I’m a little miffed here, went to build my animal pens close to a wall, the last was to be the Poyo pen but was a tiny bit into dirt(?) so I had to move it because the pen tool wouldn’t place in dirt(?) Why won’t it work on dirt(?)
I don’t understand why we can’t place on dirt, Poyos appear to be in the same family as Chickens and they need a “scratching” area, can’t scratch on grass very well 
@Unatan2 Hard to tell from your screenshot (since it’s nighttime!) but it looks as if that area is rock, not dirt.
And no, you can’t build pens of any kind on rock. You can always build pens on dirt, though.
In my humble opinion, that shouldn’t be the case. We should be able to put our animals anywhere, since they are feeding off the feed made by cooks and not the grass. Personally I’d love the ability to have random poyos roam the paved road in a crowded marketplace, but the current game mechanics don’t allow that.
Perhaps it could make a difference as a future game mechanism where placing a pen upon grass would give a certain bonus over placing them on rock (like in caves or inside a buidling).
Really good idea, I agree with you.
A small aesthetic trick: your livestock will follow the shephard around if the shephard whistles to them, so if you can make the shephard go somewhere while livestock are following then you can get the animals to follow.
One of the simplest ways to do that is to create a small pen on one side of the square, and let it fill up with poyos; then get all your other hearthlings into position (e.g. at mealtimes, or give them a quick job which has openings for lots of them so they’re idling in that location). Once you’ve got all the other “actors” in place, your stage is set… pause the game, remove the poyo pen, and place a slightly smaller pen on the other side of the market. The shephard will call the poyos over, and they’ll all follow at first. But, as they’re crossing the square, the whistle effect will wear off, and some will fall behind while only the ones destined for the new pen will keep up.
So, you should have a few moments where there’s a line of poyos following your shephard, and more poyos idling around in your market square.
Obviously this only works for a short time, so it’s good for screenshots or if you want to set up a small scene for a larger video.
Going back to the original issue: I agree that we should be able to place animal pens on hard ground like stone or constructed surfaces. However, I think there should also be an option for natural pasture, which gives alternate benefits since you need to have that area of grass present. So, that gives a choice: the player can have smaller, more efficient animal pens but need to supply feed; or have larger and more productive pastures which keep the animals happier and give some kind of bonuses (faster productivity, faster breeding, or something like that).
one earlier issue I had with pastures is the low density, which I thought would be appropriate if there is grazing (auto-fed). But there isn’t.
What I hope would be included:
pasture can be defined on any ground (including constructed), just that the type ground and number of each type determine how much grazing can be done. A large enough pasture does not need the shepherd to feed the animal manually, while a small size one will require feeding. Grazable tiles should become exhausted as animal feeds, but will grow back over time (rate could be ‘enhanced’ by stuff, such as droppings…)
animal density in pasture should not be artificially limited directly. One way of avoiding that is to make reproduction conditional: animals must be fed and content to reproduce. So even in a large pasture, without enough food, they will not reproduce. Likewise, in a small pasture, but with sufficient food they will reproduce. One other way of control is to make crowdedness lower the content level of animals thus making it harder to reproduce (they may still do so if offset by other factors, e.g. shepherd cared pasture can support more animals automatically because they are more content on average).
remove the min size of 10x10. e.g. why can’t I make a cruel farm where each animal is kept just in enough space to hold it and exploit(milk/fleece/egg) them continuously? It should be possible 
Like the idea of free range Poyos, good bug cleaners, but to confine them like mass production factories? No no, don’t want Animal Control or Peta coming after my Hearthlings 
Actually you can create pens on rock … more or less.
The starting and end point of the rectangle has to be on gras (please, do not fix this).
With hunting areas it is even possible to end it on rock (please, do not fix this).
