how should i set up animal feeding?

[oChalko]

they usually die of starvation, sometimes ill have them eat from my farm but i dont like letting my animals into freezer

[HunterSilver]

Depends on the animal. For small ranches you can setup an enclosed grazing area. I find at default rates, ~150 tiles of dirt growing grass fulfills 1 nutrient of consumption by ruminants. For larger herds or for feeding animals in the winter it often becomes necessary to produce food just for your animal.

I strongly recommend setting up a dedicated barn area for storing hay/simple meals/kibble. Keeping animals in the barn generally keeps them safe from raids, makes collecting resources from them quick and easy, reduces travel time to and from your animals and their products, and prevents resources from decaying in the open. You can also eliminate filth accumulation by not placing floors. I'd recommend setting up a separate animal hospital with animal beds that is floored for the room cleanliness rate.

At this point you just grow hay or rice to produce food for them. If your animals have a hunger rate greater than or equal to 1.3 then you want to feed them simple meals. I realize nutrient paste is more work efficient but it's also a Huge hassle and has to be done manually, so I don't consider that a real option. For everything else, kibble tends to be the most efficient way to feed them. If you lack meat or animal products to make kibble with, everything except for wargs can eat simple meals. Setup a dedicated stockpile where workers will drop off simple meal stacks and your animals will eat them. In general you don't need to freeze them, your animals will eat freshly made meals well before they rot. You only need 1 or 2 tiles of meal/kibble storage to keep even a large barn well fed.

For wargs you need corpses and raw meat. They're kind of a huge hassle to deal with under normal circumstances, so for them I'd recommend a meat locker where you store raider corpses for them to eat. This also works for any other carnivore and most other omnivores.

[Pyrrhus]

Mine for example, 12x12 freezer of just hay right next to 12x12 barn, create 4x4 storage zone for hay in barn, set it to highest priority. Your haulers would bring food from freezer to barn. I have robotic haulers and vacuums, they do their jobs. Be sure you set animal zone for your assigned animals to barn.

[Melonarche]

You can set animal foods too ?
Didn't know it, thanks.

[HunterSilver]

Originally posted by Melonarche:

You can set animal foods too ?
Didn't know it, thanks.

You cannot. If they're set to stay in a specified zone you create, they will only eat food you put in that zone. Using that you can control what they eat.

[Hoki]

first off: it depends what kinda animals you are trying to feed.

herbivores can be handled easily by having a dedicated room for their food AND having them eat live plants in the places you keep them. to fill up the food you gotta play around with the priority of this area and the freezer.

if you use kibble you can use the same approach for all animals that eat it. keeping the storage as small as you need and store unneeded kibble close to the butcher can help you keep hauling time short.

in case of wargs or other pure carnivores you either need to have access to a freezer for the meat they are allowed to eat or use a pawn for hauling to keep a certain amount of meat outside the freezer so as little as possible rots away.
if you're not against using mods - rim fridge can take care of not wasting any meat. just put down 2 of them and keep them on high priority to feed the carnivores.

[an entire Roman legion]

let me just quickly hijack this thread with a new question: How do you feed wargs on caravan treks lasting for multiple days?

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Albob:

let me just quickly hijack this thread with a new question: How do you feed wargs on caravan treks lasting for multiple days?

You don't. You can only feed them for the timespan that meat or corpses you carry with you last before rotting. It's easier farther north and during the winter since the cold weather will refrigerate or freeze the meat, but otherwise you either only take them on short trips, take them on medium length trips and hope they don't completely starve to death before you can feed them, or hope that along the way you get ambushed by some fresh meat raiders.

[an entire Roman legion]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Originally posted by Albob:

let me just quickly hijack this thread with a new question: How do you feed wargs on caravan treks lasting for multiple days?

You don't. You can only feed them for the timespan that meat or corpses you carry with you last before rotting. It's easier farther north and during the winter since the cold weather will refrigerate or freeze the meat, but otherwise you either only take them on short trips, take them on medium length trips and hope they don't completely starve to death before you can feed them, or hope that along the way you get ambushed by some fresh meat raiders.

damn what a shame, I wanted to zerg-rush an enemy-base with my warg-army but I don't have enough pawns x)

oh well, eternal defenders is their purpose then ^^

[Astasia]

For Wargs you can setup temporary colonies along the way to do some hunting for more meat. The Setup Camp mod is ideal for this as you don't end up with abandoned colonies all over your map.

Easier to just use a shuttle, pods, or teleports though.