Changes to Chickens

[Kajin]

The game lists chickens as herbivores, but they're not. They're omnivores and can eat just about anything. It feels pretty weird that the chickens I have won't even touch the meat stocks after all the vegetables have run out when I feed my chickens irl leftover meat all the time. They freaking LOVE leftover burgers.

Also, adding the ability to scratch around in the dirt and grass for worms and other insects would be awesome. Make chickens less dependent on the same food sources the colonists and other animals use. If I pen chickens up in a large open field, I shouldn't even really have to feed them anything unless I want to fatten them up. They'll go to town on whatever grasses, seeds and bugs they find.

[Regret]

+1 on the change to omnivores.

Your other proposed change would make chickens practically food-independent. That is not a good idea, it would break the game balance.
The alternative, coding a whole new layer of foodstuffs just for chickens, is not worth it.

I would like to add one: Dogs should be carnivores instead of omnivores, you can't keep a dog alive on hay.

Silly thought: cock-fights as a source of joy.

[Kajin]

Dogs have a carnivorous bias. This means their systems are optimized for meat, but have the enzymes needed to process high energy, high nutrient plant matter like rice, potatoes, corn and berries. But it is ridiculous that they can eat hay. That's just weird 

I gotta disagree on making chickens imbalanced, though. As it stands right now, they're basically worthless. They only produce one egg a day, give or take, and only give 14 food when slaughtered. The amount of food they're consuming far outweighs any benefit of having them. At all. Giving them an alternative food source (digging around in the ground for bugs) would go a long way to rectifying this problem.

Like I said, chickens are basically worthless right now. I've tried keeping them but they're consuming far too much food to be worth having right now. And even with the proposed changes, you'd need thirty or forty hens laying constantly in order to come close to supplementing your food stores for even a relatively small colony. The eggs and meat are negligible, to say the least.

[Regret]

I found chickens to be a good source of income early on. 1 rooster and 3 hens produce a ridiculous amount of fertilized eggs, let them hatch and sell the young chickens. Make sure you collect the eggs so they all hatch at the same time, you can easily get 15 new chickens at the same time in exchange for some hay, at about 15-20 silver each that is a good return on your investment.
If you don't get a trader for a while eat the males immediately. Keep the hens alive until you run out of hay then slaughter them all except 1 rooster and 3 hens. Hell, even if you slaughter them all you should keep getting new chickens from the hatching eggs.

I found it quite easy to get over 6000 hay so I never ran out of food for them. (I also made a slight miscalculation with the size of my cornfield, I let almost a third of it rot away and I still had 12000 corn.)

[Kajin]

I'll admit that selling them is a good source of income, but it seems really odd that the only viable way to have chickens is to get rid of them as fast as possible. I mean, really. The biggest point of having chickens is being able to eat their eggs and meat, right? All that hay is basically worthless because you could have just devoted all that time and energy growing it to growing potatoes instead. You'd have just as many and you wouldn't have to jump through the extra hurdle of having to feed it all to worthless animals first.

Really, the biggest appeal to having chickens (or really any animal) and using them as a source of food in a survival situation like this is that you can just set them loose in a pasture and collect eggs/slaughter for meat as you go. A great deal less effort as opposed to farming the soil yourself.

About the only animals I've found useful at all thus far have been dogs, wargs, muffalo and llamas. Dogs and wargs can be trained to haul stuff for you (wild boars can, too, but the 50 percent wildness makes them a great deal more difficult to train and, like chickens, they produce far less meat than they're worth raising for). Muffalo and llamas provide very high quality wool that you can use or sell as you see fit. Nothing else has been worth raising, yet. Especially considering that any animals you get outright DESTROY any land I've put them to pasture in, necessitating the use of hay feed year round which defeats the purpose of having animals to begin with. Why raise and use animals for meat when I can just grow food instead?

Bah. This turned into a rant at some point. Apologies.

[Didact04]

Bah. This turned into a rant at some point. Apologies.

You're spot on with your points, though. Animals are only good if you get more than you put in. As it stands they are largely worthless, sans the ones you can shave and the ones that you can work. Beyond that they are food sinks and liabilities to the colony.

I wish there was an easier way to pasture them. I can stick them in an area but they always seem to eat all the grass and things like dandelions don't get eaten till they're full or close to it. It requires some experimenting.

[Kajin]

Yeah, the way grass gets consumed needs to be remodeled. Animals in game tend to eat all of it down to the roots, which makes it much harder to grow back in and renders the pasture unusable. Real animals don't do that unless they're absolutely starving. They eat at it until there's maybe an inch of grass left then move on. If animals did that they'd be a lot more valuable.

Know what? Would be nice if you had a Pasture Grass crop option. Colonists go in and sow high nutrition pasture grasses in areas that have gone barren or have undesirable weeds. Grazing animals primary this area to pasture in as opposed to it being something colonists have to harvest. Satisfies more hunger over regular grasses and, combined with the above remodeling of grass growth and grazing behavior, would make herbivore animals more useful to have.

[TheGrover]

There is still use for chickens. If you're struggling to get enough meat to make Fine Meals then a fast growing animal which is easy to feed will help find something to cook with your taters and corn

[cultist]

Yeah, chickens will eat anything, including chicken and eggshells. They should be counted as omnivores.

[Kajin]

Just had a thought. Cooking produces a lot of waste. Bones, sinew and cartilage get leftover from meat. Egg shells. Little scraps of plant matter that goes unused like leaves and cobs and skins. So how about every meal cooked produces a Meat Waste Scraps and Vegetable Waste Scraps item that needs to be disposed of? If you have no animals your survivors just haul it to the dump where it rots into nothing, but if you have animals you can use the waste scraps to craft Feed Slop as food for dogs, pigs and chickens.

Simple meals would make a small amount of waste of whatever types used. Fine meals would have a little more waste than that, but not much more since it's still an efficient use of resources. Luxurious meals, on the other hand, would have a LOT of waste.

[Loki88]

Yeah, the way grass gets consumed needs to be remodeled. Animals in game tend to eat all of it down to the roots, which makes it much harder to grow back in and renders the pasture unusable. Real animals don't do that unless they're absolutely starving. They eat at it until there's maybe an inch of grass left then move on. If animals did that they'd be a lot more valuable.

Know what? Would be nice if you had a Pasture Grass crop option. Colonists go in and sow high nutrition pasture grasses in areas that have gone barren or have undesirable weeds. Grazing animals primary this area to pasture in as opposed to it being something colonists have to harvest. Satisfies more hunger over regular grasses and, combined with the above remodeling of grass growth and grazing behavior, would make herbivore animals more useful to have.

I just make a giant field of dandelions... No harvesting required, chickens eat them, and its not as effective as day lilies but works as a "timeout spot" for cranky colonists.

I do agree they should be omnivores though.

[FMJ Penguin]

Grew up on a farm and chickens are downright nutso. Seen them eat whole live toads before. Swallowing them whole like a snake  They're less picky than pigs which are also crazy and dangerous but at least they have smarts and won't eat their own crap(pigs I mean) hahaha

Tip...., never look a chicken in the eye. They looooove flies and pupils o_O

[Loki88]

Grew up on a farm and chickens are downright nutso. Seen them eat whole live toads before. Swallowing them whole like a snake  They're less picky than pigs which are also crazy and dangerous but at least they have smarts and won't eat their own crap(pigs I mean) hahaha

Tip...., never look a chicken in the eye. They looooove flies and pupils o_O

And anything red... Like the scab on my shin... 

[FMJ Penguin]

haha yea that too..... nasty birds......

[Kajin]

I have a fenced in area that I keep a a half dozen chickens in. One of my hens got an open wound from an aggressive rooster and all the others pecked the poor thing to death just about. Had to build it its own pen away from the others to give it a chance to rest and heal.

Chickens are like sharks, man. They see blood and they go crazy trying to eat whatever it is that's bleeding.