How Large Animal Farms Affect Server Performance

Direct answer

Measure how much tick time crowded breeding pens actually consume before changing entity settings. Collision, pathfinding, breeding activity and collection systems may all contribute.

How to check it

1. Count animals in a dense pen and profile while the area is loaded. Compare with the same players standing where the pen is unloaded, using /spark profiler start --timeout 300 on Paper.
2. Check whether animals are constantly pushing against one another, navigating toward food or trapped in a moving-water collection mechanism.
3. If farms include hoppers and redstone, profile the collection side separately before blaming animal AI.

What to change

1. Reduce unnecessary permanent breeding stock and split extreme concentrations where possible, while retaining enough animals for the intended output.
2. Shorten collection queues and remove excess dropped items. Avoid rapid hopper-clock machinery where a passive collection line works.
3. Entity activation adjustments can affect breeding and movement. Avoid applying unverified entity-AI “optimizations” to public survival gameplay.

Software and version notes

Verify the result

Compare breeding output, animals alive, client-side crowding and server MSPT during similar peak usage.

References

• PaperMC profiling guide
• PaperMC Spigot configuration