Animal Farmer

Animal Farmers are machines in Progressive Automation. They consume food items to cause nearby peaceful animals to breed.

Usage
Like all Progressive Automation machines, Animal Farmers can consume any standard Furnace fuel, or Potatoes, to function. Alternatively, if Redstone Flux is available, the RF Engine can be placed in the Fuel slot to consume RF in stead of fuel. By default (configurable), Animal Farmers consume 40RF/t and can hold 40,000RF. The Animal Farmer does not use tools to operate; in stead it consumes food items to feed peaceful animals. The food required depends on the animals being fed, in accordance with conventional Minecraft breeding mechanics.

The GUI of the Animal Farmer contains 3 input slots (Food, Fuel, Upgrade), a 3x3 grid of output slots, a fuel burn indicator, and an information display area. Upgrades placed in the upgrade slot will be immediately consumed. When inactive, the display will show why the Animal Farmer is not currently active. When active, the display will show whether the Animal Farmer is actively feeding animals or is 'Waiting' for animals to finish their reproduction cooldowns. Because an Animal Farmer will likely spend much of its time idle waiting for animal breeding cooldowns, it may be useful to set timers to only fuel or power it periodically.

The Animal Farmer is placed on the same level as the animals it is to feed.

Animal Farmers will attempt to automatically output any items in their output slots into adjacent inventories. This behavior can be changed on a side-by-side basis with the PA Wrench to allow sides to accept new Fuel or Tools, allowing the Animal Farmer to potentially be completely automated.

Two special upgrades can be used in the Animal Farmer: the Milker Upgrade and the Shearing Upgrade. Each of them add an additional slot to the Farmer's GUI. The Milker Upgrade adds a slot for empty Buckets, which the Farmer will attempt to use on Cows to collect Buckets of Milk. The Shearing Upgrade adds a slot for Shears, which the Farmer will use to collect Wool from Sheep. Note that without one of these upgrades, an Animal Farmer will never collect any items; if a user wanted to create an automated animal farm they would require at least one Killer as well.