Sarah Santitoro

This is precisely right.
Please listen to to CaptainStarbuck
You must load and unload soft ware according to a LIFO queue. (Last In, First Out)

And, even if you ignore that software rule, you have to recognize that this is a LONG term issue, many people have studied it for a long time. So, ou cannot continue on assumptions like "it shouldn't behave like that". There may be facts, seen in another light, that will uncover things what we thought we knew, but didn't. There is obviously something wrong with your approach, otherwise it would have worked by now - or proven why it doesn't.

Give in to "I don't know" with this proposal. Prove that this is not the problem. Only then can you move on with clear conscience on to the next possible solution.

Re: Can't hear them anymore...
THAT would be the one good thing that came from this. Their incessant barking (and cats' meowing and the other mobs chattering away) is WAY annoying to me. While I like hearing them, I despise hearing them so frequently! I hate to turn down/off the sound - I need to hear other cues from the environment. Wouldn't it be great if it were variable?
Thanks for this indulgence. This issue (the REAL issue of mobs despawning) & one other (mob babies suffocating upon adulthood) have my prickles up! Add the ever-present 3-5 fps LAG & I get positively LIVID.
Since MC is what I use to help me(via distraction) with my disease's Chronic Pain, you can see how very much this irritates me.

Can we PLEASE hear from the devs HERE about this issue?? ANY NEWS at all would be good to hear.

PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE!

thank you for this forum. I promise not to indulge like this again. i hope it shows HOW distracting/irritating this issue is & why it has to be addressed.

Chicks born from eggs thrown at a block, often suffocate within that block.

Oddly, I have consistently noticed that this happens far less (to the point of only rarely) if the egg is thrown at wood or stone (even maybe glass !? not enough data yet to be sure). If I didn't know better (and maybe I don't), I'd think that the increased density of these two materials makes the thrown eggs more likely to spawn outside the block as they should.
I realize this sounds kind of stupid software-wise, but I throw a LOT of eggs (around 300-400 daily) and this is consistently true.

Also: I always play in peaceful.

To reproduce this is simple:
1- Make up a large farm of about 300-400 chickens
Do this the usual way - mating intensively.
To check your population count:
a. Enter the colony - after all chicks have matured - with several FULL seed stacks...
a. Immediately and quickly feed them to full saturation...
b. Get an accurate count by adding the number of seeds it took to feed them.
2. Run around the coop a few times, collecting eggs, depositing them into a chest as you fill up.
3. Count the #eggs collected..
4. Locate / create a few dirt blocks at 4 or more blocks high and at an angle/area where you won't hit anything (i.e. chickens) when you shoot at it and so the resulting chicks will fall down into the coop.
5. Aim & throw half of the collected eggs at the dirt blocks, counting the number of successful chicks vs. dead chicks.
6. Replace the dirt block with another of the suggested block types (wood/stone/glass...) & repeat the test with the other half of the collected eggs.
Now you can create stats and report them using the collected data, if you wish.

I hope this unusual info helps you in debugging the problem. It's pretty annoying.
What's my release? I don't know how to check (I'm still a newbie in several areas), but everytime MC asks if I want to update, I do immediately. I hope that helps.

I consistently get this error, too. It also appears to interrupt with being able to catch fish when fishing underwater (to escape annoying rain noise & increase #fish coming.) I will often hear the fish, but as I go to get it, it will not come. I am convinced this is due to the HUGE drop in FPS that comes with rain. I think this error is a kind of 'stuttering' – of fish catching rather than sound (though I get that, too).
I hope this additional info helps you in debugging this issue.

The same thing happens to NPC Villagers... not all of them (so far), but several despawn after being away from them for several day. I lost my source for the diamond pickax blessing of 'Looting II with Sharpness III' that way! Sorry, I didn't think to collect data at that time. Since it happens over a period of time, it's hard to know how & what data to collect.

This may provide another clue:

After a long search, I believe my problem here belongs in this discussion as well as the suffocation issues when mobs "encounter" solid blocks and get damage/death.

In a village, when a villager is stranded atop a high place, I have often "gravel-ed up" and coaxed it to ride down the "gravel-ator" safely to the ground.

Sometimes they would apparently take it down a few levels, then jump.

All other times, at various levels, the villagers would fall through the remaining blocks & begin to suffocate. I'd have to bang out the remaining gravel blocks to save it, but it would take damage the whole time – whether this damage was from continued suffocation, my swatting away the gravel as it fell, or both – I do not know.

This is a consistent problem. I have several other suffocation-type problems that are well-described by other people here. I also get the significant lag that is prevalent throughout the game – but I work off of a laptop. I always update when MC prompts me to, so I assume I'm on the latest version.

Everything I do is strictly VANILLA.

I am in PEACEFUL MODE.
(A good thing, too! The Golems are pretty pi$$ed after my rescue attempts!)

I hope this sheds a little more light on the parameters of this large, very annoying problem.

I'm so glad this issue is being addressed.
This issue is also present in PEACEFUL GAME MODE.
My duckin (duck/chicken) coop, I get only suffocations (no known escapes) in either of these natural, dirt & stone enclosure coops. Note that most of this natural enclosure is far more than 2 blocks thick - it's a small valley-like area.

In these relatively large farms, I keep about 250-350 duckins (measured by how much feed goes out before saturation). Some of the deaths are likely trampling deaths from my running about, but they continue whenever I am in the area. I can hear them, then run back to the coop to see the corpses floating - a one-to-one correspondence: pne "death cry" per corpse.