Full Silo. Cows Wont Eat.

[Teralitha]

Why wont my cows eat the hay? I also let them out to eat grass. I cant tell if they eat it. Also they never gain any hearts. When I click on them, they always have zero hearts, and are "looking thin." Like they have never eaten ever. When I check my silo, no hay has ever been eaten from it. Its always full.
I sometimes see a heart over them when I click on them. But usually its an angry disgruntled chat bubble, and still no hearts in the bar.

I do not understand what the problem is.

[I Kinda Fail]

There's a shelf in the barn, and a hopper that should be overflowing with hay. You click the hopper to withdraw hay from it, then put it on the shelf, and it'll be gone the next morning. Same with a coop. The tier 3 barn has an auto-feeder, the the barn and big barn require you manually feed the cows.

If they're outside, they'll only eat grass (meaning the tall grass, not the bushes that give fiber, and not the decorative grass - the kind that makes hay) if it's within a certain amount of tiles from the barn. They SHOULD feed themselves if it's within 10-15 squares of the barn, but loading up the shelf is the easiest way to do it.

Handy tip, you can empty out the full silo via the barn, and put the extra hay in a chest, so that when winter comes you'll have a surplus.

Your animals will never starve, but they're kind of stupid. You CAN lock them out of the barn and potentially lose them to wolves, but you'd have to actively be trying to kill them for that to happen.

[Teralitha]

Wolves? Never seen wolves. Figured out the issue. I didnt realize I was supposed to move the hay to the trough. Even though i saw them eat grass occasiobnally, they still acted like they were not fed. Only until i was placing hay in the trough did they stop looking thin. So eating grass apparently doesnt count for eating.

[I Kinda Fail]

It does count, but I think not until the next day. Like if they eat on Tuesday, then on Wednesday they would produce milk, but if you didn't feed them Wednesday, then on Thursday there would be no milk.

There's no wolves in the game, just a chat message saying one of your animals didn't survive the night if you lock them out of the barn. It's a pretty rare occurrence.

[{ Filet }]

Originally posted by red255:

its actually linus eating your cows at night.

Linus is the resident Chupacabra drawing the essence out of the residents' livestock.