I have some tamed livestock now, such as cows, turkeys and chickens. Will they be okay outdoors in the winter? If not, does that mean that they need to be in a roofed area, perhaps with a heater? Would a heated sleeping area be enough, or should they be protected from the elements all of the time in winter?
Trial and error man... that's how most people solve their problems in this game.
Alternatively you could look at the animals stats page for your answers.
Most animals are unrealistically comfortable in a super wide range of temperatures. I definitely recommend selecting the animals you have and looking at their info tab. There should be information on their Max and Min temps that they can handle.
I reported animals not getting heatstroke as a bug a long time ago, but was told it was only like that because the devs didn't want animals to be super hard to care for. Fair enough.
I can't find any in-game or online sources for animal temperature ranges. However, using the Numbers mod, with which can view various stats, I can see that animals have minimum and maximum comfortable temperatures. Here are the ones for the animals I own (min/max):
Turkey: -8C/50C
Cat: -14C/50C
Cow: -14C/50C
Grizzly bear: -40C/50C
Red fox: -50C/50C
Husky: -50C/50C
Muffalo: -60C/50C
So I suppose it might be sensible to build a heated barn for animals to shelter in for when it gets really cold.
If you click on the animal in question, a box in the bottom left corner will pop up. Look for the information tab (i). That will list all the animals stats.
Numbers mod works as well.
Quote from: ArguedPiano on April 28, 2017, 05:32:15 PM
If you click on the animal in question, a box in the bottom left corner will pop up. Look for the information tab (i). That will list all the animals stats.
Numbers mod works as well.
This forum doesn't have a facepalm smilie. :'(
The
Numbers mod displays all one's animals' stats on one page, though... 8)
EDIT:
Quote from: O Negative on April 28, 2017, 05:12:40 PM
I reported animals not getting heatstroke as a bug a long time ago, but was told it was only like that because the devs didn't want animals to be super hard to care for. Fair enough.
So we're still not sure whether animals's comfortable temperature range actually does anything? Maybe affects wool/egg/milk production speed maybe, if it doesn't kill them?
Animals *will* get frostbite and lose appendages, freeze to death, etc. if they are not kept reasonably close to their "comfortable" temperature in winter. Chickens are particularly delicate, more than other animals I have raised, and must be kept warm with a heater or campfire if it gets at all below freezing.
I have never seen an animal suffer from heatstroke, though I do generally take pains to offer them access to cooler interiors anyway to be safe.
Quote from: Toast on April 28, 2017, 06:05:02 PM
Chickens are particularly delicate, more than other animals I have raised, and must be kept warm with a heater or campfire if it gets at all below freezing.
This is my experience too. Also, fertilized eggs will ruin and won't hatch chickens if they are frozen for a while.
Quote from: Toast on April 28, 2017, 06:05:02 PM
Chickens are particularly delicate
+1 on this, I've always found chickens to not be worth the hassle on the temperate (freezing winter) maps I play. Pigs are similar, although at least pigs only seem to need a few days' indoor time per winter.
Of course, if you allow your animals free range to come indoors it's not a problem. They seem to do a very good job of coming in from the cold.
Quote from: OFWG on April 28, 2017, 06:31:31 PM
+1 on this, I've always found chickens to not be worth the hassle on the temperate (freezing winter) maps I play. Pigs are similar, although at least pigs only seem to need a few days' indoor time per winter.
Of course, if you allow your animals free range to come indoors it's not a problem. They seem to do a very good job of coming in from the cold.
Have to admit chickens require attention during winters. I always have them though as eggs are so valuable when compared to meat. So, I'll build a coop with two rooms and a walled yard, as I separate males from females. They feed in roofed part of the yard, so hay won't spoil like it would inside. Everytime when there's zrrrt or other blackout I have to remember to build fires inside ASAP as they seem to freeze their legs very quickly. While hens without legs aren't a problem, roosters without legs can't visit the hens when I want chicken meat for pemmican etc.
How do temperature-related "injuries" happen? Is it the average temperature experienced over a period of time, like a day, or the temperature at a particular moment? For example, if farm animals have a heated sleeping area, will they be able to stand colder temperatures during the day if outdoors?
Quote from: The Man with No Name on May 02, 2017, 12:03:08 PM
How do temperature-related "injuries" happen? Is it the average temperature experienced over a period of time, like a day, or the temperature at a particular moment? For example, if farm animals have a heated sleeping area, will they be able to stand colder temperatures during the day if outdoors?
All living things (and maybe even robots?) get a "Hypothermia" debuff in their health section when outside their comfortable temperature for a small time. This gradually builds up and at a certain point (I believe at "serious") they may randomly lose body parts. When in comfortable temperature again, the Hypothermia goes away quickly.
Okay. I'm trying to work out whether I'd need to create an indoor area for farm animals to stay in 24/7 in wintertime, or whether a heated sleeping area would be enough unless it got really cold. If temperature health problems builds up gradually then the first option might be possible, by keeping an eye on hypothermia levels. So if, for example, a chicken was outside during the day and incurred initial or minor hypothermia, but slept in the warmth, causing the hypothermia to dissipate would they have health problems? Or perhaps frostbite injuries are separate from hypothermia and they may be at risk from them during the day?
Quote from: The Man with No Name on May 02, 2017, 01:11:55 PM
So if, for example, a chicken was outside during the day and incurred initial or minor hypothermia, but slept in the warmth, causing the hypothermia to dissipate would they have health problems? Or perhaps frostbite injuries are separate from hypothermia and they may be at risk from them during the day?
I believe this would work, only if the hypothermia doesn't get too bad. I don't know how far along before frostbite occurs though...
Between 0C to 10C below their minimum comfy temperature, the state of hypothermia is static - it doesn't get better, and it doesn't get worse. More than 10C below and they start to accumulate hypothermia (the colder it is, the faster it accumulates). At 37%, they can start getting frostbite.
Edit: I don't remember how long it takes to reach frostbite when you start accumulating hypothermia, but I'm pretty sure it's less than half a day.
Based on watching Rhadamant's Sea Ice Community Challenge - Part One (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kV4PHuKl2A), the way it seems to work is that you go through a few stages of hypothermia: shivering, minor, and then serious. Frostbite only seems to develop when the pawn is at the serious stage, the others are fairly harmless. When the pawn gets back to a warm place, the hypothermia level gradually does down and eventually goes away.
It appears that frostbite can occur any time the pawn has hypothermia(serious), even if it is currently in a warm place. I watched him a few times bring a pawn with hypothermia(serious) back indoors and have frostbite appear after the pawn was indoors, but before the hypothermia had time to decrease to minor.
So if it's cold enough that your chickens can get to serious hypothermiaduring the course of a day, they may be in danger. The thing I'm not sure of is whether or not chickens have the sense to notice that they are getting cold and have a wam place available, and will go to it. Noticing they are cold is trivial to implement, so is going to a known warm place when they are getting cold. The problem I see is having the chicken know that it has a warm place available. That sounds computationally expensive, since it would basically require scanning the map of the entire area the chicken can get to, looking for a warm tile. If the chicken was unrestricted, you could potentially have to scan the entire map every time it got cold to try and find a warm refuge. I suppose there may be some optimizations to make it less expensive, but it's still going to use up a chunk of CPU time.
Typing the above raised a few questions in my mind. Do wild animals also suffer from cold damage? I've never noticed wild animals dropping from hypothermia, but I haven't played much in cold biomes (which explains why my knowledge of hypothermia and frostbite comes from watching someone else's video). If they do, will they try to find a warm place for refuge? This could be really expensive, since you'd have to scan the entire map for every wild animal that gets cold. If they do actually seek a warm place, can you set up a warm place to attract animals, thus bringing targets right to your hunters (who don't even have to go out in the cold any more)?
The trouble I see with that last one is setting up a place that wild animals can get to that is warmer than outdoors. Generally, one sets up a room surrounded by walls and doors to hold in heat, and wild animals won't go through doors (although there are some real life bears and raccoons that would disagree with that concept). So setting up a warm place to attract wild animals may not be possible. If you set up a "room" (it's not fully enclosed, so the game wouldn't consider it a room) with a long narrow passage with no doors, and put a heater in the room, would you be able to warm up the "room"?
Quote from: khearn on May 02, 2017, 02:40:01 PMTyping the above raised a few questions in my mind. Do wild animals also suffer from cold damage?
I'm fairly sure that they would if you wall them in or something, but wild animals will normally leave the map when the temperature is not comfortable for them anymore (same as when they are starving and they find nothing to eat).