Pens and Food

[Stephen of Blois]

I've created a pen that includes some grass. When I click on the pen marker it tells me nutrition growth is equal to 0. I assumed the grass would give me some growth. I've changed the size of the pen a couple of times, trying to get more growth, but it didn't help.

How do you feed your animals in a pen?

[Astasia]

The pen marker doesn't look at current plants/food in the pen, it looks at biome density and soil fertility to create an average expected amount of natural nutrition growth. It's always going to say 0 nutrition in like an extreme desert or very small pen. How you typically feed animals in such a biome is to grow haygrass outside of the pen, harvest it, then haul the hay onto a shelf inside the pen for animals to eat. That is the most efficient way to feed animals without mods, if they can't graze naturally.

[hardy_conrad]

On the subject of the pen marker, is it displaying food stats a recent thing? I only just noticed it like yesterday and was wondering if I simply hadn't been paying attention until now.

[Astasia]

It has displayed grazing nutrition in the pen since 1.3 released, however I think the way it's displayed was changed more recently, maybe the tooltip when placing it in build mode is different. Not sure, when I double checked it earlier it did look different to me, but it's been a while since I used one for grazing animals.

[Stephen of Blois]

Originally posted by Astasia:

The pen marker doesn't look at current plants/food in the pen, it looks at biome density and soil fertility to create an average expected amount of natural nutrition growth. It's always going to say 0 nutrition in like an extreme desert or very small pen. How you typically feed animals in such a biome is to grow haygrass outside of the pen, harvest it, then haul the hay onto a shelf inside the pen for animals to eat. That is the most efficient way to feed animals without mods, if they can't graze naturally.

Thank you. I really appreciate it.