Hay refrigerated

[planetmaker]

I just made a special zone to keep the hay for my animals - and found out to my surprise that it will spoil within 60 days when not refrigerated.

That struck me as quite odd as hay is in my textbook a dry food which does not spoil as long as it's kept dry.

[LWM]

It won't spoil so much as compost.

It's actually really kind of freaky.  And super cool.  Haybales make an excellent way to grow things if you can't do a garden in the ground...the hay just turns to dirt as things grow.

[Whifflepits]

I just made a special zone to keep the hay for my animals - and found out to my surprise that it will spoil within 60 days when not refrigerated.

That struck me as quite odd as hay is in my textbook a dry food which does not spoil as long as it's kept dry.

You might be thinking of straw, which has no value as fodder because it essentially has no nutritional value. That's why it doesn't succumb to the same fate as described above nearly as quickly.

The nutrition in hay is just as palatable to bacteria and fungi as it is to your animals, and it will draw moisture to itself out of the air to aide the process.

If hay didn't spoil I know some cattle farmers who'd be stacking it up in warehouses the size of a Wal-mart supercenter years in advance of it's use.

[LWM]

I believe the difference between "straw" and "hay" is that hay still has some grass seeds.  Either way, cows are cool (and have to eat a lot) because they can actually digest the cellulose roughage that makes up grass stalks.  With their 7 stomachs and alien gut microbiome.  Or whatever it is.

But they will both compost into dirt - it's just that hay will self-seed with new grass :p  And straw is much more expensive.  We use pine needles for mulching this year...

[lugaruclone]

I read 'hay refrigerators' and remembered that in Mexico we sold 'ultra cheap air conditioners' that blew air through moist hay that would cool it through evaporation and you could get a room really cold with one of those devices.

[LWM]

Slightly more advanced "Passive Cooler" eh?

[codyo]

Yeah hay should last longer realistically if it's kept indoors in perfect conditions. Agriculture does a lot of research on this and what's measured is the amount of edible mass is left over after months of storage. Typically if you keep your hay airtight and out of the sun, a bale should lose only 5% of its mass after two years. I know if you leave hay bales outside then they decay easily after 12 months and animals will avoid eating large parts of it.

60 days in Rimworld equates to a year, so this number could be bigger if you want to be realistic. The question for game balance is whether it's needed though. Already, hay grass in the game grows super fast with big yields. A year of spoilage time is kinda generous compared to other products grown. If my farmers are working all the time on a field as large as my corn plots I typically end up with a huge surplus of hay.