Feeding (carnivorous) animals - do Handlers feed them?

[The Man with No Name]

Do colonists set to Handling feed animals, i.e. bring food to them?

My Warg would wander in to the freezer to eat. Then I confined the Warg to an Assigned Area and put a one square stockpile within it set to stash raw meat, but the meat would rot quickly being outside a freezer.

[OFWG]

No, the only time animals will be fed is if they're on bed rest recovering from an injury (and doctors do it then IIRC); they'll starve if there's no food source that the animal can get to itself.

[The Man with No Name]

Then how does one best feed animals? One can leave them unrestricted and they will feed themselves from the freezer, but this isn't ideal. How does one feed an animal that is confined to an Assigned Area? Build a second freezer in the Animal Zone?

[khearn]

I'm not the most experienced player, but when I've had wargs, I've set up an animal zone that covers the entire map, except for my freezer (select the freezer, then invert the zone). They'll go out and hunt on their own. As a bonus, anything they kill and don't completely eat is unforbidden, so your haulers will go out and bring it home. Free meat. Even better, if you manage to train your wargs to do hauling, they'll even bring it home sometimes.

[OFWG]

Then how does one best feed animals? ... Build a second freezer in the Animal Zone?

I doubt it's objectively the best way, but that's exactly what I do once I get enough animals to tax my main supply.

[giannikampa]

if you assign a single spot for animals in freezer (or not) they will interact with things in there and ignore anything else, even if they will have to walk trough forbidden area to reach there. This is how allowed areas work. So if you want to assign a portion of stockpile for animals in freezers you can.

[The Man with No Name]

Thanks for the ideas. I've set my carnivorous animals to roam most of the map except the kitchen and freezer and so far they seem to be doing okay (unlike the Warg in my previous game whose stomach was destroyed through malnutrition).

I'm fairly new to the game, so I don't know the best solutions, but might an Animal Feeding Bowl be a useful furniture addition to the game? Like a miniature hauling pile but set set to store only a single item rather than a stack, and that gets automatically replenished by a hauler (or perhaps handler) when needed.

[cultist]

For wargs specifically, I prefer to leave them unrestricted. They are excellent hunters and kill most small animals in one hit, so there's little risk of them getting hurt. They can provide their own food most of the time, as long as the map has a decent animal population. For maps with little or no amimals, they thrive on a diet of human corpses. Food poisoning (from rotten corpses) is a problem if you want them to fight, but is otherwise harmless.

[giannikampa]

In my actual game there are enought animals around for my bears (yeah I got bears now!) to hunt but I have all insect meat i put my hands on mixed with hay for kibble that never spoils (but has to be under roof). Plus, to save some leak of cold from freezers i built an external small freezer surrounding the inner one, here i have temp of the cooler set to -1 and i put butcher tables and a low importance stockpile that allows only carcasses and meat; this usually gets few corpses and meat because of the constant butcher and haul to some more important area. Meanwhile it is allowed to animals: they either collect corpses around the map and are allowed to eat what they can find if they are hungry, but can't go in the inner freezer because, well, i need most of the food for humans.

[Canute]

- You can made kibble, all animals like kibble and kibble don't rot.

- Mod, Smarter food selection , you can set the animals to eat animal food first and let hunter animals hunt smaller prey's for their own.

- Mod, Hunt for me, let the hunter animals even hunt larger preys and haul back.

- Like you mention, feeding bowl isn't nessesary, but your animals would be happy and eat from it first (even without mod).