Should I be planting hay inside an animal pen?

[Shoddyfrog]

Animals eat it when it is close to fully grown. Do they get just as much food from doing that as they would if it was harvested by farmers and then fed to them?

Seemed like a good idea at first, thought it would save time having to harvest and haul it.
But now I am having second thoughts.

[The Blind One]

Fully grown haygrass gives 0.3 nutrition when eaten by an animal.
Harvesting hay from haygrass gives 18 hay worth 0.05 nutrition each for 0.9 nutrition.

So you're better off just harvesting it yourself and then feeding it to them as that's at least 3x as efficient purely nutrition wise.

[glass zebra]

If you want to plant something for them to eat alive, use dandelions. For hay see comment above.

[Shoddyfrog]

Thank you.

[Tekel1959]

Dandelions die in 5 days, and you work your tail off for pt much in return.
Let them eat some of the hay as it grows in the pen, harvest and replant the rest. No big loss. plus if you are feeding them they will eat surprisingly little of the planted stuff.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Tekel1959:

plus if you are feeding them they will eat surprisingly little of the planted stuff.

Pen animals always prefer to eat live plants over food stacks. They'll decimate your haygrass plants once they're grown enough to eat directly.

[glass zebra]

Haygrass nets much less nutrition as dandelions for its growtime as a plant. If you plan on your animals eating the plants, dandelions is better. Haygrass is just better in overall nutrition, if you actually harvest it. Letting animals eat life plants that you put effort in is never optimal, but if you choose to do so dandelions are the best option.

[Tekel1959]

/shrug I am harvesting and stacking 90% of my hay. Small patch too.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Haygrass nets much less nutrition as dandelions for its growtime as a plant. If you plan on your animals eating the plants, dandelions is better. Haygrass is just better in overall nutrition, if you actually harvest it. Letting animals eat life plants that you put effort in is never optimal, but if you choose to do so dandelions are the best option.

Yes it nets much less nutrition for growth time if eaten straight by an animal but you're missing the most crucial part here. Whether you plant haygrass or dandelions the sowtime is the same but with dandelions you'll be sowing at least 3.5x as many times to get the same nutrition when the plant matures.

Meaning that I could plant 2 more haygrass fields for every dandelion field you plant and out produce you in haygrass many times over. Hay can be stored while dandelions will die on you sooner than they can feed your animals, thus wasting more precious work.

Pawn work time is the most crucial part of the game and you want to have your pawns spend as little time sowing and doing labor that you may otherwise spend on other things. Dandelions aren't bad as an emergency backup for your animals to snack on or if your planter has waaay too much free time but if there is plenty of good grow zone space then you're better off just planting haygrass or better yet, smokeleaf/psychoid to get that drug money lol

[glass zebra]

Did you just read the first sentence of that post and ignored the rest? Dandelions are the best option if you choose to let animals eat raw plants. Letting animals eat raw plants that you actively sow is bad. Haygrass is better if you harvest it.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Did you just read the first sentence of that post and ignored the rest?

It seems I did ... I really should just go to bed lmao ... my bad bro ... you said exactly what was needed haha

[Raymond]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

Fully grown haygrass gives 0.3 nutrition when eaten by an animal.
Harvesting hay from haygrass gives 18 hay worth 0.05 nutrition each for 0.9 nutrition.

So you're better off just harvesting it yourself and then feeding it to them as that's at least 3x as efficient purely nutrition wise.

or just grow 3x more haygrass and save your colony labor force. Time your pawns spent harvesting grass and bring them to the pen could be use for other more important jobs.