What is going on with Hay?

[Its Almost Harvesting Season]

I can't figure this out. I have read in numerous topics posted here that your animals will eat kibble and hay, and that you can also grow hay or crops in a pen to feed the animals. Is this still correct?

I have hay, harvested and sitting in storage and nobody is doing anything with it. The animals don't quite have enough grazing room in their current pens but my pawns won't feed them hay. I've tried putting a storage zone in the pens which only accepts hay, but right-clicking on hay to get it hauled there tells me I there's no accessible storage zones for it.

Is it solely used to make kibble or something now?

[Swordmouse]

Yep, hay is still a valid food for herbivores.

Make sure the "new" hay container is set to a higher priority than the one it's currently in, otherwise it won't be used until the existing storage fills up.

And as a side bit, since you mentioned growing crops IN the pen for the animals to graze on - dandelions are vastly superior to hay in that regard, though hay remains the go-to for winter feeding/kibble production.

[whatamidoing]

Do not sow crops (including haygrass) in a pen. The animals will eat it but the nutrition compared to harvesting it is awful. Sowing dandelions in the pen is decent, if time-consuming, but growing haygrass outside and hauling the harvested hay in is better.
I'm guessing you didn't set the priority of the stockpile in your pen higher than the stockpile your hay is normally in.

[brian_va]

you need the grazing lands mod if you want to plant crops for them to eat without having to keep running over to replant stuff.

[HunterSilver]

Colonists will only manually feed animals that are downed by malnutrition, which is honestly fine as long as you're not trying to breed animals, as this will cause a miscarriage.

Just set the storage inside of the pens to accept hay and then increase the priority above other storage areas and your colonists automatically keep it filled.

I'd strongly recommend against sowing in an animal pen. You get less nutrition, your farmers have to perform more work, and more time is wasted traveling back and forth as your farmers go to replant 1 or 2 tiles at a time every time your animals eat. It's absolutely abysmal. Even without labor and travel time included, animals get less nutrition by eating a sown plant than they do from eating hay.

[Lorax]

You need to make the zone in the pen have a higher priority then wherever you are already storing the hay. Then they will take it out of the old area and put it in the new.

[Egro]

plop down a shelf -> only allow hay -> profits.

[Its Almost Harvesting Season]

Yea storage priorities shouldn't be an issue. Feels a bit like everyone missed the part where I mentioned this following message.[cdn.discordapp.com]

Meanwhile, in my pen what is not empty, accessible, or configured about this?[cdn.discordapp.com]

Also going to add, there is literally no other storage zones that will accept hay besides this one at present so no, nothing is set to a higher priority.

[Jaasrg]

Tick "allow fresh" on.

[whatamidoing]

You have it set to not allow rotten or fresh food. That stockpile accepts nothing.

[Its Almost Harvesting Season]

Jesus christ that would explain it lmao.

That is meant to be copy+pasted from my food storage with only the other foods unticked... How the hell I clicked both of those I've no idea, fresh should of been ticked for certain.

Well, thanks, my herbivores are finally eating something other than grazed grass.