Balancing out Animal Husbandry is always my downfall...

[Morkonan]

Whenever I get inspired to start collecting and breeding animals for fur, meat, etc, I usually end up doing so far too soon and then ignore just how critically important such a decision is. :) I'm sure you've been there, too.

"Woohoo! Finally! Fur! I can make good clothes again and have some meat/skin when needed! It's all smooth sailing from now on!"

"Hey, I want some dogs! I need all that extra hauling and who doesn't love dogs, amiright?"

"WTF WHERE DID ALL MY FOOD GO! STOP HARVESTING HAY I HAVE TWO BAJILLION HAY AND POTATOES AREN'T EVEN SOWED IN TEH FIELD WTF I AM DOOMED!"

/sigh

Every. Single. Time.

I suck at "Animals."

So, wat do?

Aside from the fact that a pawn's Handling skill actually makes a difference and crop yields can be variable and Rimworld is the Universe's RNG, what are some suggestions for a good setup, some decent planning considerations, possible population ratios and the demands they'll place on me, etc?

I've only been playing post-1.0 for a few days. Pre-1.0 I still sucked with Animal Husbandry tasks, though... So, for me, it all balances out to a massive crapton of suckitude when it comes down to getting a decent animal husbandry setup going and keeping it going. I always end up getting distracted by something else ('cause Rimworld) and discover some food shortage somewhere that ends up causing a cascading problem... which is to be expected. Yet...

Halp? :)

Tips, tutes relevant to the current build if possible, tricks, any ways to get this self-sustaining, how to not mousehover over all-things-animal-food-related all the time, every time, etc... would be appreciated.

Should I just not have any carnivores, anywhere, ever, so as to make it simpler? (Kibble-making is haaard.) Are there any "Golden Ratios" of animals vs resources to consider?

[SoULLeSs]

Well, I think the only way or one of the ways to unable your animals to eat simple meals or better food is making a area for them around your base excluding your food stockpiles areas. I am currently having dogs, panthers, wargs, mufaloos and bulls and cows and since I done this, my meal quantities have been balanced

[Monoxide]

Not sure if this will help your setup much, but one thing I do to manage food stores better is to have 3 pieces to my animal area; 1) I have a typical barn with kibble for the meat eaters, 2) outside the barn I have a field of dandelions/grass (not haygrass - I have a mod to plant grass) for grazers to eat from when grown, 3) at the opposite end of the field (different side from the barn also accessible to the animals) I have a silo that contains hay.

The purpose for this is to maintain hay storage. It wont be eaten unless the grass isnt fully grown and the animals move further to the silo.

Based on your issues, it sounds like you are over producing hay. I think this setup could be helpful for you by allowing you to focus less on the haygrass since the stores wont be eaten unless necessary. However, your pawns still will need to maintain the grass/dandelion areas. the only issue is if you undershoot your storage and end up with not enough hay stored to maintain during emergencies. Toxic fallout will also throw a huge stick in these spokes.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Gr1m R3ap3r:

Well, I think the only way or one of the ways to unable your animals to eat simple meals or better food is making a area for them around your base excluding your food stockpiles areas. I am currently having dogs, panthers, wargs, mufaloos and bulls and cows and since I done this, my meal quantities have been balanced

One of the issues I encounter is that I do fine when I limit myself to just "can eat live plants" animals. They'll do fine, in general, and haygrass is easy and plentiful to grow. They can graze, if necessary, and if something terrible happens and they all die? Well, there's usually going to be some other grazing animal I can try to tame, nearby, and getting a working population back up and running shouldn't be too difficult.

But, then I get a breeding pair of dogs or some other animal that doesn't graze (can't eat live plants) but has some other very desirable quality...

Originally posted by Monoxide:

Not sure if this will help your setup much, but one thing I do to manage food stores better is to have 3 pieces to my animal area; 1) I have a typical barn with kibble for the meat eaters, 2) outside the barn I have a field of dandelions/grass (not haygrass - I have a mod to plant grass) for grazers to eat from when grown, 3) at the opposite end of the field (different side from the barn also accessible to the animals) I have a silo that contains hay.

The purpose for this is to maintain hay storage. It wont be eaten unless the grass isnt fully grown and the animals move further to the silo.

Based on your issues, it sounds like you are over producing hay. I think this setup could be helpful for you by allowing you to focus less on the haygrass since the stores wont be eaten unless necessary. However, your pawns still will need to maintain the grass/dandelion areas. the only issue is if you undershoot your storage and end up with not enough hay stored to maintain during emergencies. Toxic fallout will also throw a huge stick in these spokes.

I have a similar setup, though I haven't been using dandelion method since I don't have an issue feeding my grazers. (Dandelions have always been a good supplement crop for grazers.) It's the whole "kibble" thing, I guess, as well as failing to keep non-grazing populations in check by selling/slaughtering them off as necessary.

I will put in a few dandelion patches, though - They're really nice to have.

It all really comes down to the non-grazing omnivore/carnivores and their requirements. One has a few choices - Either make food for them (kibble), supply them with plenty of human corpses from raiders, or feed them Meals.

Dogs are just too darn tempting, what with their seggzy "Hauling" ability! So tempting... Yet, it's somewhat illusory if one wants those extra haulers to free up Pawns for other work. The first work those freed-up Pawns should probably engage in is taking care of the new haulers by contributing towards making food for them... :)

I also figure out another issue - Hunting.

Tagging animals for Hunting used to be the exact same thing as giving a Hunter Pawn a "license to murder." I used to have to micromanage Hunting because of the pawn's propensity to open-fire and blast away no matter who was in the area. And, so many Pawns would end up blasting some nasty beast in the face with a rifle and getting hunted, in turn. I've been experimenting a little bit and it "seems like" those issues aren't as common any more. Is that a "thing" now? Did they manage to make any changes so that Pawns didn't end up murdering everyone in random crossfire situations just because you told them to go hunt a rabbit? :)

So, I probably don't hunt as often as necessary to keep not only my colonists fed, but to help generate meat for kibble and better meals. It's old habit. :/

I just remembered that I've got an old "Animal Feeding/Care" Google spreadsheet saved somewhere that some kind player did and with all the nutrition requirements figure out so one can plan appropriately. Is there anything out there like that which is confirmed with good post-1.0 data?

PS - Just thinking out loud, but there should probably be an intermediate food item for non-grazing omnivores with mid-value nutritional needs. A real dog doesn't have the same caloric requirements as a full grown human, after all. Yet, in Rimworld, there are no such things as "partially consumed meals." It's a full meal, eaten all at once. And, I think it's safe to assume that it's far more nutrition than an in-game Labrador would really need. So, there's wastage with giving them a Simple Meal to eat every day, I would think. And, Kibble isn't as an efficient source of food, so there might be a need for an intermediate choice. ie: Something better than Kibble, but lower in value than a Simple Meal? Gotta go check the numbers to see if this is true...

[Tarshaid]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

It all really comes down to the non-grazing omnivore/carnivores and their requirements. One has a few choices - Either make food for them (kibble), supply them with plenty of human corpses from raiders, or feed them Meals.

The raider solution is a pretty heavy component of how I intend to feed my carnivores. All I need is a small annex to my freezer, and my dogs will never go hungry. The grazers can subsist mostly without my assistance until winter comes, and the animals' function as bodyguard and melee squad is enough to keep their numbers in check, should they breed too much.

[Morkonan]

A link to an old Food Calculator I used to use, in case any are interested. I have no idea if it's updated for post-1.0, but saving and then editing it oneself with new values isn't too difficult.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MjxYrkl7j8Z0RQogMIwQwq8Vl3y9Uozhy2Tf59AT6ME/edit#gid=1685367709

Originally posted by Tarshaid:

The raider solution is a pretty heavy component of how I intend to feed my carnivores. All I need is a small annex to my freezer, and my dogs will never go hungry. The grazers can subsist mostly without my assistance until winter comes, and the animals' function as bodyguard and melee squad is enough to keep their numbers in check, should they breed too much.

I used to do that as well. I've been trying to not have to rely on that method, but it's so very efficient... I never really used animal "Release" unless there was an emergency, though. That may be another reason why I'm also used to experiencing "animal overload" issues with my food supply. :)

PS - A different spreadsheet calculator regarding food requirements I just came across, in case others want:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m3Poylh6TAiUO9Ej7Q8FNM8d3ZRAyyquaDWS-8xDBVc/edit#gid=920396732

Again - Not sure how updated it is.

Anyone know if in-game requirement values/consumption is actually accurate? Ran across some comments that made it seem that these values are not taken from the same data-fields that actually effect the calcs in-game, but are from description fields that may not be current? True/False?

[Preechr]

Look at the food requirement for the animals you wish to keep. If they need .9 nutrition, that's a simple meal. Almost any animal can eat those. Chickens, however, only need a tiny bit of food, so a full meal would be a waste. They won't go through a ton of hay, though. For your haulers, you can spend a lot of time and effort concocting a scheme to keep them out of your meals while still hauling food into the cooler, or you could just let them eat whatever they find and budget that into your food production. If you feel like they should only get simple meals, you can make a separate cooler right by the stove for fine/lavish meals and have your cook haul them directly in.

Pretty much all raw crops like hay and corn are worth .05 nutrition each, but by making a meal out of .5 nutrition worth of ingredients, you get a .9 nutrition meal. The ratio for kibble is much lower, so the only way kibble makes sense is if you have a constant supply of insect or human meat you wouldn't normally feed to your colonists. If you have enough time for training up herds, flocks and packs and time left over to farm insects, good on you, but its just easier to make simple meals from rice or corn for most animals.

Feeding dogs and other haulers with simple meals is a good way to train up a mediocre cook. Just assign the jobs appropriately, possibly even setting up a separate stove. For carnivores, you really want to be on a map where there are plenty of other wild animals so they can always hunt. They'll kill something and take a couple bites, then haul the rest back to be butchered up. They can pretty much support themselves by eating the rest of the meat, at least until they breed up to the point that there's nothing left for them to hunt.

At that point, start killing the pups. Hate to say it, but you only need so many wargs, and keeping a ton of animals trained up takes a heavy toll on trainer time. If you can train up 8-12 wargs on a map that can support them, the resulting pups, at 1-3 per litter, can be slaughtered as soon as they grow to full size in order to maintain your main pack. Just don't mark the new pups for any training and it should work out. More training will eventually create bonds you don't need. If one of your main wargs loses a limb or something, start training up a pup to replace him.

Create a hauler zone that excludes houses and other places they don't need to be and another for the pups that excludes any indoor areas. You'll just have to remember to move the pups every time one of your haulers gives birth. Keep an eye on the wildlife tab so you can be sure to hunt any natural predators that show up as well as anything you don't want them trying to hunt, like thrumbos or megasloths. Haulers will bury dead raiders in pre-dug graves, but you can also set up a zone for them to be eaten as well. If you have a cannibal or whetever that can butcher them you got kibble there too if you want, but I don't bother.

Ruminants can generally do fine in a decently sized grazing area during summer and fall, then just restrict them to a fenced in area for spring and winter that includes a shelf for simple meals or hay. Don't train ruminants any further to avoid bonding. Just remember, the first thing you do after you pause for a raid is to send all of your animals to that winter protected area, excluding any you wish to have in the fight, of course.

For chickens, rabbits, etc... build them a big house and set up a protected area for them to graze if you want, but you can just keep them inside next to a big pile of hay and your haulers will grab the eggs when they pop up and take them to a zone you've designated. At some point with chickens, you will probably need to kill off all the males, wait for all the eggs to hatch and then kill all the male chicks, though you could let a few grow up and keep them separate from the females for future expansion.

[Preechr]

Fertilized or unfertilized eggs are .25 nutrition, by the way, where pieces of meat are .05 like a piece of corn, so a large chicken operation can also be a great way to make fine meals. Think of it this way: A full grown muffalo yields 189 meat at .05 nutrition each, or 9.45 nutrition, which is right under what you need to make almost 38 meals (excluding the veggie component) which is the equivalent of 148 eggs.

A muffalo takes 28 days to be born plus another half a year to reach full size, where chickens will produce eggs every 1.7 days. That means if you have a flock of 20 hens (regardless of roosters) you can produce the protein equivalent of a muffalo every 13 days or so.

Muffalo milk is another fine meal resource, as a muffalo has a daily average production of 6 milks at .05 nutrition each, the same as one piece of meat. That means one muffalo cow basically can contribute a little over one fine meal's worth of food in milk per day, so if you have 20 muffalo females, that's 30 fine meals a day minus the veggies.

[Solitus]

If you're not adverse to mods and the zoning issue isn't working out (I had them zoned correctly but my pawns kept feeding them meals) there is a mod that lets you set the meal preference for your animals.

Or, build up a stockpile of smokeleaf/happiness/whatever; hope for a sociopath; then have that sociopath butcher all the humanlink non colonists. Use the hay to turn that human meat into kibble, feed to dogs. Lasts longer than "corpse freezer"

But yes, I am at the same point you are; where so much of the time is devoted to food production that it feels like you can't get ahead.

[Chaoslink]

Didn't see too much talk about population here. Is... Is something like ~200 of one animal type going too far? Because apparently I kept them fed just fine. Trained too. They were just foxes, but I just couldn't bring myself to kill more than half of them. But I felt like things were out of hand. They could handle a late game poison ship worth of mechanoids with the support of just one pawn with a sniper rifle while taking minimal losses.

I ask about population simply because I always have trouble deciding when too much turns into really out of hand.

[AlP]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Tips, tutes relevant to the current build if possible, tricks, any ways to get this self-sustaining, how to not mousehover over all-things-animal-food-related all the time, every time, etc... would be appreciated.

Should I just not have any carnivores, anywhere, ever, so as to make it simpler? (Kibble-making is haaard.) Are there any "Golden Ratios" of animals vs resources to consider?

This spreadsheet was made specifically to address your problems:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/9udyed/animal_food_data_10/

Build greenhouses and grow hay or vegetables to feed your animals.

[Raymond]

the number of animals you should keep depends on your biome. Keep more animal in biome with less wildlife and less with more wildlife.
Do over expand your production or your pawns would be too busy with unnecessary tasks to do anything that matter. I don't usually keep animals until I have strong simple meals production and planning to feed everyone with fine/lavish meals.

A corn field a sun lamp can support can feed 5 colonists with simple meals year round given proper temperature. Live off wild life for the first 1-2 seasons until you can set up a greenhouse. Grow potatoes to live of the next season and then grow corns to sustain your colony. Corns take longest to grow but yield the most food. Expand your farm only when your notice your corn production isn't catching up. Farm animal is the last stage of food production. Go for chickens, cows, and any milk yielding animals.

[stevasaur]

I don't use animals all that much, but I find that maintaining a "Haygrass+Insect Meat" kibble bill is the best way to keep them fed. Pretty much everything except wargs can be few w/ kibble, and once you start using Deep Drills, you'll get enough infestations to keep you in Insect Meat until time stops. Bonus insect meat if you also have some Overhead Mountain zones.

[Grundlator]

Tons of great advice in this thread. Not even OP, and this was extremely helpful to read through

[Morkonan]

OUTSTANDING AND HELPFUL COMMENTS FROM EVERYONE! Who woulda thunk such a thing could happen? :D

Originally posted by Preechr:

...If you have enough time for training up herds, flocks and packs and time left over to farm insects, good on you, but its just easier to make simple meals from rice or corn for most animals. ...They can pretty much support themselves by eating the rest of the meat, at least until they breed up to the point that there's nothing left for them to hunt.

At that point, start killing the pups. ...

Just don't mark the new pups for any training and it should work out. More training will eventually create bonds you don't need...

Just covering the highlights of your great posts!

Originally posted by Preechr:

Fertilized or unfertilized eggs are .25 nutrition, by the way, where pieces of meat are .05 like a piece of corn, so a large chicken operation can also be a great way to make fine meals. Think of it this way: A full grown muffalo yields 189 meat at .05 nutrition each, or 9.45 nutrition, which is right under what you need to make almost 38 meals (excluding the veggie component) which is the equivalent of 148 eggs.

A muffalo takes 28 days to be born plus another half a year to reach full size, where chickens will produce eggs every 1.7 days. That means if you have a flock of 20 hens (regardless of roosters) you can produce the protein equivalent of a muffalo every 13 days or so.

Muffalo milk is another fine meal resource, as a muffalo has a daily average production of 6 milks at .05 nutrition each, the same as one piece of meat. That means one muffalo cow basically can contribute a little over one fine meal's worth of food in milk per day, so if you have 20 muffalo females, that's 30 fine meals a day minus the veggies.

^--- This is great advice! And, it includes a very subtle bit of "protip" :) - "More training will create bonds you don't need."

That's a subtle effect when you just instinctively click boxes to "train everything" without thinking about such consequences. And, in a situation where you're breeding animals for slaughter it can turn problematic once you realize you're overloaded with "Bonded" animals. GREAT TIP!

I used to have the "chicken problem" way back. IIRC, eggs were often a problem, too. Fertilized vs unfertilized, etc. I haven't seen a chicken for sale, yet. But, Muffalos are wonderful, I agree. They're really almost "OP" as there isn't really a downside to them. Milk, fur, meat and leather when slaughtered and they make great pack animals - What's not to love? In fact, when raising animals in the past I never had any issues with "Muffalo Farming." It was always when I introduced something else and got overconfident. :)

The only issue I ever really had that was annoying with Muffalo farming is the milk... The attending pawns would just mlik the cow and leave it sitting there. Little buckets of milk all over the place. The only solution that seemed to work was to confine the Muffalos so left-behind milk was, more or less, all in the same area for easy hauling. That means that one has to have a steady supply of hay/kibble/grazing area for confined muffalos if hauling milk gets problematic.

Still - Muffalos > All for animal husbandry. (Alpacas aren't bad, either, but you don't get milk with them.)

Great tips!

Originally posted by Solitus:

If you're not adverse to mods and the zoning issue isn't working out (I had them zoned correctly but my pawns kept feeding them meals) there is a mod that lets you set the meal preference for your animals.

I'm never adverse to mods, but always want to try to first figure out if a gameplay-related problem, like being full of suck when it comes down to caring for animals, is solvable in the vanilla game. :)

Or, build up a stockpile of smokeleaf/happiness/whatever; hope for a sociopath; then have that sociopath butcher all the humanlink non colonists. Use the hay to turn that human meat into kibble, feed to dogs. Lasts longer than "corpse freezer"

But yes, I am at the same point you are; where so much of the time is devoted to food production that it feels like you can't get ahead.

Psychopaths are wonderful for making kibble... I don't have any. :( The opportunities I've had to recruit them have sadly included attributes I didn't want, like Pyromaniac, or they were just bad combos, very old, low-skilled with no passions, etc. Dumping corpses in corpse-zone for non-grazing omnivores/carnivores is a viable solution, provided there's a good supply.

Originally posted by YariMurai:

...I don't usually keep animals until I have strong simple meals production and planning to feed everyone with fine/lavish meals.

A corn field a sun lamp can support can feed 5 colonists with simple meals year round given proper temperature. Live off wild life for the first 1-2 seasons until you can set up a greenhouse. Grow potatoes to live of the next season and then grow corns to sustain your colony. Corns take longest to grow but yield the most food. Expand your farm only when your notice your corn production isn't catching up. Farm animal is the last stage of food production. Go for chickens, cows, and any milk yielding animals.

Good tips. I wouldn't recommend farming animals for meat production until "late game." But, what about fur/etc? Would you shy away from all animals until you had steady meal production or just from farming-for-food/meat? (Great general grow-tip, too. Thanks!)

Originally posted by stevasaur:

...and once you start using Deep Drills, you'll get enough infestations to keep you in Insect Meat until time stops. Bonus insect meat if you also have some Overhead Mountain zones.

Ah, I had forgotten that was going to be added! Thanks for reminding me. If you hadn't posted that, I wouldn't have remembered that "new" feature until they showed up in my game. :)

Originally posted by AlP:

This spreadsheet was made specifically to address your problems:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/9udyed/animal_food_data_10/

Thanks for the link, saving it now! :)

Originally posted by Zaji1911:

Tons of great advice in this thread. Not even OP, and this was extremely helpful to read through

Absolutely! Great stuff, here.

[test]

Very simple. Make dead human bodies refrigerator and considering how much dead bodies you get in game, this can supply enourmous number of carnivore animals.
Herbivore - make hay growing zone and hay storage, and restrict them to it. If they are starving, allow them to roam whole map but not your food refrigerator. If map is plain and no grass to eat, either kill them or allow to eat from food refrigerator