Taken from the wiki:
Three chickens can be sustained on ten tiles of Haygrass.
Chickens eat three times a day: 2 hay for lunch, 2 hay for dinner and 4 hay for breakfast. So 8 hay every day that goes by waiting for crops to grow.
Haygrass grows in 5 days worth of daylight, or 10 days with nights at 100% fertility. And each haygrass produces 24 hay when it matures.
So in ten days a chicken will eat 10 days x 8 hay/day = 80 hay.
If we have three chickens then 3 chickens x 80 hay/cycle = 240 hay/cycle.
And if we have ten haygrass then it will produce 10 haygrass x 24 hay/cycle = 240 hay/cycle.
This does not take into account the exponential nature of chicken breeding; if you have at least 1 chicken from each gender locked in your outdoor pasture, soon in-bred chickens will swarm the map, stripping the land bare of any living plant (except trees) they can find.
Chickens eat too much. And even more because you cannot let them graze, since they will consume one grass tile everytime they eat. Which means each chicken will consume three grass tiles a day. For comparisons; one chicken eats about half as much as a pawn (10 units vs 20 units) which is crazy high.
Suggestion to fix this problem (yes, I know it is simply modding a number in the .xml, i'm talking about vanilla fixes): revert grass growth when animals eat. One unit of food = 10% of a grass tile total growth. 10 units of food = one grass tile. This way, each chicken will consume only one single grass tile. Though its not a complete fix, its a good change.
Breed as many chickens as you can reliably sustain, then keep the genders separated, (or simply kill the males) using the females for eggs.
Animal zones are good for this.
There does not need to be a hard cap for chicken breeding.
Our ancient predecessors had this problem too (http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Catsplosion) before the RimWorlds were settled, and many of their solutions can be adapted for the current situation.
Quote from: Trylobyte on June 17, 2017, 04:45:43 PM
Our ancient predecessors had this problem too before the RimWorlds were settled, and many of their solutions can be adapted for the current situation.
Look on the bright side, at least chickens don't usually form bonds with your colonists...
Quote from: Sola on June 17, 2017, 02:22:29 PM
Breed as many chickens as you can reliably sustain, then keep the genders separated, (or simply kill the males) using the females for eggs.
Animal zones are good for this.
There does not need to be a hard cap for chicken breeding.
Funny, I see no request for any such thing in OP's post, which is about how much haygrass each chicken eats. Mind elaborating?
I haven't done the math myself on this, but if they do indeed eat that much, I think the best solution (and most realistic) would be reduce the amount of food chickens need to one grass tile per day. I mean scale-wise a tile is the width of a door, so at least 36 inches wide. A 36x36 tile of grass is huge for such a small animal!
Quote from: Bozobub on June 17, 2017, 08:03:15 PM
Quote from: Sola on June 17, 2017, 02:22:29 PM
Breed as many chickens as you can reliably sustain, then keep the genders separated, (or simply kill the males) using the females for eggs.
Animal zones are good for this.
There does not need to be a hard cap for chicken breeding.
Funny, I see no request for any such thing in OP's post, which is about how much haygrass each chicken eats. Mind elaborating?
Quote from: Razzoriel on June 17, 2017, 12:40:08 PM
Chickens eat too much.
Chickens will only eat as much as you let them eat. If their allowed area is a 9x9 room with a stockpile of haygrass in the center, the chickens won't be
Quote from: Razzoriel on June 17, 2017, 12:40:08 PMstripping the land bare.
--
Admittedly, he's looking for a general overhaul. A patch of convenience to make things a little more realistic and a little less infuriating (Mansion-sized freezers that contain a week's worth of food, anyone?), but this is an alternative that will work until that point. It also keeps the winged rats from eating your devilstrand.
I feel like there are multiple issues relating to the food value in general. Any creature with a food value of less than 1 generally consumes more food than larger creatures, simply because they eat a "full meal" in order to fill their tiny bellies. Chickens are just the most extreme example because they can contain so little food and breed rapidly.
OP is complaining about two things. This:
Quote from: Razzoriel on June 17, 2017, 12:40:08 PM
This does not take into account the exponential nature of chicken breeding; if you have at least 1 chicken from each gender locked in your outdoor pasture, soon in-bred chickens will swarm the map, stripping the land bare of any living plant (except trees) they can find.
which is unrelated to how much they eat (even if they ate less they'd still multiply and strip the land bare), and Sola's post is a response to that.
Whenever someone complains to Tynan about chicken explosions, he says that food should be a limiting factor. This means that that is a feature, not a problem.
The rest of the post is claiming that chickens eat too much. The only real explanation I can see is this:
Quote from: Razzoriel on June 17, 2017, 12:40:08 PMFor comparisons; one chicken eats about half as much as a pawn (10 units vs 20 units) which is crazy high.
What is this comparing exactly? Your colonists can't eat hay (you should get more hay per area and hay per work than you would human food) and they can't eat grass which is literally free.
Quote from: Cimanyd on June 17, 2017, 11:10:07 PM
What is this comparing exactly? Your colonists can't eat hay (you should get more hay per area and hay per work than you would human food) and they can't eat grass which is literally free.
You didn't pay attention to the part where I said chickens are too resource-intensive compared to other larger animals. Chickens don't eat more than cows, and in Rimworld, they do, because as I said before, they eat three squares of grass per day, compared to cows/muffalos, which eat only two.
Which is why I'm saying a system of eating grass diminished the growth instead of wasting the entire square regardless of how much food they need. So we can make it so the animals that eat more now actually eat more grass, not quantified on how many squares of grass they need to keep fed. It's the same problem with "I have 100 steel; do I make a spear or a wind turbine?", but that's a complete different issue altogether.
So the solution seems to be faster grass growth, but reduced food value for grass? Chickens could eat their fill without stripping the map, but a massive herd of large animals would be harder on the ecosystem? Of course, this would mean that large animals have to spend more time eating/searching for food and need a larger grazing area. Realistic, I assume?
Quote from: cultist on June 19, 2017, 09:58:05 AM
So the solution seems to be faster grass growth, but reduced food value for grass?
No. The solution is equate one square of grass to 1.00 nutrition, and every percent growth equate to 0.01% nutrition. So grass grown at 34% equates to a square of grass worth 0.34 nutrition. If a chicken that requires 0.4 nutrition/day eats only grass, then it would eat the equivalent of 40% growth of one grass square, which is a huge reduction from three squares per day.
Quote from: Razzoriel on June 19, 2017, 10:37:26 AM
Quote from: cultist on June 19, 2017, 09:58:05 AM
So the solution seems to be faster grass growth, but reduced food value for grass?
No. The solution is equate one square of grass to 1.00 nutrition, and every percent growth equate to 0.01% nutrition. So grass grown at 34% equates to a square of grass worth 0.34 nutrition. If a chicken that requires 0.4 nutrition/day eats only grass, then it would eat the equivalent of 40% growth of one grass square, which is a huge reduction from three squares per day.
Can animals eat only part of a plant?
currently, no.
Quote from: Razzoriel on June 19, 2017, 09:48:40 AM
You didn't pay attention to the part where I said chickens are too resource-intensive compared to other larger animals.
You... didn't actually say that in your original post. ???
That's why I didn't know why you thought chickens ate too much. If a chicken eats more grass than a muffalo, that's kind of silly.
Are you saying the chicken's food bar isn't as big as the amount of nutrition grass is worth?
(I don't have time to do actual testing or dig through game files right now) If so, making it bigger (likewise for anything else that eats grass) would solve the problem, though chickens would have to be rebalanced if the eggs are balanced around how many you get for free right now. The other effect is that chickens would eat less often, but I don't think "how often chickens have to eat" is a real balance concern.
Quote from: Cimanyd on June 19, 2017, 02:42:15 PM
Quote from: Razzoriel on June 19, 2017, 09:48:40 AM
You didn't pay attention to the part where I said chickens are too resource-intensive compared to other larger animals.
You... didn't actually say that in your original post. ???
That's why I didn't know why you thought chickens ate too much. If a chicken eats more grass than a muffalo, that's kind of silly.
Are you saying the chicken's food bar isn't as big as the amount of nutrition grass is worth? (I don't have time to do actual testing or dig through game files right now) If so, making it bigger (likewise for anything else that eats grass) would solve the problem, though chickens would have to be rebalanced if the eggs are balanced around how many you get for free right now. The other effect is that chickens would eat less often, but I don't think "how often chickens have to eat" is a real balance concern.
In addition to how they interact with grass (IE overeat nutrition needs), chickens do arguably "eat too much". Their nutrition intake:
- Equals monkeys and wargs (?)
- Is .05 less than panthers, cougars, emus, and cassowaries (!)
- is .1 less than bears, ibex rams, and wild boars (...)
Bears are the same deal in reverse (eating less than dogs and the same as racoons? Wat.)
Has anyone ever owned chickens?? They absolutely eat EVERYTHING you put in their pen, and there's no grass left within a week!
Quote from: The Nickman on June 19, 2017, 08:21:51 PM
Has anyone ever owned chickens?? They absolutely eat EVERYTHING you put in their pen, and there's no grass left within a week!
A good friend of mine owns chickens and ducks. It is amazing how they will decimate an area.
Quote from: quilzas on June 20, 2017, 09:38:57 AM
Quote from: The Nickman on June 19, 2017, 08:21:51 PM
Has anyone ever owned chickens?? They absolutely eat EVERYTHING you put in their pen, and there's no grass left within a week!
A good friend of mine owns chickens and ducks. It is amazing how they will decimate an area.
How big in tiles would you say this chicken pen is ?
And how many chicken are in this pen ?
The problem with those birds is that they, like goats, eat all of the plants,
including the roots.
That way there is nothing left that regrows.
Quote from: SpaceDorf on June 21, 2017, 03:04:29 AM
Quote from: quilzas on June 20, 2017, 09:38:57 AM
Quote from: The Nickman on June 19, 2017, 08:21:51 PM
Has anyone ever owned chickens?? They absolutely eat EVERYTHING you put in their pen, and there's no grass left within a week!
A good friend of mine owns chickens and ducks. It is amazing how they will decimate an area.
How big in tiles would you say this chicken pen is ?
And how many chicken are in this pen ?
The problem with those birds is that they, like goats, eat all of the plants,
including the roots.
That way there is nothing left that regrows.
Hmmmm.. Maybe 10x20 squares. It is an area that's largely shaded by 4 trees. When she started I think she had a dozen chickens and ducks. I thought the grass would last at least twice as long as it did. It was an amazing transformation.
Sidenote - She has about an acre property and they are let out to roam around during the day, and then back into the pen at night.
Actually, much of that devastation is from chicken poop, which "burns" the plants out with its very high nitrates content. If you let chickens roam completely free — once your crop is past seedling stage; a foot high is usually enough — they're actually quite good at patrolling your crop for both weeds and pests; they leave larger plants completely alone.
The real problem with chickens in RimWorld is that IRL, chickens are one of the more efficient methods of turning feed into animal protein; about 2.1-2.5 lbs. of feed per lb. of chicken. You have to go to fish and/or insects to get a better ratio; tilapia, for example, run about 1.1-1.2 lbs. feed per lb. of tilapia. Yet in the game, chickens are one of the, if not THE *least* efficient methods to gain meat/animal protein, even including eggs.
So what's the general consensus here? Are chickens still not worth farming? I only ask because I've JUST bought a hen and a rooster from a trader, but if they're not worth it I'll feed them to the pigs. Literally
I've tried large scale chicken farms. You can sell the adults in huge quantities to traders for around 54 each, and you get a ridiculous amount of eggs in the meantime. However you need to produce a lot of haygrass and manage the males properly so the population doesn't get out of hand, which leads to wasted pawn time and a fair amount of micromanagement.
So its viable, just up to you if you want to put the effort in.
Hi there,
I own chickens, in this case they are "Serama", meaning the smallest chickens in the world. They live on a 10x20m area, and they are 5 girls and 1 boy.
And I can tell you: There is _nothing_ absolutely _nothing_ - apart from a few plants that they don't eat - left on this area. They don't eat the roots though, so every years the plants try again :)
That said I am experimenting with super fast growing plants, such as "Tobinambur" (aka "Jerusalem artichoke"), which serves both as a plant growing fast enough to survive in the chicken's area, and can be used by both Humans and Animals as food.
I have a chicken farm in my current A17 colony. This was not part of my plan, but I got the "chickens join" event, so figured I would give it a try. Managing the population is not difficult. Simply cull most of the roosters, and separate the remaining roosters from the hens until you want to expand your flock. They do eat a lot, though. The only real benefit is that each egg replaces the meat component in a fine meal, reducing the amount of hunting micromanagement required. Overall I prefer farming muffalos, as they provide wool, milk (works for fine meals as well in a17), and very sturdy defense vs. raiders or manhunters.