Animal Weights
A Minecraft NeoForge mod that gives farm animals a weight value driving drop + XP scaling based on living conditions.
Gameplay screenshot
Note: There are no labels above the animals in the actual mod, this is what it would look like
Every farm animal carries a weight
Cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, rabbits, and mooshrooms all get an integer weight from 0 to 8, shown above their head. New mobs spawn at weight 1.
Default state: weight 1, vanilla drops
A freshly-spawned animal wandering the world starts at weight 1, vanilla drops, vanilla XP, no sickness. In open terrain wild animals usually plateau here
Cramped pens make animals sick
Stuff a herd into a tiny pen with no light, no water, and no grass and their weight ticks down every in-game day. At weight 0 they turn sick — Slowness I, no breeding, and their drops get capped and culled.
Good conditions push weight up
Give an animal light (≥ 14 brightness), water (a source block or filled cauldron it can reach), grass to graze on, and at least 6 walkable cells around it, and it gains weight every day at dawn. Three of four conditions plateaus it; all four push it to 8
Peak: weight 8
A well-kept pen converges on weight 8 and stays there. This is what "thriving" looks like.
The payoff, drops scale with weight
Kill a weight-8 cow and instead of 1–3 beef you get +11 extra primary drops on top of vanilla. The curve is accelerating, so weights 7 and 8 are where the real payoff is.
The payoff, drops scale with weight
You get a lot more drops