As Ed was starting to run low on consciousnesses he was eventually forced to stop expanding the factory.
'It's good to automate all these processes but I can't spend all of my consciousnesses in one place' He still needed to keep some handy in case the system needed an upgrade or new creatures needed creating.
As for why Ed needed so many consciousnesses… It turned out that transferring skills from one creature to another didn't happen so seamlessly.
'Incompatible skills, especially active skills, cannot trigger without some thinking involved' The Autotomy skill which he acquired from the lizards in the cavern was not fit for mushrooms.
'The part that needs to be cut off is not clearly defined' Ed discovered this when he isolated a metal mushroom with this skill to test if the virus could affect the production in his absence.
