I'm so happy i saw this post! I thought i was going mad!
I run a little Lan server for me and my lad. We like abit of a challenge and neither of us are interested in animals apart from the slaughtering so we have the agro cranked right up to 80%.
We can walk around the map and all you see is horses and cows etc!
You goto the deserts.. nothing empty.
We tried fresh server on my laptop and still having same issues. I'm glad its just not me.
Please could you post if you find a solution?