Should I breed pigs ?

[Khamvil]

Hey,
I'm actually in the early game of a randy random hard permadeath run.
I built my colony in a cold desert at the pole (-25C to 25C). The food is scarce and the growing period and zones are limited.
Randy just blessed me with a sow and a few pigs. I have a very limited amount of food at the moment and winter is coming. I never bred animals in maps without grass yet, and I'm wondering if it would be worth it to keep a pig and the sow to breed ? Would they produce more than they consume ? I was thinking about feeding them with raider corpses. I don't know if I'll have time to grow hay.
What do you guys think ?

[Bryan=0101]

Originally posted by Khamvil:

Hey,
I'm actually in the early game of a randy random hard permadeath run.
I built my colony in a cold desert at the pole (-25C to 25C). The food is scarce and the growing period and zones are limited.
Randy just blessed me with a sow and a few pigs. I have a very limited amount of food at the moment and winter is coming. I never bred animals in maps without grass yet, and I'm wondering if it would be worth it to keep a pig and the sow to breed ? Would they produce more than they consume ? I was thinking about feeding them with raider corpses. I don't know if I'll have time to grow hay.
What do you guys think ?

I mean if you feed them with bodies you would bypass the eating human meat debuff.

[Jaasrg]

Unless you're using the raider corpses for something else, what do you have to lose?

[Khamvil]

Originally posted by Jaasrr:

Unless you're using the raider corpses for something else, what do you have to lose?

Well I'm still early in the game with 3 colonist, so I need to take time and ressources to build them an area and such. As opposed to just kill them. I think I'm going to try though.
I'll have to feed them when I don't have corpses as well.

[Xam Huad]

Pigs are easy to feed, since they're omnivores (eat everything).
But they eat alot. So euhm, corn rice apples cherries berries and humans.
Throw it all in there (in the recipe) if you want.
EDIT: Right, so I never actually put raw food, I prefer kibble or w.e recipe that works for you.
Personally, I prefer setting up a large indoor field of grass or poppies
before going into the business of animal barning, as it saves food.

[dnrob7]

Simple meals might not be a bad way to go^ You might think you can't afford it but with animals above a certain size (can't remember exactly), it becomes cheaper than feeding them just rice or corn. A simple meal is 10 ingredient. Watch a pig eat from a pile of raw food and see how many units it eats and you will know.

[Khamvil]

Thanks for all your advices everyone !

[kevinshow]

As others have said, pigs have the advantage that they can eat raider corpses, so that helps your colony get rid of the bodies. You can also feed them with kibble and simple meals, in the case that you create a surplus of vegetable or meat products.

But with the constant training needed to keep their tameness level, a few pigs may literally eat you out of food also, if you are not able to create a surplus of foods.

Since you are just starting the colony, you don't need to keep a lot of pets yet, but keeping a few for later when your colony is bigger and more able to feed everyone, could be OK, in case you worry that you can't get the pigs again later when you're ready.

[Myriad]

By all means, try. You seem fairly new to the game, and trying to manage a barn full of pigs is a good learning experience.

But as you're going along, ask yourself if raising, and feeding, an animal just for meat, will give you more food in return than what you've fed it. The answer is usually no.

Animals that are let outdoors to graze are a different story. But in your case, on a cold desert, those pigs are basically just free immediate food. The crops you plant are better off put directly into simple meals for your colonists.

[Khamvil]

Yeah I never tried to raise animals on a colony without grass yet.
I really needed the food so I had to kill them in the end. Now I'm doing good regarding food so I kinda regret it now reading all the comments.
The worst is right after killing them randy sent me like 200 berries.

[Rio]

I wouldn't since I sell human leather, but thats just me. Not that you can't butcher the bodies, sell the leather, feed them the human meat.

But raids early game can be rare, and small. Vs later when groups of 20-50 tribals come on down to deliever meat and leather to my door step. 5k human meat sells well, 2k human leather much, much better.

I don't really like pigs tbh, I'd want muffaloo, or something else that grows wool, maybe milk too for the cold.

[WarWise]

Something that took me quite a while to realize is that you can just plant hay in big fields and leave your animals there to eat it while its growing.
It still takes a lot of time to reproduce animals but I guess it could be worth it if you leave them to eat the grass instead of regular food.

[T-Bone Biggins]

Here is something that saves time and resources: make a 12x12 (at minimum) barn, and in the corner put a 1x2 table, 2 beds of any quality, and an end table between the ends of the beds. If you have a reliable power supply with batteries and wind/solar add a single light bulb in this corner. This will double as a 2-person prison which you can expand for animals or more prisoners as needed. Depending on climate I would add a heating/cooling unit to keep the barn/prison within comfortable temps for the animals (4-legged and 2-legged). You get 2 functions out of the same building and I haven't had a prisoner harm any animals yet, even during escape attempts. Keep a dirt floor so you are not cleaning after animals non-stop.

As to the question of animals, I'm always borderline owning too many. Be careful, I almost ate my colony out before. Always have excess food growing capability before taking on animals, and you can mix up kibble as a method to balance out the diet, you can feed excess meat to vegetarian animals or vice versa veggies to meat eaters. I keep a storage shed for potatoes and corn seperate from my main fridge so animals do not get it dirty. I grow mostly corn instead of hay, hay is a lot of trouble but highly space and time efficient for the animals that CAN eat it. I prefer just corn/taters so it can be backup food for the colonists and for my dogs.

As for pigs do not sweat it. They make decent meat with decent reproductive times, the leather is not much good for anything but selling. Because they reproduce fast you can make money selling extra pigs to nearby villages.You can a male-female pair of various animals to see what you like, always remember you only need one male to breed lots of females. My experience is chinchillas are too much hassle and each one takes up a single sleeping space for so little leather and meat. 'Pacas were my starter pack animal and can do a mediocre job, make lots of wool you can sell raw or craft, but they drive up colony wealth really bad once you get more than a few females reproducing. I had 2 dromedaries wander into camp, slow reproduction, makes some milk, makes camel hair slowly. Muffalos are harder to tame but are great pack animals, really tough, haul lots of weight, make their blue wool and milk slowly but more than dromedaries on both accounts, and you can use them as a good source of meat and decent hide once you get several breeding females. They make really good hide and wool for cold climates.

This is ancillary but dogs are not a bad investment either. Labs and huskies are both close in stats, inferior to timber wolves and wargs but I prefer them because they can eat rice, corn, and potatoes unlike the wolves and wargs. Much easier to care for by planting an extra corn field. The dogs can be sold when you have too many, and come in handy hauling stuff when you have a lot of them. Release training is their primary purpose, get a large sized pack and they can handle raids on their own sometimes with only a few dogs hurt or killed. It sucks having to put a wounded dog down, always keep at least a male and a few females away from fighting so you can have replacements if things go for the worse and get blown up or cooked in napalm.

[Myriad]

Originally posted by WarWise:

Something that took me quite a while to realize is that you can just plant hay in big fields and leave your animals there to eat it while its growing.
It still takes a lot of time to reproduce animals but I guess it could be worth it if you leave them to eat the grass instead of regular food.

Animals will eat any crop you plant, and it's really not efficient or advisable. If you wanted to do that you're better off planting dandelions, as it gives the most raw nutrition of any crop you can sow.

But if you're going that route, you should generally restrict animals from your crops and feed them the harvested vegetables instead. And hay is the best for that as it gives a good yield/time to grow, and also stacks at a whopping 200, so you can grow and store a lot of it.

Great for chickens. Big animals like cows would probably benefit more from cooking a simple meal from anything other than hay.

[Jacbo]

I just wanted to add that if you're trying to stretch food rations, use a nutrient paste dispenser. They use less ingredients than any other meal, you can't get food poisoning from them, you don't need a dedicated cook (especially useful for large colonies), and the debuff is only -4 which can be bypassed with a nice dining room, just throw in a statue and a few flowers in the dining room and it should be enough.

[M.K.]

In a desert, you don't really have any way to grow hay. So hay+raidermeat kibble is not available.
This means the pigs will be competing with your colonists for available food.
.
Also, pigs do not stand cold at all well. If the temperature goes significantly negative, they are not useful as trained haulers. Pigs also make sucky guard dogs.
.
I would not advise farming pigs in your location.
.
Huskies. You want huskies.
They haul better.
They actually *thrive* in the cold
They eat anything the pigs can eat and more.
They yield better fur.
They yield more meat.