To create fine meals, one needs to combine vegetables with animal products.
Thus far in my game, all of my animal products have come from hunting or cargo pods. Now that I have sixteen colonists to feed, I need a lot of animal products.
Since colonists pay no attention to the locations of other colonists when firing weapons and are prone to shooting each other, I fear that using the auto-hunting feature would soon lead to the demise of my colony. Manually hunting is time-consuming and only gets more so as the colony grows in size.
So I guess that means I'm going to have to take a pastoralist approach and start husbanding animals for milk and meat. How productive is the pastoralist approach to food production in this game? Any tips?
I suppose I might also start buying meat from traders, when the opportunities arise.
If you get the opportunity to buy chickens, get them. They pop out eggs left and right, reproduce quickly, are easy to feed and maintain, etc. etc.
Raising pigs or other animals for food also works but takes much longer.
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/34/48/bd/3448bd8684b4eb8e3b931f1394f25e11.jpg) | Quote from: The Man with No Name on April 23, 2017, 08:05:36 PM
Now that I have sixteen colonists to feed, I need a lot of animal products.
...
Since colonists pay no attention to the locations of other colonists when firing weapons and are prone to shooting each other, I fear that using the auto-hunting feature would soon lead to the demise of my colony.
Ranching
Tame them, and then slaughter them as needed.
Give your animal handlers good melee skill, because if an animal attacks then it will be melee combat. Plan on some haygrass to make kibble and support them growing and breeding. |
Turkeys regularly spawn on my map and, according to the Wiki, can be tamed and lay eggs, both fertilized and unfertilized.
So should I be creating walled "fields" on the map to contain my animals, perhaps with a fridge/freezer that stores kibble?
Best set up ive found (with minimal resource use)
Set an animal area for your field. And portion a smaller area for haygrass (not all though, leave grazing an option )
On the outside tile to your animal area make a dumping zone border and set it to take chunks. The chunks will slow any predetors, and if you then set a joy activity in there (so they spend more time in the field )
They can get nuzzled alot and also spot animals on the hunt. Set them to auto combat and they will safely beat/ shoot them to death as wild animals on the hunt are suicidally single minded.
Also looks pleasant to me.
Quote from: The Man with No Name on April 23, 2017, 08:26:14 PM
Turkeys regularly spawn on my map and, according to the Wiki, can be tamed and lay eggs, both fertilized and unfertilized.
So should I be creating walled "fields" on the map to contain my animals, perhaps with a fridge/freezer that stores kibble?
Yeah, but make sure that the turkeys stay in one are close to your fridge, that way, you don't have to wander around the map looking for eggs, they'll all be fairly close to each other for collecting.
Quote from: Shurp on April 23, 2017, 08:11:20 PM
If you get the opportunity to buy chickens, get them. They pop out eggs left and right, reproduce quickly, are easy to feed and maintain, etc. etc.
IIRC Iguana's have the highest throughput (ammount of eggs gotten for the same amount of hay)
Quote from: Sian on April 24, 2017, 05:23:00 AM
Quote from: Shurp on April 23, 2017, 08:11:20 PM
If you get the opportunity to buy chickens, get them. They pop out eggs left and right, reproduce quickly, are easy to feed and maintain, etc. etc.
IIRC Iguana's have the highest throughput (ammount of eggs gotten for the same amount of hay)
According to the wiki, although Iguanas lay eggs batches of 3-5, chickens lay eggs
much more frequently and are only slightly hungrier than iguanas.
As has been mentioned, chickens are the best in A16. Slaughter all males (except for one) when they reach adulthood. Keep as many females as you can handle, slaughter the rest.
Chickens can get out of hand fast. So beware.
100 chickens made my 20 pawn colony self sustainable
Your best bet is to actually just set an animal zone within your colony walls and have a stockpile with haygrass set to a high priority.
I created a suggestion thread with some quality of life changes for keeping animals:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=31966.0 (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=31966.0)
First, it should be said that Tynan is already addressing the viability of animal husbandry to feed the colony ( I'm sure I read so about the upcoming A17? )
Okay, for now there is a handy 'Colony Manager' mod that allows you to set how many animals you want of each type, adults and young each have their own settings. From there, it automatically creates jobs for your colonists to slaughter any excess animals - no need to manually manage that massive chicken population etc.
It actually allows you to set 'tame x amount of these animals' - from there it finds them itself in the wild and sets a tame job for you :)
I think this would help a lot with farming, if you fancy giving it a go!
Quote from: AngleWyrm on April 23, 2017, 08:17:44 PM
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/34/48/bd/3448bd8684b4eb8e3b931f1394f25e11.jpg) | Quote from: The Man with No Name on April 23, 2017, 08:05:36 PM
Now that I have sixteen colonists to feed, I need a lot of animal products.
...
Since colonists pay no attention to the locations of other colonists when firing weapons and are prone to shooting each other, I fear that using the auto-hunting feature would soon lead to the demise of my colony.
Ranching
Tame them, and then slaughter them as needed.
Give your animal handlers good melee skill, because if an animal attacks then it will be melee combat. Plan on some haygrass to make kibble and support them growing and breeding. |
~
Um, excuse me for instantly going off topic but, why did you include Blotch's artwork out of nowhere?! xD
Quote from: The Man with No Name on April 23, 2017, 08:26:14 PM
Turkeys regularly spawn on my map and, according to the Wiki, can be tamed and lay eggs, both fertilized and unfertilized.
So should I be creating walled "fields" on the map to contain my animals, perhaps with a fridge/freezer that stores kibble?
Speaking from experience, I tried an egg farm from turkeys, they don't produce fast enough to be worth it for eggs. Only the meat and even then you are pushing their worth.
Quote from: PotatoeTater on April 28, 2017, 04:12:34 PM
Speaking from experience, I tried an egg farm from turkeys, they don't produce fast enough to be worth it for eggs.
Yeah, I've noticed that in my game. :)
Quote from: ArguedPiano on April 24, 2017, 10:03:08 PM
As has been mentioned, chickens are the best in A16. Slaughter all males (except for one) when they reach adulthood. Keep as many females as you can handle, slaughter the rest.
Chickens can get out of hand fast. So beware.
True, chicken are the only animal that is really worth to farm (indoor)
Iganas, tukeys and cobra might alose be effective, but they reproduce slowly, you need to start with a lot of female to have descent imput.
Iagana and cobra eat corpses too, that can help if you don't have any other animal to clean dead raiders and thoses 30 dead chick ( baby untrained dogs or bears can eat thats too if no other food access)
But still chicken are the best from far, if you get to too much, throw a grenade 8)