Not enough food/animals fighting for food

[Fortunanovesia]

In some of my bigger Exhibits it happens a lot of times, that some animals are starving, cause they arent able to get their part of the food.

For example ive got a bigger exhibit with around 10 Zebras and 15 Buffalos. Growing the amount of animals i recognized that there are complains about starving. At first i removed the enrichment items, cause my Keepers are just filling up them and none of the normal feeders. Ive put 8 (way too much) of those feeders in the exhibit, just to be safe there are enough to get filled (not that problem, cause the keepers are putting the food somewhere on the ground then).

Everytime a Keeper comes in with food now, he fills up two or three of those feeders. The animals are instantly running to those feeders and eat like crazy. Its empty again just after a few seconds. It doesnt matter if they are hungry or their hunger is stilled at 100%. They are running to the feeder, starting to eat. Problem is: Some of the animals dont even have a chance to get a part of that food. The feeders are empty again just after 10-15 seconds and when they are too far away somewhere in the exhibit, they have to wait for the next time, the keeper comes and fills in - what will take a while. And as soon as he is coming again, this "fight for food" starts again. Would like to call it "survival of the fastest". Cause of this a lot of my animals (especially Babys) are starving.

I understand when hungry animals are running to the filled feeders to get their food very quick. But there are also animals with hunger stilled at 90-100. This really needs to get fixed. Ive got this problem in nearly every exhibit with more than 8-10 animals. (same at my gorillas and red varis for example.

I think the amount of food the Keepers are bringing into the exhibit is pretty low calculated. They definitely should bring more food and especially should fill all of the feeders the player puts into an exhibit. Besides that i dont think to tie the enrichment items to the feeders is a good idea (first enrichment items, then (maybe) feeders). Keepers should fill all of them.

Its kinda stupid, when animals are starving, but there are like hundreds of feeders in the exhibit.

 

[zoomac92]

When in doubt, hire more keepers/build more huts. Had this issue when I merged the lemur habitats in the 2nd tutorial. Turned out I needed to upgrade the keeper huts and hire more keepers specifically for the exhibit. Where is your keeper hut in relation to the exhibit and is it small or large? The game doesn't do a good job of explaining this, but only one keeper can work in a small keeper hut at a time. A large keeper hut can hold two at a time. See if your have enough keeper huts to accommodate the exhibit keepers, or if they're going halfway across the park to get food. Keep in mind that some animals need more care than others, and thus will require more keepers. We're not sure what the exact numbers are at this point, but if your habitat holds 25 large ungulates, you might need 4 keepers just to deal with feeding and poop scooping your herd. Which means you would need 2 large/4 small keeper huts purely for that habitat. Play with the number of keepers and the appropriate huts til you get something that works, and if any of your keepers freeze or loop, fire them. Chances are you have enough feeders, but not enough keeper huts/keepers. Hope this helps you and your critters.

 

[Agathorn]

When in doubt, hire more keepers/build more huts. Had this issue when I merged the lemur habitats in the 2nd tutorial. Turned out I needed to upgrade the keeper huts and hire more keepers specifically for the exhibit. Where is your keeper hut in relation to the exhibit and is it small or large? The game doesn't do a good job of explaining this, but only one keeper can work in a small keeper hut at a time. A large keeper hut can hold two at a time. See if your have enough keeper huts to accommodate the exhibit keepers, or if they're going halfway across the park to get food. Keep in mind that some animals need more care than others, and thus will require more keepers. We're not sure what the exact numbers are at this point, but if your habitat holds 25 large ungulates, you might need 4 keepers just to deal with feeding and poop scooping your herd. Which means you would need 2 large/4 small keeper huts purely for that habitat. Play with the number of keepers and the appropriate huts til you get something that works, and if any of your keepers freeze or loop, fire them. Chances are you have enough feeders, but not enough keeper huts/keepers. Hope this helps you and your critters.

You can build all the keeper huts you want big small extra large, but it won't make a difference in how much food is given to the animals because the game tries to calculate how much they need rather than just filling up whatever trays you put in

 

[Silhouette]

I'm not going to lie I sort of like this...? Like my keeper filled a food dish and two flamingos just took off at a run across the entire habitat to eat and it was the funniest thing to watch Plus it's realistic, I remember watching a show about I think the Columbus Zoo in their wildlife park, and as they were driving along animal herds began to follow them because they knew truck = food.

So I really enjoy the whole animals running to eat mechanic that's in the game. Even animals that are full. Let's be honest, animals will eat free food regardless of whether they're hungry or not.

So the only real issue, which is what you brought up, is that if there's no enough food, animals will starve. Keepers definitely should have way more on hand when entering a habitat, and fill up everything.