Inadequate fodder availability - which choice is less bad

[xyzzy57]

Suppose you are running a just-in-time fodder production system. You have good livestock; food quality matters.

Situations outside of your control result in you not harvesting enough high Q fodder for an RL week.

You don't have stockpiles of good enough fodder.

Which will cause less harm to your animals:

- feeding them whatever junk you can stuff into their troughs, well below animal q
- letting their troughs become empty, so the animals hibernate?

What about harm to any young that are still nursing?

What if the swill isn't horrific - just 20 or 50 Q below animal Q? Or below the expected Q of the animal's milk/meat/hide/wool?

p.s. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to keep my livestock fed on adequate Q fodder, in spite of moundbeds no longer working reliably.
But I'm not sure I'll have enough stored, or will be able to keep crops un-withered long enough to harvest them, so here I am asking this question.

Thanks for any enlightenment. Though I fear we won't have a good answer till we have the results of people's attempts to cope with the broken moundbed winter on world 16.

[vatas]

Assuming you're a returning player. There's been an update over a year ago that makes livestock effectively hibernate instead of starving:

viewtopic.php?f=39&t=79249

It requires the livestock to be on a claim, and not be manually woken up (until the supply of fodder has been restored.)