feeding animals in pens

[MiguelCairo]

so in warm seasons they can graze, got it, but during winter, am i supposed to zone in some food then zone it out when winter ends? whats the best way to manage food through the seasons with less headache?

[Mringasa]

I just put storage in there for kibble, hay, or whatever you're feeding them. Put an animal flap up during the cold months when things don't grow. Put up a wall during the warm months.

Kibble is best since it doesn't deteriorate or rot, but if you have coolers to keep that section frozen, you can just leave whatever is in there without worry.

Could do the same with a fence in front of a building with your stored food as well. Just fence off the front of it when it's warm, and deconstruct the fence when it's cold.

[MiguelCairo]

that's genius!!! thank you. can all animals eat kibble?

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by MiguelCairo:

that's genius!!! thank you. can all animals eat kibble?

I don't know if the answer to that is yes, but so far every Animal I have raised has been able to eat it, which includes dogs, cats, elephants, camels, thrumbo, chickens, ducks, turkeys, alpacas, muffalo, megasloths, rhinos, boomalopes and uh...a few others I can't think of.

Given the list above, I think it's safe to say that at the very least almost all animals can eat kibble.
A google search says "all animals except wargs" which can only eat corpses and raw meat.

Right now I have 3 animal pens as well as 3 different "free roaming" animals that I raise. In order to make sure they all are fed, seeing as I use the same food type, I had to install a mod that lets you limit the "stack size" in a stockpile, otherwise my pawns would fill up a stack in one or two locations but the other animals would get nothing until those first locations got full.

Just something to consider if you are going to have multiple places where animals will need to be fed (only if you don't have so much surplus of food that you can keep all the locations full).

[Cannenses]

For larger colonies, yes, the kibble method works.

On a smaller colony, however, keep in mind kibble requires other ingredients to cook. So, in that sense, it’s a “waste”. Having animal haulier for hay into these pen zones will reduce workload for colonists and require less work (making kibbles).

I believe all animals can take kibble except wargs.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by Cannenses:

For larger colonies, yes, the kibble method works.

On a smaller colony, however, keep in mind kibble requires other ingredients to cook. So, in that sense, it’s a “waste”. Having animal haulier for hay into these pen zones will reduce workload for colonists and require less work (making kibbles).

I believe all animals can take kibble except wargs.

Bear in mind that kibble is a net gain of 25% on nutrition vs. the input, so it actually will feed more than what the raw inputs would. For that reason, I wouldn't call it a "waste".

You are right though that it has an additional labor cost, as well as the fact that it takes meat, so for vegetarian diet animals it could be considered a waste of meat IF you don't have a steady enough supply of meat to sustain it while having plenty of vegetable input.

I only feed it to my non-carnivores when I get into a "low food" situation, such as when I had the Long Night event for a year and then a drought for another year and half or so, so I don't totally disagree with you.
I just think that calling it a waste is a bit overstated, given the net nutrition gain. Not to mention it's a great way to get newer cooks some training without having to worry about them poisoning your people.

[Cannenses]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

Originally posted by Cannenses:

For larger colonies, yes, the kibble method works.

On a smaller colony, however, keep in mind kibble requires other ingredients to cook. So, in that sense, it’s a “waste”. Having animal haulier for hay into these pen zones will reduce workload for colonists and require less work (making kibbles).

I believe all animals can take kibble except wargs.

I only feed it to my non-carnivores when I get into a "low food" situation, such as when I had the Long Night event for a year and then a drought for another year and half or so, so I don't totally disagree with you.
I just think that calling it a waste is a bit overstated, given the net nutrition gain. Not to mention it's a great way to get newer cooks some training without having to worry about them poisoning your people.

I am probably overstating the point. So, “guilty as charged”, lol.

It’s just that finding the good balance for a small colony (10 pawns) is a heck of a challenge for me at the moment. I wince every time I see my handlers feeding my starved animals kibbles! ;-)

I suppose that’s where my story is at this moment … 😩

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by Cannenses:

I am probably overstating the point. So, “guilty as charged”, lol.

It’s just that finding the good balance for a small colony (10 pawns) is a heck of a challenge for me at the moment. I wince every time I see my handlers feeding my starved animals kibbles! ;-)

I suppose that’s where my story is at this moment … 😩

That's totally fair. The value of kibble as general animal feed is all dependent on your own resource availability.

If you are overall short on food, it's a great value. If you are short on labor and have plenty of food, on the other hand, it's a horrible value.

My story, and I why I defended the value of kibble is thus:
I use the Vanilla expanded Events mod and when I got hit with The Long Night event last a year in the early days (before I had access to Sun Lamps or hydroponics), Kibble saved the last remaining animals that I had.

No plants (including grass) grew for that entire year, I ran out of hay long before the sun rose again. I slaughtered literally ALL my animals except 1 male and 1 female of each species. and I researched sun lamps and hydroponics...but even so, my food supplies were stretched thin.
And therefore, those last few animals lived on kibble, to stretch the food just a little bit further.

I will never undervalue kibble again.

[dande48]

Here's a suggestion: Use a freezer with an animal flap entrance. Animal flaps function the same as regular doors, except they allow pen animals to enter and leave.

You could also use a regular door in addition to those animal flaps, which you can "hold open" during the winter months to allow animals to feed, and closed during the summer to encourage grazing. For some reason, animals won't often graze, if there is cut hay or kibble available.

[Pro file name]

greetings..
i know this post is old.. but for my particular question, i can not find any answers.. only vague youtube, reddit..
that being said.. i have a pen up.. with goats (the cross set to only goats).. have a barn for them to hide in (with the flap, AC and heater (cause, awww goats ), etc.. i have the pen set to grow Hay.. and the animals wind up starving for food..
NOW, do i...? click anything so no one harvests the Hay in the pen? do i have to click/set up something that requires i "make" them eat? i usually wind up grinding to kibble and going that route.. but for future knowledge i would like to know what i might be doing wrong!
thank you in advance!

[Jaggid Edje]

Hay is not efficient for grazing. When animals eat plants, the amount of nutrition they get is NOT the same as the amount you get for harvesting that plant. Hay grows too slow to be a good grazing source, but it is a GREAT supplement in terms of the nutrition provided if you actually grow and harvest it where they cannot graze.

If you are playing umodded, you should plant dandelions in the pen. Or just leave natural fauna if it's a grassy area, because grass is pretty great for grazing.

[Cannenses]

Don't grow hay INSIDE the pen because nutrition value of growing hay is less. Grow hay OUTSIDE and use it as fodder (ie. allow hay to grow completely, collect and place them in pen). Use omnivores to haul if you can.

[Pro file name]

thank you!

[Yxklyx]

You can make Kibble with Hay and Human meat. There's a small butchered human meat mood modifier, like between -1 and -5.

[glass zebra]

The mood modifier for butchering humans is -6 stacking up to 10 times with 75% on the butcherer and non-stacking -6 for the rest of the colony if you did not modify anything. It lasts for 6 days and is between -6 and -23.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

The mood modifier for butchering humans is -6 stacking up to 10 times with 75% on the butcherer and non-stacking -6 for the rest of the colony if you did not modify anything. It lasts for 6 days and is between -6 and -23.

These penalties are true for non-Ideology, but they're different with Ideology. The whole-colony penalty stacks with Ideology, and the severity depends on the ideoligion. This also means that an ideoligion may make a pawn not care at all about butchering humans.

Also, pawns with Cannibal, Bloodlust, or Psychopath never care about humans getting butchered, whether they're the ones doing it or someone else did it.