Animal farming viable?

[dkmoo]

Hi All,

I recall Tynan saying that in a17 "animal farming" for meat will be viable.  Can someone point to me exactly what changed to the animals to make animal farming viable? I was expecting some combinations of changes to to meat yield/reproduction frequency/feed amount/maturation period. But so far haven't really noticed any difference other than hunting became harder.

I really want to start raising an animal farm but want to make an educated decision based on a17 changes. What are your experiences so far? is chicken farm still the undisputed (OP) king?

Thanks

[BetaSpectre]

Viable? yes as it always was.
Preferred IMO no.

I'm not aware of any new changes but as always you can designate an extra colony/zone for the animals to eat the naturally occurring brush in forest/plains maps.

Deserts and ice sheets are kind of no no unless you have a farming set up, but if you do then it's usually cheaper to just keep your food around (unless you hate using power for some reason)

This is just my opinion of course based on gameplay

[Bozobub]

Animal farming is completely viable, *IF* you combine purposes.  Remember, animals also can potentially provide:
- Wool.
- Milk.
- Defense.
- Hauling.
- Colonist rescue.
- Transport for caravans.
- Persistent mood bonuses.

You don't have to feed the grass-eaters at all if you don't want to, although keeping a haygrass and/or kibble stash is a good idea for lean times (fallout, blight, and so on).

Animal farming just for meat?  Nah.  But that's far too simplistic a way too look at it.  SOME animals are certainly worth farming, although I'd avoid using the ones that cannot haul/rescue, myself.  Even a horde of squirrels can be marvelous, used correctly!  I've had attack-trained animals save my pawns (especially hunters) from serious injury/death many times, indeed.

[dkmoo]

Thanks, that's all fine and good what both of you said, and I've been doing some of those since I started in a16.  I'm more asking specifically about making meat farming viable b/c Tynan himself specifically said "Tons and tons of rebalancing and detailed redesign to make skills matter more, make the economy more coherent and balanced, make animal farming for meat viable," in the A17 updates. I just have yet to see or notice specifically what he updated to support this statement.

it sounds like you guys didn't notice any changes either?

[Bozobub]

In my case, not really, but I have never farmed JUST for meat, so I don't have a "control case" to compare to; YMMV, of course .

If you let grazers, well...GRAZE, they're easy to treat as self-replicating grass-to-meat conversion units, just as is the case IRL.  Just forbid them from all your fields and food storage (yes, that means no animal hauling of food though!) and don't train them at all; ZERO effort and expense, beyond zoning now and then.  You also need to make sure you patrol your flock/herd for babies, so you can kill them when you have enough; this will help maintain your FPS somewhat.  I also do NOT recommend the super-fast breeders, like chickens, unless you enjoy constant micromanagement, no matter what reason you're "ranching".

If you get creative with zoning, you can keep largish groups of self-maintaining animals that also happen to interfere with incoming raids.  Squirrels are notoriously good for this (very hard to target) and so are bears (they're, well, BEARS ) and other large animals.  Remember, though, NEVER rescue downed animals in this scenario (unless you keep separate groups)!  Otherwise they may bond to your colonists anyway.

I've done it many ways, but I personally prefer pigs or larger dogs as a "base" pet (so anyone can have one + omnivorous; I like pigs better) and muffalo/giant sloths/elephants/bears/etc. for pack/defense animals.

[Gohihioh]

If you want to breed animals use Colony Manager mod. You can specify the amout of animals your colony will keep. They will automatically butcher anything that goes beyond the set limit(you set limit separetaly for female, male and juvenile - meaning that you can leave hens or cows for milk and eggs but kill all roosters or chickens).
Everything is super easy with it and you don't have to micromanage anything, just set good area for them to food of.

[Thraxon]

I beleve not much changes has been made with animal farming ( they still eat random meal and corn... ). But you can do it with natural ressources and caravan, animal will graze instead of eating supply.
I cannot be sure of A17 changes but i noticed differences beetween few patchs ago. I think that animals are more obedient. They respond quicker to zone change or attack command. This is a great improove. Also hay is giving larger yield or grow faster? 


You can easy manage a great herd without mod, using animal tab and multiples animals zones. 
You ofc need a fertile map with a good climate so that bushes grows by itself most of the year.

I recommand using a inverted home zone for grazing, exculding all your living buildings and paths, because animals with make ton of dirts everywhere. You can inculde a large barn with sleeping spots in the border of your town, to force them to come back sleep at night. The down side of this your pawn will travel big distances to milk/shave. You can counter this by zoning your shepherd to not go too far.

To slaugther animals in few clicks it is simple, you need a small zone inside your freezer and switch of zone all your babys  by holding left click and drag to the bottom. When animals are inside the zone, double click slaugther.

You will need another zone in case of raid.Bunker inside sleeping barn. Keep multiples males in case of raiders kill your only male .

[b0rsuk]

Using animals for meat only is awkward and not terribly efficient. Doubly awkward in a biome with winter - you have to stockpile plant matter for them to eat in winter, and now you're either growing food or harvesting berries while trying to keep them out of hands of colonists.

I keep trying to get Megasloths, which are like bears with good wool, but they tend to be scarce and you need a really good tamer for a nice chance.

[Jovus]

I vaguely remember that, in the service of making farming more viable, incest checks in animals were removed or restricted.

Don't know if that's true, though, as I haven't played a17 yet.

[iceteazz]

 _ You can use animal farming for many products in a post above. But honestly, if you want animals for stuff, you have to be sure several things : your people got enough foods to survive, you got enough foods for your animals ( meats, hay grass, kibble etc ) you pick the right animal for right products you want ( milk, meat, chicken nuggets, wool, leather, even haulers, fighters, mule animals etc ) and the last : you need to build a certain temp environment for those animals to survive. Many animals have very limited range of temp, too cold they will freeze to death, too hot they will go insane.

_ I personally always grow some kind of animal for meats because i mostly play in pretty hard biome where you can not hunt much wild animals. My favourites are chicken ( of course ) cow ( milk ) alpaca / muffalo ( wool ) and raiders ( meat, leather )

[Boston]

Raising animals just for their meat alone is generally pretty much always going to be extremely 'expensive' and wasteful.

A good rule of thumb for real-world animal husbandry is "It takes 10x the land to raise 1 lb of meat than it does to grow 1 lb of grain".

Sheep and Goats are the worlds most husbanded animal due to sheer practicality: they don't just provide meat, but also milk, wool, dung and leather, and can be raised on land that can't grow crops. Pigs and Cattle come in at #3 and #4.

[Thraxon]

Last tips, If you don't make use of human corpse, you can hold a small a pig farm with it ( pig, huskies, or whatever eat corpses ) in a freezer. It will also eat any rotten corpse. Enclose em in a small freezen.
But be sure to have a safe supply of food in case of no raid and don't be too greedy.

[Sola]

Bill > Make Kibble - Always > Use only Human meat and Haygrass.

Animals fed forever.

[Snafu_RW]

Bill > Make Kibble - Always > Use only Human + insect meat and Haygrass.

Animals fed forever.

FIFY

[mumblemumble]

Raising animals for meat isn't the best idea by itself, but combined with uses, they work well. Attack pigs for instance work good as you can eat ones that die, and they haul too, and breed easy enough you can keep cycling in new ones when other ones die off.

Add to that the using kibble to handle human meat being recycled into animal meat over time, and its viable to use them as meat, but I would recommend getting animals that can do something useful while they fatten up, otherwise the usage is a little dubious.

I like pigs the best because they are very easy to train, do all jobs, and are omnivores : pretty much easy mode animals, but they don't do any job super well either.

But they are good haulers, decent cuddle animals for mood bonuses, ok at attacking, and easy to provide meat. Plus, taming them is much easier than taming boars, or squirrels, or other critters.

Guess the big question is if you have a decent tamer, if so, go ahead, if not, just put the effort into growing more food. Though remember that human meat can be recycled into good meat using this approach, and if you have plenty, its worth it to get, effectively, free meat.

....Really depends on what the feed situation is for the animals, I guess.