The "small devourer" (chickens/chicks) problem

[Razzoriel]

Taken from the wiki:

Three chickens can be sustained on ten tiles of Haygrass.

    Chickens eat three times a day: 2 hay for lunch, 2 hay for dinner and 4 hay for breakfast. So 8 hay every day that goes by waiting for crops to grow.
    Haygrass grows in 5 days worth of daylight, or 10 days with nights at 100% fertility. And each haygrass produces 24 hay when it matures.
    So in ten days a chicken will eat 10 days x 8 hay/day = 80 hay.
    If we have three chickens then 3 chickens x 80 hay/cycle = 240 hay/cycle.
    And if we have ten haygrass then it will produce 10 haygrass x 24 hay/cycle = 240 hay/cycle.

This does not take into account the exponential nature of chicken breeding; if you have at least 1 chicken from each gender locked in your outdoor pasture, soon in-bred chickens will swarm the map, stripping the land bare of any living plant (except trees) they can find.

Chickens eat too much. And even more because you cannot let them graze, since they will consume one grass tile everytime they eat. Which means each chicken will consume three grass tiles a day. For comparisons; one chicken eats about half as much as a pawn (10 units vs 20 units) which is crazy high.

Suggestion to fix this problem (yes, I know it is simply modding a number in the .xml, i'm talking about vanilla fixes): revert grass growth when animals eat. One unit of food = 10% of a grass tile total growth. 10 units of food = one grass tile. This way, each chicken will consume only one single grass tile. Though its not a complete fix, its a good change.

[Sola]

Breed as many chickens as you can reliably sustain, then keep the genders separated, (or simply kill the males) using the females for eggs.

Animal zones are good for this.

There does not need to be a hard cap for chicken breeding.

[Trylobyte]

Our ancient predecessors had this problem too before the RimWorlds were settled, and many of their solutions can be adapted for the current situation.

[jamaicancastle]

Our ancient predecessors had this problem too before the RimWorlds were settled, and many of their solutions can be adapted for the current situation.

Look on the bright side, at least chickens don't usually form bonds with your colonists...

[Bozobub]

Breed as many chickens as you can reliably sustain, then keep the genders separated, (or simply kill the males) using the females for eggs.

Animal zones are good for this.

There does not need to be a hard cap for chicken breeding.

Funny, I see no request for any such thing in OP's post, which is about how much haygrass each chicken eats.  Mind elaborating?

[Rimrue]

I haven't done the math myself on this, but if they do indeed eat that much, I think the best solution (and most realistic) would be reduce the amount of food chickens need to one grass tile per day. I mean scale-wise a tile is the width of a door, so at least 36 inches wide. A 36x36 tile of grass is huge for such a small animal!

[Sola]

Breed as many chickens as you can reliably sustain, then keep the genders separated, (or simply kill the males) using the females for eggs.

Animal zones are good for this.

There does not need to be a hard cap for chicken breeding.

Funny, I see no request for any such thing in OP's post, which is about how much haygrass each chicken eats.  Mind elaborating?

Chickens eat too much.

Chickens will only eat as much as you let them eat.  If their allowed area is a 9x9 room with a stockpile of haygrass in the center, the chickens won't be

stripping the land bare.

--
Admittedly, he's looking for a general overhaul.  A patch of convenience to make things a little more realistic and a little less infuriating (Mansion-sized freezers that contain a week's worth of food, anyone?), but this is an alternative that will work until that point.  It also keeps the winged rats from eating your devilstrand.

[cultist]

I feel like there are multiple issues relating to the food value in general. Any creature with a food value of less than 1 generally consumes more food than larger creatures, simply because they eat a "full meal" in order to fill their tiny bellies. Chickens are just the most extreme example because they can contain so little food and breed rapidly.

[Cimanyd]

OP is complaining about two things. This:

This does not take into account the exponential nature of chicken breeding; if you have at least 1 chicken from each gender locked in your outdoor pasture, soon in-bred chickens will swarm the map, stripping the land bare of any living plant (except trees) they can find.

which is unrelated to how much they eat (even if they ate less they'd still multiply and strip the land bare), and Sola's post is a response to that.

Whenever someone complains to Tynan about chicken explosions, he says that food should be a limiting factor. This means that that is a feature, not a problem.

The rest of the post is claiming that chickens eat too much. The only real explanation I can see is this:

For comparisons; one chicken eats about half as much as a pawn (10 units vs 20 units) which is crazy high.

What is this comparing exactly? Your colonists can't eat hay (you should get more hay per area and hay per work than you would human food) and they can't eat grass which is literally free.

[Razzoriel]

What is this comparing exactly? Your colonists can't eat hay (you should get more hay per area and hay per work than you would human food) and they can't eat grass which is literally free.

You didn't pay attention to the part where I said chickens are too resource-intensive compared to other larger animals. Chickens don't eat more than cows, and in Rimworld, they do, because as I said before, they eat three squares of grass per day, compared to cows/muffalos, which eat only two.

Which is why I'm saying a system of eating grass diminished the growth instead of wasting the entire square regardless of how much food they need. So we can make it so the animals that eat more now actually eat more grass, not quantified on how many squares of grass they need to keep fed. It's the same problem with "I have 100 steel; do I make a spear or a wind turbine?", but that's a complete different issue altogether.

[cultist]

So the solution seems to be faster grass growth, but reduced food value for grass? Chickens could eat their fill without stripping the map, but a massive herd of large animals would be harder on the ecosystem? Of course, this would mean that large animals have to spend more time eating/searching for food and need a larger grazing area. Realistic, I assume?

[Razzoriel]

So the solution seems to be faster grass growth, but reduced food value for grass?

No. The solution is equate one square of grass to 1.00 nutrition, and every percent growth equate to 0.01% nutrition. So grass grown at 34% equates to a square of grass worth 0.34 nutrition. If a chicken that requires 0.4 nutrition/day eats only grass, then it would eat the equivalent of 40% growth of one grass square, which is a huge reduction from three squares per day.

[cultist]

So the solution seems to be faster grass growth, but reduced food value for grass?

No. The solution is equate one square of grass to 1.00 nutrition, and every percent growth equate to 0.01% nutrition. So grass grown at 34% equates to a square of grass worth 0.34 nutrition. If a chicken that requires 0.4 nutrition/day eats only grass, then it would eat the equivalent of 40% growth of one grass square, which is a huge reduction from three squares per day.

Can animals eat only part of a plant?

[Limdood]

currently, no.

[Cimanyd]

You didn't pay attention to the part where I said chickens are too resource-intensive compared to other larger animals.

You... didn't actually say that in your original post.

That's why I didn't know why you thought chickens ate too much. If a chicken eats more grass than a muffalo, that's kind of silly.

Are you saying the chicken's food bar isn't as big as the amount of nutrition grass is worth? (I don't have time to do actual testing or dig through game files right now) If so, making it bigger (likewise for anything else that eats grass) would solve the problem, though chickens would have to be rebalanced if the eggs are balanced around how many you get for free right now. The other effect is that chickens would eat less often, but I don't think "how often chickens have to eat" is a real balance concern.