Animal food management

[Emnasia]

I've searched Google and YouTube quite a while to find a solution suitable for me when it comes down to feeding my animals. I want all sorts of animals to be in seperate barns, but then you'll have to be able to feed them all. Now this is my situation: https://prnt.sc/a9gBWFDlO9WA I put down stockpiles and animal feeders to experiment, but it's not really working as it should be. Is my idea even doable? As you might know it's not possible to set a certain amount for each stockpile, same goes for the animal feeders. I'm starting to second guess my whole idea

Is this doable? Does anyone know how to manage this? Or should I just work with zones (is that even still possible with pen animals?)

[glass zebra]

You can just make small storages with hay in each barn. That might trigger a lot of running to fill them up, but it's doable.

[brian_va]

Originally posted by Emnasia NL:

IAs you might know it's not possible to set a certain amount for each stockpile, same goes for the animal feeders.

if you are open to mods, satisfied storage will allow this, for the stockpiles at least. possibly the feeders as well, never used them before.

otherwise, like glass zebra said, small stockpiles. maybe a stockpile barn to hold the bulk thats off limit to the animals to help reduce the workload.

[Astasia]

It's not working in your screen for probably a couple reasons, the main reason is it looks like you don't have enough hauling happening. You have wood laying all over the place on the ground and on your shelves. Don't expect food to start ending up in the right locations until most of everything else in your base is cleaned up. Second might be a priority issue on the stockpiles, looks like you have 2 tile stockpiles set for food, if they are a higher priority than your other stockpiles then that's probably going to work fine as long as you don't have a mod increasing stack sizes and grow enough food to fill those few tiles.

Setting a couple tiles or a shelf in an animal area to hold hay will absolutely work and is something I often do when grazing isn't an option.

[qualified turtle ship]

half-solution answer is to connect the barns via animal flaps to a common 'feeding' pasture (pen marker) where the food is stockpiled. 1/2 solution bc in this method (via sleeping spots) you can force them all to sleep in separate barns, but during the day time they'd be free to roam in the wrong barns.

[Emnasia]

Thanks everyone for thinking with me

First: what do you mean with a small stockpile? I'd think of a stockpile with 1 or 2 tiles. But how do I make sure every stockpile gets some food in it. I do use Stack XXL, I set Foods to Not changed. That'd be 200 each stock right?

Second: I do use quite some mods, but I started this game already. I'll definitly use Satisfied storage and greenhouses in the future. I don't want to give this save up

Third: Ye, hauling is not really going as it should be. I do need colonists to do some dumb labor. I should trade with factions I think for slaves or something. My dogs are also not constantly hauling for some reason

Fourth: I did set the stockpiles to Preferred/Important. It comes down to the hauling indeed. But I'm mostly afraid it gets hauled to only one stockpile and the others are forgotton

I think I have to go with the solution of tearfang for now, at least until the hauling is set up properly

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Emnasia NL:

what do you mean with a small stockpile? I'd think of a stockpile with 1 or 2 tiles. But how do I make sure every stockpile gets some food in it. I do use Stack XXL, I set Foods to Not changed. That'd be 200 each stock right?

Depends on how many animals you have, in your case 1 tile would probably work for now, upped to 2 later if you let them breed enough, or just start with a shelf to make it easy. Default max for hay is 200 yes. You get hay in all stockpiles evenly by making sure you have enough of it. If you have 4 pens with shelves in each, 2 stacks of 200 hay in each, that's 1600 hay total to fill all shelves, so just make sure you try to keep more than 1600 hay at all times. If that seems like too much for your stage of the game use 1 tile stockpiles instead of shelves for now to halve it. That looks like boreal forest so you will probably need a few thousand by winter anyway.

[glass zebra]

3. Dogs do not haul constantly. They are not as effective as colonists at hauling and are not meant to replace them 1 by 1, but you can just breed them quickly and a handful or two can often take care of most hauling needs. One thing to increase hauling efficient is often to reduce hauling needs and many micro storage tiles do increase that instead.

4. If you caught up with hauling needs and have surplus hay, all stockpiles there should be filled up until max. It does not matter how many stockpiles are marked as preferred as long as there is a lower priority stockpile which still has stuff to fill them.

Having one hay storage is indeed a lot more efficient than several spread ones.