Lone Oak Farm and Season Mod - some questions

[Limmin]

Hello FS'ers! I've started a new game on the unbelievable Lone Oak Farm map, and am using Seasons mod. I've not got much experience with this mod, and the LO map also adds some interesting twists, so I'm trying to separate out what's going on.

Let me present my findings in chronological order, along with questions. (Internet and forum searches, including on the realismus web site, did not reveal the answers. Thanks for your help!)

1. First, I had purchased 8 cows, but did so before adding seasons mod. I had harvested the one already-growing field, and there was a small amount of straw available. Once I added seasons mod, it reset all growth to its earliest state, including grass, and started me out at early spring, as usual.

2. So, the cows only got to have water and straw their first night. Their health was at 70%. During the night one cow died. (!)

3. Seeing that no grass would grow for a few more days, I sold the cows back, taking a ~$15k loss. This is no big deal; I had found all the golden nuggets on the map and had plenty of money.

4. When the grass was finally harvestable on day 4 of spring, I partly mowed the large field to the NW of the farm, field 35, and created one grass bale, plus several hay bales. After delivering one bale each of these foods to the trough, I bought 4 cows. Note, I have the "table manners" mod, so cleanliness (as FS measures it) is always at 100%

5. Their health quickly fell to 75%, despite their having two of their favorite food types available. At this point, the only thing missing is "power food." I won't have straw for a long time, not until my barley is harvested, several "days" from now, so power food isn't available for a while.

6. In Lone Oak, manure is not automatically moved to the bunker, you have to do this yourself. I guessed that the manure that was accumulating in the barn, where the food is, could be causing this health drop. So I shoveled 95% of it out with my front loader and dropped the manure into the bunker.

7. But...the cow health was now at 74%. With health under 80%, apparently the cows don't reproduce and might die.

Question 1: Does the manure accumulation in Lone Oak farm barn affect cow health? I am starting to suspect that it doesn't, but can't tell yet.

Question 2: What increases cow health? Must I give them power food?

Question 3: If cleanliness is at 100% and they have all food types available (and their feeding area isn't full of manure), is there anything else that can bring down cow health?

Thanks!

[Sandhill]

1. I don't know Lone Oak.
2. A complete diet including power food is necessary, and time. Increases in animal health happen quite slowly in Seasons.
3. No, as long as they have all foods and water and straw for bedding you have done all that you can.

You should probably read through the ingame Help section that is added for Seasons and also check the manual,

https://www.realismusmodding.com/mods/seasons/manual/

Good luck!

[AdrianBrown]

What I know about animal health is that it does not go up on the spot, it takes time. So your animal health now might be 74% but it will slowly go up over the year.
Personally I have never reached 100%, the highest I've reached is 89% i think, and that is with providing everything for the cows, even grass.

I am yet to try without powerfood, but will do this season, just feeding them water, straw and silage. So I might get back to you on that one.

[Limmin]

Thanks folks! I'm leaning toward getting the necessaries for producing powerfood, since apparently grass isn't available for long (or at all, during winter) in Seasons mod.

I'll watch and see if I can't get the cows more healthy by giving them all the food types they could desire. (I guess I should lay off the electric prod, eh?)

As for the manure, if it doesn't hurt them, then sort of like chicken egg gathering, I might just leave it for a while and do it only sporadically...

[aristoprat]

Originally posted by Limmin:

Thanks folks! I'm leaning toward getting the necessaries for producing powerfood, since apparently grass isn't available for long (or at all, during winter) in Seasons mod.

You are correct, come winter the grass dies back and is unavailable until a few days into spring. You can't stockpile grass bales as they rot after two days so, on the face of it, you just have to put up with reduced productivity in winter.

I have not tried this but I believe grass in a container (e.g. tipper or loading wagon) does not rot. It may not rot in the storage placable. My solution is to use the mod that allows you to feed cows hay in place of grass, this is what they eat IRL so it's not a "cheat" like storing in a wagon.

[AdrianBrown]

Originally posted by aristoprat:

Originally posted by Limmin:

I have not tried this but I believe grass in a container (e.g. tipper or loading wagon) does not rot.

Grass and hay does indeed rot when stored in a forage wagon.
Bales overall rot when out in the open but under a roof with collision they don't.
I've kept grass bales under a roof on Loan Oak, and they did not rot.

[Sandhill]

From the Seasons manual,
"Grass bales will gradually rot and disappear after two days, unless they are wrapped so that they become silage bales. " No mention is made of "unless they are under a roof." Maybe Lone Oak has an exception built in?

Originally posted by aristoprat:

You can't stockpile grass bales as they rot after two days so, on the face of it, you just have to put up with reduced productivity in winter.

My solution is to use the mod that allows you to feed cows hay in place of grass, this is what they eat IRL so it's not a "cheat" like storing in a wagon.

But the idea is that IRL the milk production goes down when the cows are not on pasture and have to eat just hay, so if you use a mod that makes hay=grass and get no production decrease it might not be a "cheat" but it does circumvent a restriction built into the game.

[Limmin]

Interestingly, I filled up the cows' trough with grass long ago and they're hardly eating it. So...dunno what will happen with that grass.

[Moose]

I play LO map and only use Seasons. I have 89 cows right now.

I thnk your error was feeding the grass in bales. To my knowledge Seasons and LO does not allow that. You need to cut the grass, windrow it (you start with a windrower), and pick it up with a scooper wagon (not provided.) The yellow one is cheapest and will serve a long itme. About $35,000 I think. Borrow the money if you spent your nugget money already.

You can also make hay right from the start as you are given a tedder. The cows like hay more than grass.

You don't need straw right away to keep them alive. You need straw to make manure, but you don't need manure for the first year, or ever if you don't mind buying fertilizer.

The manure in the cow barn can be scooped up with a skid loader and shovel, but you will tire of this quickly. You're going to want to build a conyeyor belt system as soon as possible. The manure always collects at the same spot, so once you have the belts leading out the open side door, you can park a tipper under the last belt and have it dump automatically. You can fill the silo, or take it to be sold over at the manure merchant. I get about $500 a load for the smallest tipper size.

I have dedicated the field right behind he house to be all grass, all the time. You get two cuttings a year if you d/l the Oregon weather overlay for Seasons and install it. Rarely snows, and the weather is accurate for where LO is in real life. I make one cutting into hay and fill a modded hayloft building ($90,000) It also holds straw. I set it down right outside the big side door to the barn. You're going to be making a LOT of trips once you have more than about 30 cows. The second cutting I do half grass, and make a huge pile in the cow pasture to get me through the winter. (skid loader to fill the back pasture trough with grass.) The other half I make silage, some for TMR, the rest to sell in bales.

Once I got some of the big, rectangular fields to use for grain, I went to all grass on the three starting fields just so I don't have to plow and seed the odd shapes every year. I got equipment (the Kuhn DLC) to go into heavy production hay and silage bales, and sell them to make working capital to plant the grain. The cow income also provides profit to bridge the grain sale dates. Soybeans don't max until the following summer, for example, so there's a lot of days to get by without cashflow if you don't have animals. I have not done anything with forestry as yet.

[Sandhill]

Originally posted by Limmin:

Interestingly, I filled up the cows' trough with grass long ago and they're hardly eating it. So...dunno what will happen with that grass.

They mostly eat pasture grass in the spring, summer and fall so you don't need an awful lot then. Just tonight realized that if you bale and wrap grass (to become silage) on the last day of fall, since Seasons takes a transition to ferment grass to silage, it's still grass and available (yes you can feed grass in bales) for the first two days plus of winter if you're playing 9 day seasons, which gets you at least a little bit ahead...

"The cows like hay more than grass."
They like the combination of power food and grass best. Lacking grass, just feeding power food is best. If you feed sufficient power food they will never get low on hay, and thus should never need to be fed hay. Sheep in the winter live on hay.

Farm on

[aristoprat]

Originally posted by Sandhill:

But the idea is that IRL the milk production goes down when the cows are not on pasture and have to eat just hay, so if you use a mod that makes hay=grass and get no production decrease it might not be a "cheat" but it does circumvent a restriction built into the game.

Fair point, I now considerate this a "cheat". I am not going to criticise Seasons as it is a fantastic mod but I think there could be a better way of doing this. By removing the option of grass in winter there is one less job to do in a quiet time of year. I am going to continue "cheating" to give myself something to do.

[Moose]

I will try grass bales, but I thought the Seasons mod prevented anything from being fed in bales directly. I "diassemble" straw and silage, and hay bales with the mixer wagon, but it won't take any form of grass. I also only feed grass in the pasture trough, although the intererior trough will take loose grass that is cleaned up.

Mixed ration is best, yes, but the OP is starting out and the mixer is expensive. With 8 cows he's still in bootstrap mode.

I also find it a lot easier, with the hayloft building, to tipper a load of hay out of the building (a vertical drop loading), and just dump it into the trough with no mixing. In the mixer I use one square silage bale, but then dump hay and straw on the ground out of the hayloft and use the vacuum snout to get the ratio right. It takes over three full loads of TMR now to feed 90 cows. It's a lot of work, so I fill with "fast hay" from the loft if I'm in a hurry. They'll never die on just hay, but milk production won't max out.

With the Oregon overlay I can get grass piles big enough in the pasture to get through the winter. Snow is the great killer of grass piles. Rain reduces them, but a big enough pile will make it.

In spring, summer, and fall they might eat grass from the pasture--the graphic shows this--but the grass in the trough still plummets every day. A full trough with 90 cows lasts about two days, even in summer.

[Moose]

I did make some grass bales and test hem directly into the pasture trough out back, and lo and behold they do load that way. Learn something every day. I have a placeable bale storage building that has grass bale slots, but I never filled that portion of the capacity since I didn't know how to disassemble grass bales. Now I can alter my approach, and maybe not make huge piles that I have to load into the trough one bucket at a time.

[Limmin]

Great info folks, many thanks!