My situation somewhat dictates that my group plays non-language dependent games, so we will be playing the family game almost exclusively. Since I misread the 'only one' animal gets born per species rule when starting out, I've been playing that each pair of animals can breed. I like it that way! I think it really adds to the enjoyment of the game, as there is a lot more going on in terms of building your farm. It maintains competition for resources while putting more points on the scorecard. It's going to be the house rule around here.

I think this gives too much bias towards feeding through animals. The way things are at the moment is that feeding through animals is balanced with feeding through bake bread. This variant would throw off the balance.

Cool - maybe I'll do that with my semi-gaming group. I've been trying to think of ways to make the game less of a stressful thinker game (stressful in a good way), since they're more laid back and enjoy the lighter games. I think I'm going start out with a couple of extra food each with them, for the same reason.

I guess my only question would be, does making animals better throw off the balance between animals and farming.

I think so. Check out this thread, http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/337325. A lot of people already think Baking Bread is underpowered. I disagree with them though. I think Baking Bread is a very viable way to get food.

In a 5 player family game, you have the action of getting a sheep/boar/cattle early, but with fewer people, there really aren't enough actions for getting livestock. And while sheep can breed early in the game, there aren't many breeding phases for increasing boar or cattle. This variant would make feeding with sheep easier, but breeding boar and cattle would be mostly for scoring points. This breeding variant also increases the desirablity of resources and actions for making this happen. This also introduces greater competition for points involving large numbers of livestock, which starts to make sense of the stable action. As riches appear in these areas, there is less pressure on farming, which should mean that it becomes easier to do well with farming. As feeding becomes easier, growing the family becomes more competitive. There is still the competition to do a little bit better than the other players, just at a higher level of productivity. It's just more fun to be productive!