Trying to find a good, sustainable food source for fine/lavish meals

[CoLS Firestar]

I tried caribou but they grow too slow.

Chickens seem promising because you don't have to slaughter them to get meat (eggs)

I fed them hay, but a post on the official forums seems to indicate never to use hay because there's too much work for too little benefit (grow, cut, haul)

In addition, chickens vomit when eating hay becaue it's "raw"

So... I tried making simple meals and feeding them those for a while. Except the chickens still vomit all over the floor. How? It's not from raw food. Is it because I'm feeding them a simple meal made from eggs?

[Grishnerf]

you should try out boars/pigs.
they dont need much hay, breed like crazy, can even haul items and rescue pawns too.
storing up hay in a barn is also not that hard, the hay lasts for over a whole year.
not much work needed.
they just need access to your barn and will feed themselves

[Sphinx of Black Quartz]

I'm not really sure what you're asking here; I think you're asking a number of related questions. So I'll try to answer them in turn. :)

Biome is the number one cause of hunger problems, which is why a lot of folks recommend temperate forest for your first embark. In a temperate forest, you should have a comfortably long growing season for stocking up on corn and potatoes; by the time winter rolls around, you should have a freezer or warehouse full of food, and you can supplement that by hunting.

Livestock farming can be valuable in the long-term, but it can also be a trap — you'll need a fairly complex infrastructure to keep those chickens, caribou, or muffalo fed. I recommend establishing a comfortable food supply before you attempt any serious ranching. Chickens are fast breeders and produce lots of eggs, but given the labor involved I'm not sure they're a net plus to your food supply; you'll have to do a LOT of growing and hauling.

Also, no matter what kind of livestock you have, don't hesitate to slaughter them if food problems are lurking on the horizon. It's better to turn your critters into tasty tasty muffalo burgers at the beginning of a long, lean winter than at the end when they've already eaten up your food reserves.

Chickens are quite happy eating hay. Check their health tabs to make sure they don't have food poisoning or some other issue. It's possible one of your cooks made a bad batch of meals.

Finally, if you're accustomed to Dorf Fortress, you may find meals quality doesn't work quite as you expect. In DF more complicated meals are good because a higher-quality meal gives a mood bonus, and because they have useful secondary effects from including multiple ingredients. Notably, more ingredients means a better chance to include something a dorf particularly likes; and dorfs get bored and angry at eating the same thing over and over. A dining hall packed with bored, angry, heavily armed dorfs is a terrifying prospect.

However, that doesn't entirely transfer to RimWorld. Simple meals and fine meals both require a total of 10 units of food to create, and provide about the same level of nutrition; the big difference is fine meals require 5 meat and 5 veg (whereas simple meals can be 10 of anything, in any combination), require at least Cooking 6 to produce, and give a flat +5 mood bonus. If you have a reasonably skilled cook and good supplies of both meat and non-meat foods, there's really no reason not to make fine meals and get an ongoing +5 to mood... but on the other hand, if food resources are limited, it won't hurt you to subsist on simple meals. Collies, unlike dorfs, are happy eating nothing but cooked potatoes for the rest of their natural lives. (And if you're in an area where food is scarce or growing seasons are short, an indoor potato farm can be a lifesaver.)

Lavish meals, on the other hand, are gratuitous wastes of food — they give about the same amount of nutrition as a fine or simple meal, but require double the ingredients of a fine meal: 10 meat and 10 non-meat. It isn't a bad idea to stockpile some fine meals, forbid the stacks, and save them for mood-management at some point in the future... but don't try feeding your collies on lavish meals all the time unless you have a pile of food in your freezer and a very secure food production chain.

I hope that helps, and good luck!

[CoLS Firestar]

Thank you.

[dr46onfusion]

Chickens are vegetarians, so obviously they only eat vegetables like potato, corn, rice, or berries.

The issue with your 'raw' food is that foods like simple/fine/lavish are 'processed' foods, and they can't handle those, as they are herbivours, and can't eat something that 'may' contain meat (a simple meal is a entity that consist of meat and/or vegetable, so they can't eat it if it allows meat to get mixed in).

The game is programmed in that sort of perception.

Simple meal = (Meat +/- Vegetable) = Chickens can't eat it because it 'may' contain meat.

The reason why they can't eat hay is due to it not being processed for them, you might want to try kibble, but they might still react in the same manner.

This means raw crops that can be eaten well, like berries is your best bet to feed them.