Auto Feeders: any good?

[BustedHipGaming]

I put one on a 3x3 patch of cows, but I am not sure I understand the benefit. Now instead of running over to feed the cows every 15 mins or so, I have to run over and stock the feeder every 15 mins or so, and it's expensive. What am I missing?

[Adesanya]

Good question. I don't understand them .... ergo I don't use them LOL

[BustedHipGaming]

Originally posted by indie.author.extraordinaire:

Good question. I don't understand them .... ergo I don't use them LOL

I hope someone will explain to me how to use them effectively

[Snowy Sprout]

One feeder will feed 12 animals for 15 minutes. The cost of the feeder is determined by the cost of your animal's feed. If you have more or less animals than 12, it gets averaged out.

A feeder isn't really needed if you're running farm hands, who will keep your animals fed. But farmhands don't work if you're not there, while feeders do.

The complication is that every animal has different cost for feed, time till it needs feeding, and time till harvest.

So let's say you have 12 New Hampshire chickens, that already happen to need feeding every 15 minutes, at a cost of 130g per chicken, and harvest once per hour at a value of 584g per chicken. You put four feeders around those 12 chickens. Every time you fill one up it costs 1560g (which is 12x130). So you spend 6240g total (4x1560). Then you get to ignore them for a full hour, when they come ready to harvest. And you get to collect 7008g (584x12). So you made a profit of 768g total.

Feeders don't give you more profit per chicken or anything. They just mean you can turn your computer off for an hour and come back to find the harvest waiting for you, instead of hovering over it every 15 minutes to feed them more.

[Huillam]

Feeders add two cycles of food to a given animal: for example it gives one hour worth of food to the jersey cow.
By filling the feeder and adding food on the ground you can simply come back to harvest and repeat every 90mn instead of adding food every 30 (but that's true for that animal because it needs to be fed three times per harvest: some require more).


As for the 15mn mark, it's the time before you can add food to your feeder but it doesn't mean it's empty. For the jersey cow it would be half empty; for the Akhal-Teke Horse (fed every 6 hours) it would still be 96% full.

[TheOrigin]

Originally posted by Snowy Sprout:

But farmhands don't work if you're not there, while feeders do.

What do you mean? If i am anywhere in my farm, all my farmhands work no matter where i am located at... Or do you mean "offline"?

[YuffieG]

Basically, if you want your farmhands to work you have to be online. If you're offline then they won't work at all. So say you need to afk for an hour or two and want your farmhands to continue working for you during that time, you would need to leave the game running whilst you're afk.