A better means of manure

[Sandwich-Anomaly]

Is it better to buy manure or have animals that give you manure?

[richardmgoldsmith]

You may reach a point where doing both may be beneficial. It is quite heavy so with no horse I would say have an NPC gather it first from your animals.

[markjl1]

Pigs give manure best to use pigsty with NPC Can get two if have higher need for a lot of fields Buying ok in short term . I have found

[Sandwich-Anomaly]

Originally posted by markjl1:

Pigs give manure best to use pigsty with NPC Can get two if have higher need for a lot of fields Buying ok in short term . I have found

seems i also have to deal with feeding the animals for the manure. so make fields for crops to feed the animals to make manure for the fields... I think ill need to figure out how to utilize pigs effectively first.

[Kwalyz]

The amount of manure that can be collected from a fed adult pig depends upon the farming skill level of the villager assigned to the pigsty.
A villager with farming skill level 1 can collect 10 pieces of manure per day from one fed adult pig. A level 2 can collect 20 etc.
So 5 adult pigs can yield a lot of manure per day if you assign a villager with level 3 or higher in farming.
In the short term, consider utlising rot to make fertiliser. Rot comes from decayed food. There is a setting that you can toggle on/off that will cause food dropped on the ground (ie not in any storage container or your personal inventory) to decay to rot when the season changes. Most food yields multiple pieces of rot. For example, one piece of meat gives 3 pieces of rot, cabbage yield 4 pieces. So it's a good use of excess food. If you are playing with the setting where food does not decay upon season change outside of container (eg if you have put out food on display and you don't want it to rot.), then it will take 8 or more seasons for the food to decay in the food storage building. A bit faster if you have it in other storage containers. Conversion to fertliser is 10 rot to 1 fertliser compared to 2 manure to 1 fertliser, but if you have excess meat for example you won't care that is not as efficient.

[richardmgoldsmith]

Originally posted by Sandwich-Anomaly:

Originally posted by markjl1:

Pigs give manure best to use pigsty with NPC Can get two if have higher need for a lot of fields Buying ok in short term . I have found

seems i also have to deal with feeding the animals for the manure. so make fields for crops to feed the animals to make manure for the fields... I think ill need to figure out how to utilize pigs effectively first.

It is all about balance and fine tuning. Don't forget - production rates never stay static as NPCs gain experience their production goes up, so there is no such thing as a steady state. It is very rewarding to get just enough grain grown to make animal feed to get enough manure to fertilise the growing of just enough grain ...

[lmill1]

I haven't had pigs for years. All of the fertilizer comes from rot which is abundant. However, at the beginning of the game I had both, but to get it going I would buy manure or fertilizer everywhere I went to supplement the fertilizer supply. Finally, I had so much fertilizer that I no longer needed the pigs and I could stop buying fertilizer all because of using rot.

[Swift-Li]

You guys are full of manure.

[richardmgoldsmith]

Virtually full, yes.

[Veny]

Buying pigs require large investment AND you have to feed them, assign a worker to them and you also need certain amount of farm points to be able to build pigsty. Plus other costs like hiring a farmer who will turn manure into fertilizer, building a barn etc.

Pigs are certainly great source of manure and the best option for independent farmers in mid and late game but in early game... the initial investment may be just way too high.