I have come to wonder four things about livestock in this game.
Firstly, is there a way to see what amount and what kinds of fodder goes into a given barn?
Secondly, does the different kinds of livestock require different amounts of fodder pr. animal? (I would imagine so, but I’d like to be sure)
Thirdly, what does the fodder quality bonus of the grazing area actually do? Obviously, the higher the better, but I’d like specifics.
Fourthly, it seems from a superficial investigation, that the only advantage of goats compared to cows, is that goats are more tolerant in terms of what grazing areas gives them a fodder bonus. Is this to?
Click on the barn and it tells what you is kept there as fodder. Villagers prefer stocking it with hay over grain, and grain over root veg, and also prefer stocking it from closer storage buildings.
Nope, they’re all the same.
It affects the health of the herd. Higher health means more milk and more births. The effect is non-linear, above ~70% pasture quality you’ll barely see a difference. You have to go below 60% to start feeling the effects.
That’s one advantage - although you can always build a crop field and keep it perpetually filled with clover to have great pasture for any animal. Goats are also cheaper to buy, breed a little faster, have cheaper & smaller barns, and need fewer herders. This makes it substantially easier to start ranching them in the early game. However, the amount of milk / meat / tallow / hide per herder is lower for goats than for cows.
I realise I phrased myself wrongly - My main concern was the yearly consumption of fodder for any given barn, rather than the type of fodder as such - I figured, though, that it would be a reasonable assumption that different kinds of fodder would be used at different rates.
So a chicken eats the same amount of fodder as a cow? Wild! - Where, by the way, did you find this information?
Thanks!
I crunched the numbers for my current settlement, and I found that in every respect - once things are up and running that is - cows are just the better choice, even when accounting for the amount of workers required and the amount of land used. I didn’t think of the fact that goats are faster and cheaper to get up and running - that’s a good point.
Sorry, I misunderstood the first couple of questions. I meant that each type of feedstock is worth the same: 1 unit of grain is worth 1 of hay is worth 1 of roots. Different types of animals do eat different amounts. In the barn panel, you see a number for feedstock, something like 120/150. The numerator is how much you have in that barn, the denominator is, I think, the estimated yearly consumption of feedstock in that barn. Which is really the same thing as the winter consumption, because animals only eat from it for the 3 winter months.
If you want all the numbers I pulled from the game:
This is very helpful! Thanks a lot! So it looks like goats eat four units of fodder a month, compared to the 10 for cows (If I read your table correctly) - So they have that going for them at least.
Another point to weigh in here is that should you not have the hay, grains or root vegetables to feed them, their health bar will go down but rarely ever kill any of them off. When spring comes, the quality of the grazing area does seem to affect how quickly their health recovers. Planting clover is kind of a misnomer in that none of the farmers actually go to the field to do any planting. It is just automatic. You can have zero farmers and still plant clover.
While cow barns seem to have the most meat per worker (85 per year) over goat barns (45 per year) when they are at max population and fully manned up, they still pale in comparison to what a single hunter can bring in. I usually see between 150 to 325 a year from hunters. The difference though is that barns add milk production, which can be turned into cheese and provide the only two food sources for the dairy food group. Housing upgrades that require a certain number of food types go by these categories. Not the foods themselves. Be careful with your hunters though as over saturating your map will quickly kill off all the deer. You’ll want plenty of meat smokers too or that meat will just rot in 3 months time. Also, I wouldn’t bother upgrading your hunter cabins unless you ensure they have traps set to zero. If the deer are present (and boar are better) then trap meat will reduce your production rate drastically. They are only good when you have low populations of deer to hunt.
It is also worth noting that chickens provide eggs, which is an ingredient for the only luxury group food item, pastries.
Looking at the numbers in game, it looks like barns try to stock 4 months worth of feedstock for animals. But they only seem to eat 3 months worth. Probably, it’s hard to keep track exactly.