In one of my games I had a few large barns built close together. In one barn the cattle grazed on a field with 99% fodder quality, In another two barns they grazed together also on a 99% field, so both had a fodder quality of 50%. All three barns had the same number of workers and livestock. Over the course of many years, they produced roughly the same amount of milk yearly. One would have thought that with such contrast between fodder quality I should see a difference in milk production.
I think the barn mechanics could be better explained because it’s not clear to players how fodder quality, livestock health and the amount of milk produced are related to each other.
Don’t have hard numbers, but some time ago I did an experiment in-game with barns, cows and grazing: put one herd on a purpose-planted field of Clover, one in a fruit orchard, one on plain fertile ground, etc.
In the end, couldn’t see much of any difference - and before that, I had been regularly using carefully prepared planted clover pastures for each Barn.
In fact, found out that the amount of food in the barns (grain, root vegetables) made much more difference in happiness and healthiness of the cattle than anything they grazed on, and haven’t bothered to plant a clover field for them since!
It appears to be far more important to make sure you are growing enough grain and root veggies and have a granary and root cellar stocking those items close to the barns to keep them supplied, than any differences in where they are grazing.
lets pretend that a cow needs 100 food per year. you have 2 barns, 1 at 50%, 1 at 99%.
the 99% barn would consume 25 food during the winter months, and no food during the summer months
the 50% barn would consume 25 food during winter and about 37 food during summer = 62 food total
higher fodder means you need less grain/roots per year.
Since this discussion seems to be about feeding meat/milk animals on Farthest Frontier please consider these very basic questions:
I am getting alerts because my beef critters are out of a substance the game calls Fodder, yet there are no means to provide them with Fodder.
What is Fodder (sorry, I was a city kid I know nothing about cows/farming)?
Specifically where does it come from?
I tried to hunt Fodder, grow Fodder, forage Fodder, mine and pray for Fodder but I guess it is a magical substance that somehow appears?
I have looked at all the crops and all the stuff that shows up in the list of stuff the village can stock and I see the word FODDER no where, so now I guess FODDER is a secret code word.
I am sometimes a slow learner and need complete answers in plain-simple English, no code words please.
Thank you in advance.
Two days later: the mystery was solved. Cows eat farmed crops gathered by the cow managers. And Fodder = Cow Food. No more replies needed. Thank you to Mazus for a great answer.
cattle need food to sustain themselves , you need to assign a grass field for them to feed on.
during the winter season, your cattle will rely on wheat / rye / buckwheat or root vegetable (carrot / turnip) to keep them going
your barn worker will store these “fooder” to the barn and prepare for winter season
in short, you need to grow some extra root vegetable or grain before you plan to raise some cow.
I let cows alwasy grase on my regular fields. The dung outways by far the little food they consume
I create 2 side by side fileds of 8x16 and fence them in, fodder quality is typically at 100%
Why two fields? Especially in early game, it is to difficult to finetune flax, roots aso and fertility with one big 16x16.
In my calculation, the fertility gane by direct cow manure (depending on general fertility) is at least at 5% plus p.a. that is a lot, again especially in early game