it doesn't happen with our cows. They eat every day and are getting happy
After several days it's time to try first milking project. On the pack page you can see approx amount of milk produced by the cows.NOTE! Milk and other raws obtained from animals do increase ONLY when animals are in packs. Separate animals on objects page must eat just like these in packs, but their milk and other attributes stay on the same level.
Ok, we are sure, so...
Let's get a bucket and start work.
All harvesting animals projects have fixed time (1 day) and can give fixed amount of raws (i.e. milk) upon finish, unless there is not enough milk (then you get everything currently available). Amount which you will get is unknown until the end the project.
Oh, great. And remember, more often you milk a cow, more total output you get, but you can also milk them rarely and get slightly smaller amount and spend much less time. There's no one optimum way, so you must decide when you should milk them.
Bad news: limitations
Ok, everything looks cute, but as animals are quite powerful addition to Cantr gathering economy, they must be limited in some way to balance whole system.
Domesticated animals in packs use gathering slots
It also means pet animals (stored as individuals, not in packs) don't use any slot.
How does it work? There's no hard limit on number of animals of every type (like it is for wild packs). Instead that x animals of a certain type will take 1 gathering slot. When they exceed that limit, they take 2 slots, if their number continues to grow above 2*x then can take third slot and so on.
In example, we have a pack of rabbits and we know that 12 rabbits take 1 slot. So 13 or 24 rabbits take 2 slots and 30 rabbits take 3 slots. Easy, isn't it?
There will definitely come the moment when you'll have to decide to let them grow and grow or rather spare some slots for the working people. Or maybe sell milk and buy materials in neighbouring settlement.
Good news - animals reproduction
How to exceed the limit? You can tame many wild animals, but it'd be better to have new animals for free. There's such secret option
but you need at least one pair of domesticated animals of that type. If they are well fed then soon you'll welcome first newborn animal. But, unfortunately, young ones aren't different from their parents and just increase pack size of that type by one. Picture from the top of the post will depend on your imagination.Pet animals - bonding/adoption
What if you don't need milk, wool or other things but rather a pet friend? There can be an option to make your dog unique by adopting it. Some (or most, I don't know) of the animals will have possibility to be adopted.
Lock button is (probably) just a temporary image
Adoption project takes same raws/tools/time as taming project does. If succeed, it creates a bond between you and that animal, which is visible on the objects page:
It doesn't give any special possibilities to command animal etc. It gives only a way to separate you own beloved animal from a crowd of the others (at least currently). But it's not the only reason why I created that possibility, so be ready for a nice surprise some time in the future.
And it's not completely truth that it doesn't give you any superpowers - there is one. You are now the only one person who can join that animal with a pack, but be cautious: when you join animal with a pack it becomes loyal to a pack and forgets its last owner. If you will separate that animal from a pack then you'll have to adopt it again.
Also if animal is adopted, you can't think it will be yours forever. It will never reject your friendship without involvement of sb else, but can be readopted by other character. Be sure to protect them from strangers, but such attempt will not be invisible - trying to adopt animal creates public event just like picking lock does.
The end?
I'm afraid that's all what I did and almost everything of planned things. But that's probably not last info about animal domestication, because there are some special actions like butchery (and not only), which are not ready yet. Maybe it will be separate thread, but rather an extension of this one, because really not much left.
Slaughtering/butchering
Milk and eggs are nice, but sometimes we really want some meat. What to do then? Most obvious way is to hunt domesticated animals like wild ones, but that way you'll not get anything extra. Just the same amount of the same raws, so nothing worth your time. To be professional you need a cleaver or something like that first.
It has special option "butcher", you click the button and select one of animal-objects in location.
What happens then? Well
you slaughter the animal. It can take some time, sometimes even a few days. Then you get all meat and other stuff from the killed animal. Slaughtering project is like a normal project but: the same animal is needed in location to start and finish it (funny thing is - you don't need animal present when working on it 
But please do not overuse it). Project gives multiple types of raws. Amount of obtained raws depends on how fed animal is and increases gradually like other raws in animal pool (like milk etc.)But why slaughtering animals can be useful when it's possible to get meat and bones by hunting wild animals?
There goes another idea: some types of domesticated animals will give you exclusive types of meat (like: pork, beef) when slaughtered, which will be used for even more exclusive recipes (like: sausages). Details are not yet decided, but I'm sure it will be worth your time. And if you'd like to use special meat in regular recipes (i.e. for cooked meat) then you will have possibility to easily convert special meat into generic one using mincer.
Nice, isn't it?
Animal enclosure
As suggested, animal enclosure will be used to protect animals from a random theft. You first build an enclosure, then add a lock (like for container) and your animals are almost safe
That button in the middle is absolutely useless.
When enclosure is locked then only key holder can separate/join animals with a pack. Any other actions (slaughtering, milking, shearing) are not prohibited, because enclosure is adapted to stop animals (chickens too), not people. If you want to steal animals from a pack then you must first destroy the lock or get the key.
Enclosure is one "global" object in location, it covers all the animals. It's not possible to have some packs outside and some inside.
New end
Today (12.09.2012) we had some fixes in the game and their reason was to make things as ready for domestication as possible.
Tests of already finished feature will start in the following days. Be ready to see it in the game soon
