Oddball question on raising animals

[Ariander]

HI -

A couple weeks back I traded for breeding pairs of all domestic animals (horses, cows, pigs and sheep) - all of them came to me as adults and quite high quality in terms of their various traits - a quality well beyond my ability to produce swill/food for at the same level. The trader was also kind enough to provide me with a pretty large amount of high quality swill-filled troughs - so I'm just now running out...

My question is this - if I feed them a quality of food that is far lower than the condition they arrived to me in, will that also affect things like milk, breeding, etc. in the adult animals themselves or only the offspring? Like let's say I separate the males and females for a time, until I can get better quality food, will they still maintain the stats/traits they had when I first got them so I can start breeding them at a later date?

Thanks in advance for any info...

Ari

[Fratari]

If my rabbits are any indicator, low food quality won't just affect the quality of their produce; it will affect the quality of the animals themselves.

[Ariander]

Bleh, that's what I was afraid of - oh well, thanks for answering at least I probably should have waited to trade for the animals until my farming was higher.

[MagicManICT]

I've not messed with animal husbandry this world, but if I recall right, the animals track the average food quality eaten, so it will come up over time. You can keep those original breeding stock alive for a while (or as best you can) and it will help bring your animal quality up as your farming increases. Or at least faster than what it would normally go at.

Just remember that carrots are the fastest quality increase if you can keep them rotated as quickly as they grow. You can harvest them a stage early to get seeds to replant if you're only worried about pushing quality.

[Iva]

I probably should have waited to trade for the animals until my farming was higher.

You can buy good quality seeds and start to plant them even with low farming skill. In this case, the quality of the crop will not increase and may even decrease a little, but not with 100% probability. The level of your farming skill is not hardcaps crop quality for now.

[Potjeh]

Unless they changed it recently fodder quality doesn't cap genetics at all, it only caps the products quality.