Can animals (rats) eat brambles?
I have put a tiny animal zone over a bramble patch.
The idea is that the animals will eat away the entire patch, so I don't have to waste the colonists time on manually cutting it, AND it also supposedly provides nutrition to the animals.
I have seen a gray/yellow loading bar over one of the patches, when an animal was eating.
BUT the problem is that I got the message:
"Rat 5 is having a miscarriage due to starvation"
But there are plenty of brambles left to eat, so why is it having starvation?
The info-"i" on the rat even says: "Diet: ..., Live Plants, ..."
Is this some kind of bug caused by mods? Or am I doing something wrong?
Or is the rat just retarded enough to not understand how food works?
Currently in-game it is the "3rd of septober", in case seasons have anything to do with it?
it is 14*C outside temp.
Can brambles overlap a patch of grass, so when i saw that loading bar, it was actually the grass under the brambles that was eaten?
I just did an experiment I basically un-restricted the animal zone (inverted), and the rats b-lined for the closest grass patch, Hmmm...?
Can the "Home zone" interfere with where the animals feed from? Do they not eat "Live Plants" in the "Home zone" area?
I did a better test now, I found a 1x1 bramble patch & surrounded it with a 5x5 (hollow) floor, so nothing else can grow there with a 3x3 animal zone on top, (just to make SURE the rats can't eat something else).
I also did the same patches around a 1x1 of: Grass, Bramble, Bush, Oak-sapling, Dandelions (all wild plants, nothing planted). When hovering over each of them the tool-tip says "(plant, varies), soil, lit" (no "double stacked" plants).
Result, 3 rats B-lined for 2x bramble patches & 1x Grass patch, and they have a loading bar while they eat. In this order 7 rats: Bramble, Grass, Bramble, Grass, Dandelion Grass & Waiting (wandering, not hungry).
Noteworthy: they did NOT go for the tree oak-sapling, there is also an available Dandelion patch (but not enough rats).
After eating, the plant-patches visually diminished (but didn't vanish), because a rat isn't hungry enough to eat an entire patch of 100% grown "Live Plants" (needs multiple consecutive rats for that :).
So, I reloaded the test area, but now only selected ONE bramble patch.
The first rat ran there & started eating, the bramble reduced from 100% grown to 62% grown, and the other rats REFUSE to eat from it, even when starving (the rats have "7.1% Food (0.01 / 0.2)" left), I tried making a new animal area a bit away (still floored area), remove the old area, the animals moved, then re-create the "bramble patch area" again, and removed the new-other area, and the animals moved back into the bramble-area, but they STILL REFUSE to eat. WHY??? :(
I want to eradicate the bramble patch, and the animals want food... but the idiots prefer to starve to death, instead of exterminating the bramble weeds! :(
New test:
I have first (unfortunately needed) starved an alpaca down to "Food: 9.1% (0.09 / 1)" then moved it into that Bramble-pen (reloaded the map first), before eating, the bramble is at "100% grown" (hopefully the alpaca can eat it all in one go? Or i need to find a bigger herbivore?)...
YES!!! The bush is gone & the alpaca has gone up to "Food: 59% (0.59 / 1)", so a REALLY starved alpaca can probably eat 2x bramble patches (not recommended).
Unfortunately Rimworlds new(-ish) animal-pen system makes this VERY annoying to use, because first you need to build a animal fence around the bramble patch you want to eradicate, THEN you have to convince the game mechanics that the pen the animal is in currently is NOT the "best pen" (use the forbid-animals system, in that sign you place in the pen), to trick the game into ALLOWING you the great honor of moving your own animals to where YOU WANT to move them (damn idiot system! I F***ING hate it!), to finally have the animals do what you could just use the "cut plant" tool & a minute of colonists time, to do the same thing...
Also, you NEED to make sure the alpacas are REALLY starved, if they are just "a little peckish" (little hungry) you will just get that rat-situation all over again! :(
If anyone know of a mod, or can make a mod, that fixes this behavior, please suggest it here, thanks!
Feel free to suggest other tests to try, thanks!
Sorry for the long "post".