Cows on a hunger strike

[1John5vs7]

Dear HnH,

My cows appear to have taken a page from Ghandi's book and are on a hunger strike. We tamed a bull and 2 cows out on the grassland near our base recently, and we have them penned up with not one but TWO troughs inside the pen with them. The pens are small, about 3 tiles wide by 10-12 tiles long. We have sown grass on all the tiles inside both fences (just in case that matters) and have made sure to fill the troughs completely full.

Yet despite the fact that the troughs are brimming with q25 food, the info window on all 3 cattle says that quality 10 food has been eaten. And sure enough, the troughs don't seem to be getting touched.

So where am I going wrong? Does there have to be a certain minium amount of space for the cows to move around in? Can the trough be outside of the fencing as long as the green radius covers the pen of the cows? Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Thanks for any light you can shed. In the meantimem, we're going to try relocating them to a different pen to see if this solves the problem.

Thanks,

DS

[krikke93]

Hmmm, weird, they can eat from a trough over the fence, as long as it's in the radius.
I don't really see why that's happening. Maybe they're eating from the grass? Try moving them to paved or normal ground, then let us know what happens.

[MagicManICT]

Livestock is weird that way, especially newly tamed animals. As a note, it does take a while for them to start eating from troughs for some reason, and once they do, you won't notice on quality of feed right away. I don't think it's intentional, but they might not be seeing the troughs. Picking them up and setting them down might do it, too.

[ImAwesome]

food eaten averages out just like everything else, when you first tame a cow it has a full hunger bar and q10 food(they're probably eating and you haven't noticed they don't eat alot until they're pregnant). each animal will eat just under 5 units of food per day, at q25 you won't notice any improvement for a while.

just an example I don't know a cow's full bar stat: if a new cow has 25 spots in its hunger bar all at 10, and you add 1 at 25, assuming 1 of the tens gets dropped to allow for the new hunger spot, that cows hunger points would be at 10(10 * 24 + 25 = 265 / 25 = 10.6 truncated to 10) meaning at q25 fodder if cows have 25 hunger spots you'll never raise food eaten quality(if they actually have 25 spots in hunger bar you'll need q35 to raise it by 1, then it can go up from there). if they have more you'll need higher quality fodder, if they have less then you'll get it up eventually at 25...

[1John5vs7]

food eaten averages out just like everything else, when you first tame a cow it has a full hunger bar and q10 food(they're probably eating and you haven't noticed they don't eat alot until they're pregnant). each animal will eat just under 5 units of food per day, at q25 you won't notice any improvement for a while.

just an example I don't know a cow's full bar stat: if a new cow has 25 spots in its hunger bar all at 10, and you add 1 at 25, assuming 1 of the tens gets dropped to allow for the new hunger spot, that cows hunger points would be at 10(10 * 24 + 25 = 265 / 25 = 10.6 truncated to 10) meaning at q25 fodder if cows have 25 hunger spots you'll never raise food eaten quality(if they actually have 25 spots in hunger bar you'll need q35 to raise it by 1, then it can go up from there). if they have more you'll need higher quality fodder, if they have less then you'll get it up eventually at 25...

I guess I don't understand what you mean by saying they'll never raise their quality at q 25 fodder. Wouldn't they eventually get to q 25 since it's an average of each unit of food they've eaten? Or do you have to let the cow almost starve and then feed them all high q units?

I remember at an old village before we were raided, we tamed 3 cows and a bull, and the cows got pregnant within a day in the pen with the bull and ate gangbusters. We were constantly dumping pumpkins into the troughs to keep the heifers fed, and the calf that was produced was quality 15, and that was from just taking freshly tamed cows, tossing them in a pen, and feeding them fodder that was q 25 or so. *shrug*

DS

[MagicManICT]

I guess I don't understand what you mean by saying they'll never raise their quality at q 25 fodder. Wouldn't they eventually get to q 25 since it's an average of each unit of food they've eaten? Or do you have to let the cow almost starve and then feed them all high q units?

Yeah, if they're eating from the troughs, you'll see numbers going up within a couple of days, especially if the food quality is significantly higher than the base q10 grazing they'll do without fodder. That's one way you can tell that they're not eating from troughs.

[1John5vs7]

Ok that's what I thought. What I cannot figure out is why they aren't eating from the troughs. I must assume it's because the pen is too small and they are not moving around properly. Oh well. Will relcoate them if I can ever figure out why I can't load my game client anymore. I think I need to downgrade to Java 1.6, but whenever I run the 1.6 install and it completes, there is no java.exe on my computer. So I don't know where I'm going wrong, but I'm just about to throw the towel in on the whole game (i.e. butthurt ragequitting) because of it.

Thanks for your advice though. Sorry I'm venting. Ug.

[Onionfighter]

Pen size shouldn't matter. I have kept cows penless by closing gates on them. This may not be applicable, but I have heard that pregnant cows that eat grass will start to starve, even if there is plenty of grass available.

[Potjeh]

We were constantly dumping pumpkins into the troughs to keep the heifers fed, and the calf that was produced was quality 15, and that was from just taking freshly tamed cows, tossing them in a pen, and feeding them fodder that was q 25 or so. *shrug*

Fodder q has nothing to do with genetics. Also, the random range is -5/+20, so 15 is a pretty meh roll.

Pen size shouldn't matter. I have kept cows penless by closing gates on them. This may not be applicable, but I have heard that pregnant cows that eat grass will start to starve, even if there is plenty of grass available.

From my experience this is definitely true.