Help! Farm animals sexed up and now we're short on food

[jpinard]

I now have 10 colonists and my recent animal population exploded thanks to some random events, and not separating roosters from hens.  So I find myself with a cat, 3 alpacas, 20 chickens, 3 trained dogs, a trained boar, 7 boomrats, 5 Emus, and an Ostrich, and soon - 3 turtles once they hatch.  This past spring I planted what I thought would be more than enough food  (temperate zone that has 30 says of growing then cold winter) with all manner of food-stuffs and hay.  16x16 area (rich soil) for rice, corn, potatoes, and strawberries.  An even larger growing zone for hay of 22x22 (normal soil not rich soil). 

What should I sell/harvest and what should I keep?  Also, I could swear I saw some of my people feeding chickens basic and fine meals (or it is coincidence they eat just at the time they feed Animal Zone #2 of just roosters).  But some still starve even though I'm growing hay growing there.  Weren't chickens and stuff supposed to be able to feed off of grass growing naturally?  Or did you need to actually cut grass somehow to then feed to them?  How in the world are people managing large farm populations?  Thanks!

[eadras]

Large animal farms require precise custom food stockpiles and meticulously restricted animal zones.  I wouldn't recommend it for a beginner.  Even if you have everything set up properly, you'll have to cull the herd from time to time, either by butchering or selling the excess.  Once you've culled your animals, start experimenting with stockpiles and animal zones.  These are the tools we are given to control the madness that is Rimworld fauna.   

[LordMunchkin]

Slaughter them jipinard. Slaughter them all.

More seriously though, keep the dogs, alpacas, and chickens. You're going to need a lot of haygrass for those chickens depending on the biome so you should weigh the opportunity cost of them carefully vs just buying your meat or hunting.

[PotatoeTater]

Best title I've seen in a while.

I would go through and kill all the roosters so you still have egg production without risk of additional hungry mouths. Then I would kill the emus, boomrats, and ostrich (or wait to sell them), they are in general not worth keeping. I would also think about selling any male alpacas if you want to keep your herd small and selling off all the turtles as well.

Those are my suggestions anyways.

[jpinard]

Will the boomrats explode if I harvest them?

Also can anyone answer the question, "Can any animal you own survive in spring/summer/fall on their own with no hay ie. Basically just eating grass since I'm in temperate zone"?  Thanks for the quick answers!

[Shurp]

Yes, boomrats explode on death. You're better off setting a separate animal zone on a water square far from your base and letting them starve to death - or use for target practice.

[LordMunchkin]

Will the boomrats explode if I harvest them?

Also can anyone answer the question, "Can any animal you own survive in spring/summer/fall on their own with no hay ie. Basically just eating grass since I'm in temperate zone"?  Thanks for the quick answers!

I'm pretty sure they don't explode when you slaughter them. At least I don't remember them exploding when I slaughtered an unwanted boomrat that joined my colony. Or you could just draft someone and have them shoot it from a distance. Or just sell it at the first opportunity.

Also, yes most herbivores can survive just by eating grass in a temperate climate when it's not winter. However, they will be vulnerable to predators and can lag your game if you get lots of them and let them roam the map. I recommend having a walled off area where you grow grass and a series of small animal zones you shift them to so the grass can regrow.

The animals tab mod is also pretty useful for slaughtering your male animals. You want to only keep one or two males for each species and in the case of chickens you want to keep them far away from the hens.

[Stormfox]

I suggest more or less the same things the others have touched on above:

Get rid of the boomrats (carefully), they are a liability and good for nothing. Then, kill all the roosters and male big birds and keep the rest for their eggs.

Build the equivalent to an animal pen (an animal area that, depending on your climate, might need to be enclosed so it is heatable) with a few hay-only-stockpiles in them, make sure hay only goes there (or at least almost only there, and put all your birds there. If the climate allows outdoor, all the better because they will need much less hay then.

The dogs and pigs are solid home animals. Let them cuddle with your colonists and build them some nice animal beds somewhere in the house, but make sure to restrict their zone so they do not get near the fridge or the flower pots. Place a small stockpile (if you have the mod for it, a food basket or two are nice) near their sleeping spots with only kibble allowed and make sure it is always nicely filled. Train them all to haul and never have them follow your drafted colonists and you are set. They WILL haul from outside their allowed zone, no worries.

[jpinard]

They WILL haul from outside their allowed zone, no worries.

Ohhh, see I was worried about that!  Last question: 

If I have my animals trained up as far as possible, should I turn off wardening for my colonists so they don't waste time manually feeding or training?  or maybe it's unnecessary to do that as the game will skip it?  I was trying to figure out if the colonists actively feed pets if they aren't training them.  So much to learn

[RazorHed]

You should never slaughter your own animals . Euthanize them instead for some good medicine exp. and rescue those downed animals you hunt and euthanize them as well

[cmitc1]

what if they allow you to fix animals to where they cant have babies? cutting off stuff couldn't be that hard for a doc.

[Tammabanana]

IMO:

Keep one or two roosters, just in case of a chickenpocalypse where you need to restart the breeding program - but flip all your meal-production recipes to include fertilized eggs as potential ingredients. If some hatch anyway, eat the chicks.

Chickens are the only birds that will lay eggs without males, aren't they? The rest will stop egg progress at 50% and wait for fertilization before they lay. Eat the emus and the ostrich and the turtles (or their eggs).

Turn the boomrats loose outside the compound to fend for themselves. Maybe you'll get lucky and they'll take out a raider or two for you. Wait for rain or snow if you plan to shoot them. (I don't know if they explode when slaughtered or not.)

Turn off training for animals with only Obedience/Release, unless you actually want them to bond or attack. Colonists use up food training them, and there's pretty much nothing to be gained from training chickens. Colonists won't feed by hand outside of training; the animals will go find food themselves within the zone they're restricted to. (But if there isn't any in that zone, they'll start starving. You can temporarily set their zone to Unrestricted if they're starving and you can't figure out why, and they'll make a beeline for the nearest food, to save themselves, and then that might tell you something about what they want to eat.)

Don't let them eat the hay stockpile during the warm seasons - forbid it, or zone them out. Make them eat the wild grass while it's an option, and save the hay for winter. I've had trouble with animal starvation over a haygrass-only zone - I think maybe they won't bother eating baby haygrass, and it takes a long time to grow. Try dandelions too, they grow faster.

[jpinard]

Tammanana - thank you so much!  You answered a whole bunch of questions I had about how things work! 

[Thyme]

Kill them, eat them. Problem solved. Keep the useful ones if you can afford.

If you like micro, try to keep mainly females, as you can eat their offspring (does a pregnancy cost extra food?).

[Limdood]

keep the dogs, keep the alpacas.

Dogs are best value since you can get them hauling and save your important colonists walking time.  Alpacas are great value over time as they grow wool fast, and alpaca wool is the most well rounded.  An alpaca duster will cover you from anything from very hot to very cold.  Add a tuque or cowboy hat as needed and you can survive any but the most extreme cold temps.  Alpacas can also graze outside if the terrain supports it.

NEVER let chickens into the stockpile.  Here's why.  each food unit gives a certain amount of nutrition.  Tiny animals need very very little nutrition.  a chicken might eat 1-3 hay to fill up (or berries, or rice, or corn)...but it can't eat less than 1 meal...so it will eat a full meal if its near a meal when it gets hungry.  which is the equivalent of 18 units of food in nutrition.  Meals are a great deal for colonists or large animals since it packs 18 nutrition worth of food using only 10 food units, but a TERRIBLE idea for small animals who might only need 1-5 food worth of nutrition to go from empty to full.

In short, small animals should eat individual raw food.  Large animals and humans should eat cooked meals (or nutrient paste) to save food (though cooking meals for animals will save food, it will use up colonist time to cook)