I keep getting a message that I have an unhealthy herd of cows at one of my barns, telling me they’re hungry. Yet the feed present in the barn is, for one example, 341 of 384, and the fodder quality is 90%. How can the cows be hungry? Am I missing something?
Maybe you forgot to set the grazing area for that farm?
Sometimes I find this is an issue for the first year or two, and then it fixes itself.
Cows require X amount of food per animal to be stored at all times.
When new calves are born, the required allotment of food per animal is automatically short by the number of new births.
Watch the food amounts requirement rise as more animals are born and you will see this in action.
Each time there are births there will be a period of shortage until more food is stocked in the Barn.
Placing a Granary contiguous to your Barn will ensure that food is close by.
Granary/Barn, gotcha. And a small field of grains, too, inside their grazing area?
Grain or Clover both seem to work for a grazing area. In my latest game, I experimented for the first time on making a separate un-fenced ‘field’ just for the cows, planted with Clover exclusively (so the farmers wouldn’t try to harvest it, which they will with Grain).
Works like a charm - well-fed cows, and from buying 4 cows to start , less than 8 years later I have 3 barns with 50 cows and am culling 7 - 9 cows per year to keep the herds level with the calving rate. It;'s about time to Upgrade the third barn, in fact!
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Nope. I set the grazing for each barn right after it was built, to the highest percentage around.
I have every one of those contingencies covered. And it isn’t that they don’t HAVE food; they have plenty, both in good grazing, and in plentiful feed in the barn. It’s just that I keep getting a message that my cows are hungry when they shouldn’t be because they have plenty of food. I can’t figure why I’m getting that message.
Now, that sounds like something to try, for sure. Thanks, Boris.