Animals Not Turning "Fat"

[Yldrania 1,425]

My deer are not eating from the ground at all, no matter what I put there. The only animals that eat a LOT are chickens, everything else seems to have stopped eating.

Edited May 15, 2018 by Yldrania

[Pashka 707]

My chickens aren't eating either.  Most everything I put on the ground is just going to decay at this point.

[Yldrania 1,425]

13 minutes ago, Pashka said:

My chickens aren't eating either.  Most everything I put on the ground is just going to decay at this point.

Mine eat only when there's a rooster and they're producing eggs. They don't produce eggs at all without a rooster for me.

[Yldrania 1,425]

UPDATE:

 

I killed an animal that did NOT show the fat trait in its name, however when I killed it it gave me the message [15:04:28] An aged fat bison is dead. R.I.P. 

Beginning of the fight: [14:36:41] You try to cut aged bison. 

Picture of the dead animal: 

[Pashka 707]

Can we please get our animals to start eating again.  I know that they eventually get to fat but I'd rather some of them hurried up.  Plus my chickens are decidedly stingy with eggs when they are not eating.

[Brash_Endeavors 4,735]

On 5/15/2018 at 5:43 AM, Yldrania said:

Mine eat only when there's a rooster and they're producing eggs. They don't produce eggs at all without a rooster for me.

 

Is this a new change in game mechanics?

[Alectrys 2,040]

1 minute ago, Brash_Endeavors said:

 

Is this a new change in game mechanics?

 

No, just a particular player's observation.  Mine all lay eggs and eat fine without a rooster.

[Pashka 707]

I haven't had a rooster around in ages.  Doesn't affect production or the eggs hatching.

[Yldrania 1,425]

16 hours ago, Alectrys said:

 

No, just a particular player's observation.  Mine all lay eggs and eat fine without a rooster.

So is the feeding thing also just an observation or an actual bug? 

[Pashka 707]

Ok 3 days ago I dropped 4 pumpkins and 4 seeds in each of my pens that hold either 2 chickens or 2 pigs.  The most missing is 1.  Some pens do not even have 1 item missing.  So instead of getting them to eat now they eat nothing?  I think something is going backwards instead of forwards.

[Kelody 333]

Pumpkins are a very poor choice of food to drop on the ground. Fine for manual feeding. Animals will eat when they are slightly hungry, but will eat the entire pumpkin. I use bread slices or breadcrumbs to feed pigs, easy to get lots of small pieces. Also a good way to unload loads of lq meats.

 

For hens that that refuse to lay eggs, I would starve them for 2 days then resume feeding. They eat constantly when laying eggs and should have 10 + food available each day to get maximum eggs. 

 

If if you don’t relog regularly, animal age and fat to not update in the highlight text. It is correct in the examine text. 

Edited May 23, 2018 by Kelody

[Pashka 707]

I have always used pumpkins to feed the pigs.  They used to eat 5 of them each and every day.  The chickens used to eat 10 seeds each and every day.  I have been away for a few days and came back to find only a few things eaten by the chickens or pigs.  I would say a chance for them to have decay'd but the decay on the remaining items wasn't to that extent  yet.  Just would love for some feedback from a dev so we know if this is intended or what.  It is beginning to look like I can feed them or starve them and will come up with the same results.  (Before someone says it is because I have been away......I have had absences like this before and the animals still ate and still got hungry and still did everything else that I expect.  This isn't my first few days in the game.)

Edited May 29, 2018 by Pashka

[punishlife 449]

So despite stocking up the food supplies daily, my two chickens starved to death at seperate times, the older one died a couple of days ago (the last one actually died during a stream) i'd leave 10+ seeds per chickenand when i noticed i had one left that was starving, i manually fed it until it wasn't interested in food and it died minutes later. The horses seem fine for the moment but my other animals are eating less and less

[Ostentatio 1,970]

2 hours ago, punishlife said:

So despite stocking up the food supplies daily, my two chickens starved to death at seperate times, the older one died a couple of days ago (the last one actually died during a stream) i'd leave 10+ seeds per chickenand when i noticed i had one left that was starving, i manually fed it until it wasn't interested in food and it died minutes later. The horses seem fine for the moment but my other animals are eating less and less

 

How old were the chickens? Can you confirm somehow that it was starvation, not old age?

[Brash_Endeavors 4,735]

Chickens do die much much younger than almost all other farm animals (at the end of "Aged" I think, though if you give one a Cared For slot it can survive past Old & Venerable). It should have zero meat when butchered if it literally starved to death.  

 

I would probably start hand feeding animals you are extra concerned about  at least once a week  on grains (wheat oat rye or barley -- those have much better nutrition than normal seeds and are easier to carry in large amounts than pumpkins) in addition to "ground piles" until we find out whether anything is severely broken, plus "examine" any to see if they show signs of malnourished.  As far as I know, they are simply gaining fat more slowly rather than actually losing weight or starving. but if people can chart their "fat status" (see list below) it will be easier to document and get dev attention. Be aware any animals that go through pregnancy (includes chickens and eggs) can suddenly require vastly more calories, so mares used in horsebreeding might easily become extremely thin if not given some time off between pregnancies.

 

 

If you examine them, the starvation / fat levels are:

 

• only skin and bones
• very thin
• a bit under nourished
• normal build
• well defined
• a bit round
• extremely well nourished
• good reserves of fat

 

I would probably put on special watch status any animals at "under nourished" or lower, and certainly not allow those to get pregnant. 

 

 

I seem to recall this issue of "horses gaining fat layers super slowly" as one that periodically popped up over the years every so often, so I would not be surprised if devs might occasionally be tweaking codes, perhaps even to reduce lag on Xanadu, or reducing ground packing, etc by reducing the timers on animals looking for food or something or another. Or it might be that animals are an unintended consequence of other tweaking. 

 

it is not really a new issue though it may come-and-go:

 

 

2015:

 

2014:

 

 

 

Apparently GetInfo (path of knowledge) will monitor animal hunger levels so maybe also use that as a monitoring tool, if it is available.  I don;t know how timers or polling data or whatever works (how animals decide when to eat, when to look for food, etc) so maybe a dev out there can step in and educate us all on how it works in normal conditions.   If it is simply gaining fat more slowly, that in itself is not actually dangerous nor does it much affect gameplay (although it can severely agitate those with OCD -- I am among those professionally diagnosed with OCD and it does not take much sometimes to get me agitated, as a few have learned over the years)

 

Chickens and egg laying will always be the most severely affected, I would not worry too much if horses and cows are gaining fat layers slowly. It would not be the first time and for the less fragile animals, should not be a major issue.  My egg laying chickens used to get quite thin if I did not run around and hand feed them periodically. That was years ago, I no longer bother with pigs or chickens as it was too frustrating. Cooking probably changed that for many people, and got them interested in those animals again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 29, 2018 by Brash_Endeavors

[punishlife 449]

On 5/29/2018 at 8:24 PM, Ostentatio said:

 

How old were the chickens? Can you confirm somehow that it was starvation, not old age?

The first one was old, it died when i was offline.

the other =

[19:18:24] A mature hen eats a barley.
[19:18:24] A mature hen does not seem hungry any longer.

[19:18:31] You drop 16 barley.
[19:19:04] A fine hen proudly prods around here.
[19:19:04] She is only skin and bones.
[22:09:40] A mature starving hen rolls with the eyes, ejects her tongue and dies from starvation.
[22:09:40] A mature starving hen is dead. R.I.P.

[Alectrys 2,040]

Just because the hen won't eat another seed, doesn't mean she is not still starving.  

 

They must have not been fed for quite a while to get to the starving.

 

I've also noticed that some animals are lazy and won't go around their pens to eat, so I drop food on every tile in their pen and mine stay fat.

[punishlife 449]

Well thats the thing, the chickens lived in a 2x1 pen and i'd have a pile of seeds on both tiles and i did resupply them frequently, more often than not, say i dropped 15 seeds, i'd see a pile with 9 damaged ones after 2 days, they just weren't eating them all, so i'd swap out decaying ones for fresh ones as i went about restocking the other pens

[Yldrania 1,425]

Let's face it: Something is going on with animals and the way they feed. It is obviously not just me experiencing this issue. I have seals next to piles of fish that are dying from starvation. I have hens in pens filled with piles of mixed grass and seeds that are not eating. I have horses that have been on enchanted grass since birth and have not turned fat by the time they are aged. SOMETHING is going on. All I'd like to know is whether this is a bug or a game mechanic. 

[Pashka 707]

My chickens are in a single tile pen as are my other animals.  I know they are not eating like they should, sometimes not at all.  I have decided since the devs will not say anything that it must be a new feature.  The animals are going to take 3 times as long to get fat and they are not going to eat as they should from piles on the ground.  One less chore for me I suppose.

[Brash_Endeavors 4,735]

On 6/1/2018 at 12:37 PM, Alectrys said:

 They must have not been fed for quite a while to get to the starving. 

 

 

I think they can also get to starving even with abundant food, if they are laying eggs  faster  than they can add new fat layers. Actually, any time they are laying eggs actively, they are probably burning through fat layers FASTER than possible to add them, unless hand fed throughout the day.  If devs slowed down player+animal fat production during the Cooking/Nutrition update a couple years ago, the impact might take time to show up.

 

I am not sure if food types influence egg laying, but if there is a way to "encourage" egg laying in food types / feeding styles, there might also be a way to discourage egg laying by feeding things like, I dunno, cucumbers?  and I would certainly recommend "discouraging" hens at less than "round" from laying any eggs for a spell. In addition to piles on every tile, I always hand fed periodically (weekly or so) the .30kg "grains" (wheat, oat etc), it seemed like many would lay eggs soon afterwards,  and I now have something like 400 eggs in my larder, which I will never use as I mostly just cook Pizzas. This is on WU which might have slightly "older code" than WO and therefore may not be applicable here. It is possible that mixed grass piles are counter-productive as it has next to zero nutrition under the new nutrition system, and eating a mixed grass might cause an animal to miss a chance to add fat layers causing them to never quite fatten up... Also horse breeding can have a similar impact on horses -- repeated pregnancies from an early age without much time off between can mean it is hard for them to eat enough to replenish fat? Maybe -- or maybe not. This is just guessing. I have not had a problem despite a massive horse breeding farm, but then I tend to take more time off from the game every couple weeks giving the animals perhaps a needed break from baby-production as well. 

 

Certainly Pashka & Alectrys  have both  been tending chickens longer than I have been playing Wurm (I am pretty sure I recall seeking noobie egg advice from both), and I defer to their knowledge of chickenlore. I have been pretty haphazard mostly in keeping chickens, though I did try to up egg production (pretty successfully) after the Cooking update. Then I lost interest again once I realized I wasn't using eggs much.

 

I might just have been lucky but if there is a way to try to "fatten up" chickens and discourage egg laying until they are a certain minimum weight class, I would probably suggest giving them a periodic timeoff from egg production... It is very possible one problem is some are too successful at egg & baby animal production, and the animals just cannot keep up?  "A Broodmare's Tale" ....  Could be another argument in favor of adding cooking recipes for animals (kibble), so that animals can survive off foraging as long as they get occasional "high nutrition" too....

 

 

 

 

Edited June 3, 2018 by Brash_Endeavors

[Pashka 707]

We already have to put food out for chickens, pigs, dogs and any other non foraging pet.  I would rather there not be another chore of having to hand feed or cook for an animal.  I did cook for my champ dogs ages ago on indy but only so they would get bigger meals  than any pile of meat I might put out.  Regardless of what some have said, if you know what they will eat during a day they will eat that amount regardless if it is in 3 bites or in 300 bites.   Just do not want any more forced chores.

[TeeeBOMB 668]

I found another example of a 'non fat' horse. This one is branded to my deed Cornersville on Independence. It is off deed and has been stranded in the wild on a grass tile for over 120 days. It is being cared for by previous owner (has not been online 123 days).

 

When I 'examine' it, I get "[11:08:02] He is very strong and has a good reserve of fat." When I try to feed it, it says, "... does not seem interested in food right now."

 

But still. when I cursor over this horse, it does not say 'fat', see image...

 

 

Also, it does not say fat on my animal list. All other animals on my animal list says 'fat' on them. The grass tile it is standing on, is 'tall'.

 

Thanks your thread Yldrania o/

 

TeeeBOMB