food for animals too expensive

[Lasse1305]

I have a problem with my franchise zoos. I cant seem to make money because I have to spend a lot on animal food (like 10000) which makes me loose money. despite having good animals and a good income my zoo doesn't make profit... does anyone have an idea?

[BumpInTheNight]

The type of animal drastically influences how much their food costs. You probably have to have a more balanced zoo, not just focusing on big-ticket animals that cost a fortune to maintain.

Example: I noticed when my Komodos had offspring that my food budget for my fledgling zoo basically tripled just from the extra 4 dragons. They were each costing me like 900$/year to feed.

So now I have a bigger zoo and more animals and with that larger budget I can absorb the cost of a high-value pen or two. Makes sense?

[tdawg81]

Ive noticed that I cannnot have too many babies/animals in each exhibit or i will go into negative profit really fast. Unless you have a big well established zoo - just do one pair of breeding animals. You can switch out the mom after she gives birth so you have babies coming faster but I try not to have more than 4 or so at a time. They can go into the trade center until your money evens out.

[Lasse1305]

ok but right now I'm paying 40k on food just for 4 elephants 4 tigers 4 gavials and 4 orangutans and i feel like this is too much... do you pay this much too?

[Flying Nimbus]

dont know why but my food costs just shot up after today, nearly 90k per year, dont have that many animals even..

[BumpInTheNight]

Are those the only animals you have? If it is I bet those elephants and tigers are like 70% of it. I have no idea what those cost yet so I don't know but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that's normal. What I'm saying is you need other, cheaper, animals too to balance out the costs. Profit from the ostrich pen to help pay for the elephant pen, know what I mean?

[OoSirBelt]

i have noticed that Carnivores food is 1000s more than the typical herbivore, make sure you have plenty of cheap animals to help support the cooler carnivores.

[Lasse1305]

ok i sent some animals to storage and it works again thanks guys

[Lasse1305]

yes i try to do an asian style park so I'm limitted on the animals to choose :D

[River Otter]

Początkowo opublikowane przez tdawg81:

Ive noticed that I cannnot have too many babies/animals in each exhibit or i will go into negative profit really fast. Unless you have a big well established zoo - just do one pair of breeding animals. You can switch out the mom after she gives birth so you have babies coming faster but I try not to have more than 4 or so at a time. They can go into the trade center until your money evens out.

Those are very large, food eating monsters. Don't go so big without massive income.

[Raydock]

This happened to me when I was breeding lions and had about 15 baby lions in my habitat. within 30 minutes my money went down from 400k to 30k.
I changed the meal quality of all animals to the lowest quality and put the female adults in the trading center so I couldnt get any more baby animals. As soon as the babies grew up I immediately put them in the trading center as well. Once my income was stable again I slowly raised the meal quality of my animals again.
I only have one female and one male per habitat now and take out the babies once they're grown.

[BumpInTheNight]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Lasse1305:

yes i try to do an asian style park so I'm limitted on the animals to choose :D

Gotcha, Pangolins have been pretty cheap to maintain for me by the way, decent crowd pleasers too and very good CP return when sending them out to the wild because they're critically endangered.

[cwk]

Yep same thing with me. Steady 25k/year food bill. Suddenly for no reason shot to 90k. Long few hours of debt recovery ensued. Feels like a bug to me as it was a spike.

[XrystalBelle]

Don't forget you can also use contraceptives to stop the breeding.

Keep the minimal set of adults to keep everyone happy in the habitat... when babies grow up remove the parental group ( remembering to keep some to keep the minimal adult sex ratio correct ).

I leave the food at the lowest until their needs are low enough to warrant doing it .. upgrading the food is the last thing I will do as it is one of the main ongoing costs for animals ... I have yet to need to do it to keep the animals happy. They may not be ecstatic but they are happy :)

[Scrub]

Have the same Problem right now. Never had money problems (1.600.000 in Bank), but at some point you have 5 stars in every category and then you have the maximun on visitors in your zoo. Currently at 6500 and now every new animal kosts me more and more money wihtout any more guests to pay the bills. im paying 325.000 each year for food with 300+ animals.

[XrystalBelle]

I have noticed this happens for 2 reasons .. There may be other reasons of course

1) Upgraded to level 3 food too soon.
2) Too many animals requiring feeding costing more than the money coming into the zoo in the same time period ..

To solve :
1) Downgrade until you start making money again, wait until your profits can cover the costs
2) Store some of the babies/excess animals until the older ones are close to being removed due to old age or close to sterility.


I have a zoo purely of Tundra animals .. Bears and Wolves .. I've just got overrun by a ton of babies waiting to age up and eating during that time .. They are good earners due to their popularity but when the trade building runs out of storage there are more animals than the profits can handle .. to the point that I have been sitting at -20k waiting for animals to grow up to shift them off and trade some of them away to make room on the trade storage. Contemplating a wolf sanctuary to place my young wolves that I plan on keeping and breeding from and transfer the babies back and forth based on the numbers.