OK -- so is hay or rice better for feeding livestock?

[rolypolyman]

I'm not clear on whether hay or rice is more efficient for feeding animals like horses and boomalopes. If you were wintering over and you had a single 11x11 room with a grow light just for animal feed, would you get better efficiency growing rice or growing hay, given the typical yield per square per day?

Obviously rice is more versatile since it can be used for human food, but just ignore that for now, and I do know about nutrient paste but that's extra steps.

[The Blind One]

Hay has higher nutritional value for the labor / land input but can't be eaten by humans. You should always feed hay to your animals instead of rice (or other human food) if you have too give them something to eat. (best option is to just let them graze if possible)

Also consider making "Kibble" for your carnivore animals (except wargs) since it allows you to combine hay with meat to make it. (made at butchery table)

You can technically feed kibble to your colonists too ... just so you know if you're in a pinch and on the break of starvation ... it's great to feed your prisoners with though

[CloudSeeker]

Just go with haygrass. It is way better. Rice is labor intensive for not that much yield. If you grow rice for fed, you might as well just grow corn instead.

[Burki from Turki]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

You can technically feed kibble to your colonists too ... just so you know if you're in a pinch and on the break of starvation ... it's great to feed your prisoners with though :lunar2019crylaughingpig:

I think prisoners commit suicide if they are unhappy for too long unless it is a modded feature i didnt realise

[null]

I would go with rice because you cannot use hay on human and food shouldn't be restricted to one type of animal I think (call it a preference)

[Ducks on Fire]

Originally posted by Burki from Turki:

Originally posted by The Blind One:

You can technically feed kibble to your colonists too ... just so you know if you're in a pinch and on the break of starvation ... it's great to feed your prisoners with though :lunar2019crylaughingpig:

I think prisoners commit suicide if they are unhappy for too long unless it is a modded feature i didnt realise

That's definitely a mod.

[The Blind One]

Originally posted by null:

I would go with rice because you cannot use hay on human and food shouldn't be restricted to one type of animal I think (call it a preference)

You're way better off producing hay for animals than if you were to produce rice for both humans and animals. It's really not cost-effective. It might be versatile but it's not efficient in the slightest. Hay has ~50% nutrition bonus efficiency compared to human food.

[Security Cam #7]

Hay without a question. It requires way less labor time and provides more nutrition for your animals than rice ever will. It has the HIGHEST yield per day out of every single other plant per tile without taking hydroponics into account, as hay cannot be planted there.

Rice can be planted in hydroponics, and only then it surpasses the yield per day of haygrass, but is even more labor intensive and very costly to set up on an animal feeding scale.

[Sovereign Star]

Strawberry is more superior, also you can make kibble with any veggie as long as you have meat.

[whatamidoing]

Originally posted by Sovereign Star:

Strawberry is more superior, also you can make kibble with any veggie as long as you have meat.

No, berries are worse. Their only advantage is that they can be eaten raw without a mood hit (but still the raw food food poisoning chance).

[SievertChaser]

Nutrient paste, made from rice. It has a huge nutrition value multiplier.

Assuming you have the Vanilla Expanded mod that offers an output building which drops meals in a form animals can interact with, of course. Otherwise it's a huge bother.

[sooshon]

Kibble made from hay + human meat \ insect meat

[Ittrix]

Hay is better, but, since hay can't be placed in hydroponics it can't be planted everywhere.

[The Yeen Queen]

Just be aware: Do not grow the haygrass INSIDE the pen. When grazed, it has a MUCH worse nutritional value. If you want to grow something in the pen ( some biomes, the natural grass/etc growth isn't enough to keep the livestock fed ), plant dandelions. The plant and grow fast, have great grazing nutrition, and have a chance of spreading on their own to replenish eaten patches.

[Astasia]

Yield per day per tile:

Normal soil:
Hay - 1.39
Rice - 1.08

Fertile Soil:
Hay - 1.73
Rice - 1.52

Hydroponics:
Hay - NA
Rice - 3.03

Work per tile is a factor at lower plant skills, rice needs to be harvested/sown twice as often and if this takes your grower a while it may not be efficient depending on what else you need them doing. At high plant skills a grower can zip through a field harvesting and planting in a trivial amount of time. Just growing rice is viable if you don't want to balance multiple food sources for your colony, that's what I tend to do. If you are already using a sun lamp then throwing down some hydroponics and growing rice in there is vastly superior to anything else without using that much more power.

[null]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

Originally posted by null:

I would go with rice because you cannot use hay on human and food shouldn't be restricted to one type of animal I think (call it a preference)

You're way better off producing hay for animals than if you were to produce rice for both humans and animals. It's really not cost-effective. It might be versatile but it's not efficient in the slightest. Hay has ~50% nutrition bonus efficiency compared to human food.

The question was between rice and hay so I felt the choice between the two; hay or rice. On a personal note I myself use rice all the time. I like the fact it can remain in storage for a sufficient period of time without much refrigeration. I use kibble for animal. I make it from rice and animal meat.