Unable to train cow, says 'no usable food' despite presence of food

[strata8]

Trying to train a cow but it's telling me (upon right clicking on the cow) that I have 'no usable food' despite the presence of corn, potatoes and rice in my freezer. Similarly I've given orders to tame some squirrels, but no menu appears at all on a right click.

The colonist is unrestricted and has an animal skill of 8. The cow and bull are restricted to a barn close to the colony.

It feels like a bug but I've posted it here just in case there's anything obvious I've missed. There's a screenshot below and the save file is attached.



[attachment deleted due to age]

[Ithildae]

Check if your colonist is forbidden to use said food.

This includes being forbidden to reach the room the food is in, or forbidden to reach the cow.

Edit: If you put the research bench in its own room, that room becomes a laboratory.

[TLHeart]

check your animal handlers gear tab, if they have not picked up food to tame with you will get that message, as they have no usable food in their personal inventory to train with.  They have to pass through the storage area and pick up food to train with first....

Want to force the training, then draft the trainer, send him into the food storage, undraft, he will pick up food, then you can right click the animal you want trained... does not improve the chance of that animal being trained though.

I loaded your file, and neither of your trainers are carrying any food to train with... means they do not pass by the food storage area to pick food up in the morning.

[strata8]

Thanks for the help, that was the reason Though it could be clearer in-game and I'm actually a bit surprised that manually prioritising it doesn't make them gather the food, like it would when you ask for something to be constructed.

[TLHeart]

The whole animal husbandry has many ruff and ragged edges to it. Needs lots of refinements. But a deadline had to be met, so the alpha was released as is.

[LouisTBR]

Your colonist may not have food on her person. They will, if they have no food on them, wait until they're supposed to do taming and then proceed to grab some various foods from the fridge. This is a main cause of the problem, but it may also be affected by colonist zoning. I doubt you would be stupid enough, but a lot of posts on the bug forum have simple answers: 'Allow your colonists to path into the area!'. Check if you have them in any specific zones, if not, just be patient and wait or put the taming priority up to 1/above everything else. If you have done this, they should automatically grab some food from the stockpile and then go on their way. If this is not the case, report it in the bug forum. Thanks!

[skullywag]

If they dont have 3 of a food type on them it wont work. This has been addressed by ison for the next release i believe.

[Cimanyd]

If they dont have 3 of a food type on them it wont work. This has been addressed by ison for the next release i believe.

Like TLHeart said, if they have to go pick up more food, manually prioritizing taming won't make them pick up the food unless they're in the same room as the food, it just says "no usable food" and doesn't let you prioritize at all. That's the bug; prioritizing should make them go find and pick up the food even if it's somewhere else. Even if they could use multiple types of food at the same time somehow, they'd still run out eventually and have to pick up more, and this bug would still affect that.