How to Feed Animals in RimWorld (1.6) | Animal Feeding Planner + Winter Reserve Tool

How to Feed Animals in RimWorldWithout Feeding Bad Failures

Quick answer: match the animal to the food it can actually eat, check the pen marker, keep roofed hay or kibble close to the barn, and cut herd pressure before winter starts eating the reserve.

Open Feed Planner Jump to Quick Solution

Local Core defs 1.6.4633 Make_Kibble verified from local data Warg rule checked from ThingDefs_Races

Step 2: Key Data Sources

Small Pet Bases

Household convenience first

If the colony only has a bonded pet or a couple of utility animals, the real job is stopping them from burning colonist meals. Give them one reachable animal shelf and refill it from low-priority inputs instead of overbuilding a ranch economy.

Use kibble or hay as a dedicated animal lane.
Keep the shelf near base traffic, not mixed into the pantry.
Rebuild only when the reserve drops, not forever.

Fast action: for small bases, put a roofed shelf near the animals, tighten human food policies, and keep one modest reserve instead of a giant winter barn workflow.

Quick Solution: Feed Animals Fast

Situation	Fastest answer	Why it works	Biggest mistake
Pen herbivores hungry	Check the pen marker, then add reachable hay or more grazing.	The pen math tells you if land still supports the herd.	Crafting more kibble before checking reachability.
Winter or toxic fallout	Move roofed hay or kibble onto barn-side shelves now.	Stored feed works after plants stop doing the job.	Waiting until the pen already went negative.
Pets stealing meals	Give pets their own reachable kibble lane.	Dedicated shelves stop human food leakage.	Using the same pantry for colonists and animals.
Wargs starving	Feed raw meat or corpses.	Local Core def marks warg food as strict carnivore only.	Assuming kibble works for every predator.

Emergency Animal Feed Checklist

Confirm the animal is getting the right diet category first. Confirm the food is inside the pen or allowed route. Confirm there is a roofed shelf, stockpile, or barn tile animals can reach. Use a butcher table if you are converting mixed spare inputs into kibble. Remove kibble from normal colonist food policies. Cull or sell surplus breeders if the pen marker is already red.

Status: start with the first three checks. If any of them fail, the route is broken before the recipe is broken.

Common Kibble Mistakes to Avoid

Using kibble to avoid herd-size decisions.
Converting scarce colonist food into routine animal feed.
Ignoring reachability and blaming the recipe.
Building the winter reserve too late.
Keeping one universal shelf for animals with different diet rules.

Local 1.6.4633 Reminders

Make_Kibble uses 1 nutrition of raw meat or animal product plus 1 nutrition of plant food, with Hay explicitly allowed.
Kibble and Hay both carry 0.05 nutrition per item in local defs.
ButcherSpot has WorkTableEfficiencyFactor 0.7, which is why the same recipe only gives the effective 35-output result.
PenMarker and AnimalFlap local defs match the barn-routing advice in your report.
Warg uses CarnivoreAnimalStrict in local race data.

FAQ & Quick Tips

Do I need research to make kibble?

No special research gate is the important part here. The usual failure is using the wrong workstation or not having both ingredient sides available.

Why are animals still hungry if food exists on the map?

Because food location is part of feed quality. If the food is outside the pen, under the wrong policy, or behind a bad route, the colony still behaves as if it is short.

Can all carnivores eat kibble?

No. Your local Warg def is the important exception: strict carnivore only, meaning raw meat or corpses instead of kibble.

Should I use hay or kibble for herbivores?

Hay usually wins on simplicity. Kibble wins when you need mixed stable feed, want to dump low-priority meat, or need a cleaner reserve for travel or mixed colonies.

Patch History

2025-06-11: Ludeon announced Odyssey and free Update 1.6.
2025-07-11: Odyssey and Update 1.6 went live.
2025-08-28: 1.6.4566 improved animal travel and roaming behavior.
2025-10-31: 1.6.4630 fixed some animal fishing edge cases.
2025-11-04: stable version history marks 1.6.4633.

The official notes change animal-management context around travel and fishing, but your local code snapshot still shows the same core feeding loop: Make_Kibble, Kibble, Hay, PenMarker, AnimalFlap, and Warg all line up with the vanilla advice in the report.

Advanced Storage & Bill Tips

Ingredient staging: keep low-priority meat and hay closest to the butcher table.
Shelf priorities: make the barn shelf the easiest valid destination.
Animal flap routing: connect the barn without making colonist traffic cut through the feed room.
Reserve targets: build to a number based on nutrition per day, not on shelf vibes.

Watch & Learn Videos

Kibble Crafting Guide

Basic recipe loop

Animal Feeding Tips

Pens, shelves, winter prep

Food Farming 2025

Haygrass and grazing context

Planner Tools: emergency triage, reserve math, and local Core-def facts

Emergency Feed Tool

Use this when animals are already trending toward starvation and you need the next correct action, not a whole theory lecture.

Animal group

Current situation

Immediate problem

Best backup feed available

Can the animal reach the feed?

Herd pressure

Logic here follows your report plus the local Core defs for Make_Kibble, PenMarker, AnimalFlap, and Warg.

Recommendation

Choose the inputs on the left. The tool will tell you what to fix first, what food lane fits the animal, and when the real answer is to cut herd pressure.

Primary feed lane —

First fix —

Penalty to avoid —

Reserve reminder —

Vanilla Feed Matrix

Animal category	Best default feed	Best reserve feed	Important caveat
Pen herbivores	Pasture or hay	Roofed hay, then kibble if mixed input matters	Pasture first; do not overcraft kibble if the pen already carries them.
House pets / haulers	Kibble	Kibble on a dedicated shelf	Remove kibble from colonist food policies.
Most tamed carnivores	Raw meat or kibble	Kibble if the species allows it	Check the exact animal before assuming the warg rule applies.
Wargs	Raw meat or corpses	Raw meat reserve	Local Warg def uses CarnivoreAnimalStrict, so kibble is the wrong plan.
Pack animals	Map forage when possible	Stable packed kibble or hay	Plan for total travel time, not just the ideal ETA.

Winter Reserve Calculator

Enter the nutrition your stored feed needs to cover. This uses the local 1.6.4633 values of 0.05 nutrition for both Kibble and Hay, plus the local recipe and butcher spot efficiency data.

Daily nutrition

Reserve days

Safety margin %

Bench used for kibble

Reserve type you plan around

Recipe facts used: Make_Kibble outputs 50; ButcherSpot has 0.7 efficiency; Kibble and Hay both carry 0.05 nutrition.

Reserve math

Enter your numbers. The calculator will convert total nutrition into kibble count, hay count, butcher batches, and approximate hay/meat inputs for the selected bench.

Total nutrition with margin —

Kibble needed —

Hay needed —

Batches at selected bench —

Plant-side input items —

Meat-side input items —

How to read the result

Kibble count tells you the shelf number if kibble carries the whole reserve.
Hay count tells you the equivalent animal-feed count if herbivores just eat hay directly.
Plant-side / meat-side items assume the common 0.05 nutrition inputs like hay and raw meat.
If herd pressure is already too high, a bigger reserve number is not the only fix. The correct fix may still be fewer mouths.

Local 1.6.4633 Code Facts

These cards use the local RimWorld data already in the site repo under static/data/rimworld/1.6.4633_rev1266/entities. They are the in-repo facts this page is built around.

Make_Kibble

RecipeDefs/Recipes_Food.xml

Ingredients: MeatRaw or AnimalProductRaw count 1.
Ingredients: PlantFoodRaw count 1 with Hay explicitly listed.
Product: Kibble 50.
Work amount: 450. Work skill: Cooking.

TableButcher vs ButcherSpot

ThingDefs_Buildings/Buildings_Production.xml

Both local defs list Make_Kibble in their recipes.
ButcherSpot has WorkTableEfficiencyFactor 0.7.
The spot is the emergency option, not the efficient long-term option.
TableButcher also carries the expected cleanliness penalty.

Kibble

ThingDefs_Items/Items_Food.xml

Description: mixed meat and plant animal feed; humans dislike it.
Nutrition 0.05 per item.
DeteriorationRate 6, so roofed storage still matters.
FoodPoisonChanceFixedHuman 0.02 reinforces that this is not people food.

Hay & Haygrass

Items_Resource_RawPlant.xml / Plants_Cultivated_Farm.xml

Hay description explicitly says good animal feed, inedible for humans.
Hay carries Nutrition 0.05.
Plant_Haygrass is described as nutrient-rich grasses yielding hay.
The local data supports hay as the simple herbivore reserve lane.

PenMarker & AnimalFlap

Buildings_Misc.xml / Buildings_Structure.xml

PenMarker local description matches the vanilla pen-routing workflow.
AnimalFlap local description explicitly calls out insulated animal access.
That is why barn-side shelves and animal flaps belong in the same plan.
Storage route quality is part of feed quality.

Warg

ThingDefs_Races/Races_Animal_WargGroup.xml

Local race data uses foodType: CarnivoreAnimalStrict.
The local description says wargs only eat meat or corpses.
This is the key exception that breaks lazy one-shelf feed plans.
If the colony has a warg, reserve the right food before travel or winter.

Open the local wiki pages

Make_Kibble Kibble Hay TableButcher ButcherSpot PenMarker AnimalFlap Warg Kibble calculator