Yes having the real ammount of animails in your stable or on your fields.
I'd like that idea, and i whish that they'll be animated, not only standing still like beeing frozen.
I'd even like the idea to have to bring water on a trailer to your cows on the field.

i know programming them with good animations and realistic behaviour will be hard, but as a later update it could bring an even greater experience.

Only problem I foresee with this is: 100 animated cows in a paddock is going to cause an incredible performance hit, even if you have a high-end PC. There's a reason why Giants did not do a 1:1 ratio with the livestock.

Nah it should be able in my eyes to find a good way for performance and even still visibilty

As mentioned before, having 250 cows may be a little bit to much for your pc but 2500 im sure would be overkill.
on the other hands, here in europ 100-400 cows are more than regulare, while 400 is quiet a really high number.

but entering a stable or maybe driving along a field where there should be all of your animals and seeing only a tenth of them, would be even to less in my eyes...so i hope they'll find a good balance

I would also like to see 1:1 ratio. A possible way to negate the performance hit would be to make only a portion be animated. Say 25% animated and the other 75% static. I would be thrilled with that.

I agree that if they go for 1:1 there going to have to get creative. I'm not sure how much I'd like having static models mixed in though. I know this is subjective but statics on animals are usually a real immersion breaker for me.

Ive always thought it would be an experiance enhancement if your startup stable only could take for example 10 cows. If you whant to buy some more the you could use a field. Sow grass and build a fence.

I'd really like the OPTION for this...with so many of these things, options make it richer and give us the power to push the game in a direction that is most pleasing to the user. That way the user can choose what balance he/she likes of performance versus image quality or accurate visual representations.

My expectation for livestock in C&C is.

Feeding the livestock: they need to be fed with TMR during the winter, during spring they need less as the days/months go by because you start letting them out on the grass, during summer time they need nothing or almost nothing else but the grass they eat outside and during autumn they need more and more TMR as it gets colder and they spent more time inside.

Even though it would be nice to see 1:1 cows I still think that maybe it's better to go for a ratio of 1 visible cow for every 2 cows you own, as stated above the reason for the max og 20 cows visible in FS is because of performance(You can adjust the amount of visible cows in GE) and MasterbrainBytes needs to take that into account so I guess we will have to see what they go for.

Breeding is a must have of course and I would like to see them going through the stages that a irl milking cow goes through, Calf -> Heifer -> Cow

I think thats it for now

It would be cool milking the cow

I would say that goes into how optimized (or lack of?) FS is. 20 cows shouldn't be a problem really. I mean.. People are playing GTA and such with hundreds of people on the screen at the same time, in a huge city scene with cars, planes, and high res textures.

What makes FS run so poor is their own engine coming around to bite them. That's what I think.

all true, but I do also like not to have too high expectations, so if they end of with some sort of a max limit of visible cows(for performance) then thats quite alright with me.

That made me remember one more thing I would like to see in the game when it comes to cows and thats a limit to how many you can own like 500 cows on a meadow and in a stable like that is way too much so I would like to see some sort of Max limit to the amount of cows you can own.
If they plan to add place-able/upgrade-able buildings then you'll simply have to upgrade your stable size and meadow size if you plan on having free-range cows

If anyone remembers the horror of UIG's Agrar Simulator 2011 it had upgradeable buildings. It would be a good feature if there was a hard limit set on how many livestock you can own due to building size. Then you could upgrade your livestock and garages to accommodate more etc. We'll soon find out what the devs have for us though.

I am with the above comments on limits depending on your facilities. Starter head of 20 or so if needed but then you need to plan for the future if you're aiming to go big.

Regarding good animal animation, the tech is out there. It's going to be important.

All stages for maturity from new born to 1&2 year olds (beef) as well as milkers is something really needed and hopefully planned.

How about the ability to pick a heifer to bring into the milk herd .... maybe doing a trade with another AI farmer down the way ?

Ability to turn out older cows to keep the herd younger and managed.

Animal passports in some fashion are already in there right?

I like to have weighing in place for decision making on when to sell beef.

Can we have a Bull model please?

I'd want to put out a bull in the early paryt of the new milking year with the milking herd and have the ability to cut the bull out of the herd in the later part of the year. No need for any of the birds and the bees stuff LOL.

Anything to enhance well being management of the herd also would be welcomed. Dosing, keeping salt licks stocked and well as the above food strategies mentioned and so on.

Actually have an AI vet scheduled to come to the farm to do TB testing?

As for milking, better yields on offer for doing the milking yourself (not hand milking of course) as opposed to the magic milking option where it somehow gets into the milk tank.

Regarding milk collection and milk quality. Can cleanliness be am impact to quality? What is the ppm milk count compared to the last pickup. Is there a need to do a system wash again?

the list continues ... with a lot assumed.

I personally don't care about how many cows are visibile. It would be NICE to have a 1:1 ratio...so you get to SEE your cow population grow in front of you and not just from the number on a spreadsheet...but that's just icing on the cake for me.

What I would love to see and agree with previous posters on is a limit of cows based on space...whether that's the cow buildings or pasture size or some combination of both. That would be a realistic limiting factor that could provide an added challenge and reward to the game. It could also come in to play with rising costs since more cows/area = more costly and complicated machinery.

On a side note: I'm excited that we are talking about real items like this for a game and actually hopeful to see it include these real life elements. I know no game can be perfect, but C&C is building excitement for the fact that it actually LISTENED to the farm sim community and seems to be working to build many of these suggestions into the game. I'm excited!