Animal food trough quality

[Deborah]

I have a quick question.

I fill my animals trough usually to hover around 36/35 fodder quality.

But when I look at my cows or sheep stats it will say food eaten: quality 26 or sometimes lower

why is it saying that?

Does it have something to do with the the fact I have grass in the pen as well as a trough?

[sabinati]

only if they are eating the grass. were they fed on q10 milk as calves? how long has it been since they matured?

[Deborah]

Yes both female cows were fed on 10q milk. But they now have calves of their own. So it has been some time since they matured.

I just checked them and their food eaten Q is 27 today.

The pen is large and I keep all females together with their calves. I often see them hanging out at the fences (trough is in the middle) could they wander to far from the trough making them eat grass and lowering their food q?

[sabinati]

if there are brown patches in the grass, then they are eating it. otherwise it is just taking a while to raise the average of all the food eaten in their lifetime.

[Deborah]

I had no idea what the food actually averages. I just assumed it gave the average of the last food they ate the last few times. This does explain why earlier this week they were 23-24 and now they are 26. But I had no idea it takes so long!

There are no brown patches in the grass.
Thank you for this info!

[Sevenless]

Oh cool, it's an average. Some stuff I've read elsewhere states that feeding them low quality is a permanent degradation to their output quality. Average makes sense to me personally.