Feeding Hogs w/Silo?

[Diggity]

I have been feeding cows, sheep and hogs but with hogs (hogs cause I'm from Iowa) I have been selling them off regularly to keep my total head at about only 10. I think I would have trouble keeping up with them, due to the extra feed type requirements. How does the pig food silo work? Does it satisfy all the food requirements so I wouldn't have to stock corn and root crops? Is it expensive and does it wash out the profits ignoring the initial cost of the silo?

Thanks

[dunnjob]

Short answer is yes. The pig food works to fill in all or any gap you may have in the feeding process. However, I found that pig food is incredibly expensive as a total replacement for all the other components. I would recommend at least using corn since that is 50% of their dietary needs.

[Diggity]

Ah, that makes sense. I wondered if the cost was going to cancel out the profit of keeping them...

[summerrider]

I know this is off topic but do you really feel that you can't keep up with 10 hogs? Did you miss a few zeros there?

[NateS]

Short answer is yes. The pig food works to fill in all or any gap you may have in the feeding process. However, I found that pig food is incredibly expensive as a total replacement for all the other components. I would recommend at least using corn since that is 50% of their dietary needs.

I don't think that's how pig food is distributed... I believe when you feed pig food, it distributes at 50/25/20/5% regardless of what you have already fed them.
Example: you put 5000 corn in and then 5000 pig food. You will now have 7500 corn.
It does not distribute the pig food to whichever category is lowest. Even if all your food's are full except for root crops, only 5% of the pig food you add will go to the root crop section.

[dunnjob]

NateS may be correct here.

Regardless, silo pig food is expensive as rip.

[NateS]

I don't know what it costs out of the silo, but I'm sure it's similar to the big bags in the store. Those cost $1,400/1000L or $1.40/L
Each pig consumes 107L of food each day according to my tests. So using the big bags, it costs $149.80 a day to feed a pig. While it will still be profitable, it cost about double the value of the individual crops.

[FordFarmer97]

The silo is $1000/1000 l

[NateS]

So to determine if its worth it, figure out the average selling price of: 500 corn, 250 Barley, 200 Canola, and 50 potatoes... if it's over $1000 (which it's not) then the silo would make sense.

Also, if you are feeding pig food because you are worried about the root crop portion, don't do it. The 5% reproduction rate loss is almost unnoticeable, whereas the cost of the specialized equipment is very noticeable.

[Guil]

Short answer is yes. The pig food works to fill in all or any gap you may have in the feeding process. However, I found that pig food is incredibly expensive as a total replacement for all the other components. I would recommend at least using corn since that is 50% of their dietary needs.

I don't think that's how pig food is distributed... I believe when you feed pig food, it distributes at 50/25/20/5% regardless of what you have already fed them.
Example: you put 5000 corn in and then 5000 pig food. You will now have 7500 corn.
It does not distribute the pig food to whichever category is lowest. Even if all your food's are full except for root crops, only 5% of the pig food you add will go to the root crop section.

Unless it has changed in an update I'm nearly certain the pig food works as was stated above. I've watched YouTube videos where they use the pig food pallets to topup the missing crops and that's all that gets added. I haven't tri f it myself though.

[CombineBert]

You could use the pig food to top up the root crops, that might work out cheaper than all the special equipment and labour required. But as a previous poster has said, 5% productivity is not noticeable.

[NateS]

I just ran a quick test and it does work the way I described earlier. You CANNOT use pig food to 'top off' one category. Pig food is filled at 50/25/20/5 no matter what you have in the trough already.

[FarmerJimbob]

If you are a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to feeding your pigs then buy a smallish field when the AI farmer has sugar beet in it (yield higher than potatoes) and harvest it with leased machinery. The harvest will keep your pigs fed for a long time even if you sell some to cover the leasing costs.

[NateS]

That definitely is an option. Leasing the small in game harvester costs $8400. Sugar Beets yield about 115,000L/ha. Using some rounded math and assuming $250/1000L sell price, it takes about .3ha to pay for the lease. 200 pigs will consume 1000L Sugar Beets a day.