Originally posted by Serencam:

Why don't pigs breed when I'm not nearby? do you have a solution to this

There are 2 events you need to be present for. The mating, and the birth. You don't need to be in the area to run down the actual pregnancy timer though.

Basically, you want your pig farm to at least be somewhere you will somewhat frequently pass through. If your pigs are well fed, and you portal into the area, after 30 seconds or so you'll start to hear them squealing. It may continue for a minute or so. That's all you need for them to be pregnant, now you can leave and do whatever. Some time later, when you come back by and load into the area again, another 30s and the squeals start and piglets begin popping out like fireworks.

So, you don't need to hang around, but you do need to come by for a brief moment to trigger those two stages.

Other breeding tips...

- They DO eat while you're gone, so don't over feed them if you don't plan on coming by to trigger the next event in a reasonable time.
- They don't need to eat to survive. They only need to be fed to trigger the two events, mating and birthing.
- They won't breed if there are 5 or more in a small area.
- They sometimes tend to clump up together even in a large pen, causing them to stop breeding. Breeding is more efficient with many small pens slightly spaced apart to prevent that clumping. When you butcher them, just leave 2 in each pen.
- Carrots are a good source of pig food. If you have a carrot farm near your pig pens, every time you go to harvest/plant your carrots, the pigs will mate/birth.
- Pig meat is a good source of food for wolves. Breeding wolves in the area gives a full farm production chain, farming carrots to feed the pigs to feed the wolves.
- Wolves can be bred the same way as pigs, or given a larger area. You can just tell 2 or 3 wolves to "stay" in a particular spot, and drop food there. The cubs will wander off, freeing up space for them to breed again. Beware that doing this without any fences at all can result in an island completely overrun with wolves.