Feeding dogs

[GrimmSpector]

My dog is eating so much meat in a day it's cutting into my stores! Their appetite is voracious, and I haven't even had  successful hunt with it yet, nervous to try to do so without a hunting horn!

How much is the minimum they need to eat a day to not die? They don't appear to eat any spoiled meat or fish, despite the forums seeming to say otherwise. Do they eat bones?

How hard are they to retrieve without a hunting horn when loosed?

[PALU]

Dogs don't die of hunger at all. However, a starving dog will eat from killed prey and damage the skin, which is a reason to keep them fed.

Dogs eat spoiled raw meat and fish, as well as bones. However, they won't eat spoiled prepared food (such as e.g. roasted meat).

This means that if you kill a large animal and is unable to preserve the meat, you can still save the meat you can't preserve and use it as dog food (so I'm not too worried about letting most of an elk spoil early on, before I get the means to prepare it, as I know I can use it for dog food later on). Thus, don't prepare more food than you think you can eat yourself (or trade away).

I leave a stack of bones out for the dog to nibble on, with most of the bones stored in a root cellar, because dogs eat bones in a round robin fashion, i.e. a little bit from each bone, resulting in lots of stacks of bones and thus item clutter. So once the bone pile has been eaten, I then bring out some more for a new pile.

After having lost a dog to a vicious reindeer (kicked the dog to death) I don't use my dog for hunting, but only for protection against enemies/predators.

[GrimmSpector]

Dogs don't die of hunger at all. However, a starving dog will eat from killed prey and damage the skin, which is a reason to keep them fed.

Dogs eat spoiled raw meat and fish, as well as bones. However, they won't eat spoiled prepared food (such as e.g. roasted meat).

This means that if you kill a large animal and is unable to preserve the meat, you can still save the meat you can't preserve and use it as dog food (so I'm not too worried about letting most of an elk spoil early on, before I get the means to prepare it, as I know I can use it for dog food later on). Thus, don't prepare more food than you think you can eat yourself (or trade away).

I leave a stack of bones out for the dog to nibble on, with most of the bones stored in a root cellar, because dogs eat bones in a round robin fashion, i.e. a little bit from each bone, resulting in lots of stacks of bones and thus item clutter. So once the bone pile has been eaten, I then bring out some more for a new pile.

After having lost a dog to a vicious reindeer (kicked the dog to death) I don't use my dog for hunting, but only for protection against enemies/predators.

I have 7 spoiled whole fish that the dog isn't touching.

Sounds like if I'm not taking him out to hunt and I'm willing to lose a hostile animals fur that they can be left hungry sometimes then. Thanks.

[JP_Finn]

Have you tried throwing the fish to the dog?
1 or 2 tile range always goes to the dog, “catch”, further throws might go amiss and then the dog starts running around excitedly and eventually might land on the tile where the food landed and eats.

Or you could try to tell the dog “Eat now”, but that at times causes same “excited” running around as further throws.

Small and regular dogs tend to eat 2 cuts (one pound) of meat or fish every day. Large dogs often want to eat 3 cuts (1-1/2lbs).
Some proteins have higher energy values than others. Feeding them bream might take more scraps than feeding them bear or pork.

[GrimmSpector]

Have you tried throwing the fish to the dog?
1 or 2 tile range always goes to the dog, “catch”, further throws might go amiss and then the dog starts running around excitedly and eventually might land on the tile where the food landed and eats.

Or you could try to tell the dog “Eat now”, but that at times causes same “excited” running around as further throws.

Small and regular dogs tend to eat 2 cuts (one pound) of meat or fish every day. Large dogs often want to eat 3 cuts (1-1/2lbs).
Some proteins have higher energy values than others. Feeding them bream might take more scraps than feeding them bear or pork.

Cool I'll try that, do they eat cuts from a whole fish, instead of just the whole fish, or should I be cutting everything into cuts for them? I don't even know where to get bream, my nets only catch salmon and trout, and manual fishing has only caught me roaches and perch.

[ineedcords]

do they (dogs) eat cuts from a whole fish, instead of just the whole fish, or should I be cutting everything into cuts for them?

Fish cuts do not exist.

I don't even know where to get bream, my nets only catch salmon and trout, and manual fishing has only caught me roaches and perch.

Please see the text below, which covers some of the factors deciding what kind of fish you end up with:

URW Game Encyclopedia description
The official URW in-game encyclopedia (accessed by the F1 key) doesn't have a separate entry for the perch, but in the entry on Fishing, it mentions the perch and perch-fishing in the following paragraph:

The fish to be caught depends on the fishing method, equipment and the fishing site. Different kind of fish live in shallow or deep waters, lakes or rivers. Perches, roaches, breams and pikes are the most common fish living in lakes. Salmons are found only in rivers, and especially in rapids during their spawning season. There are also lavarets, trouts, pike-perches and so on.

source: The official Unreal World wiki https://unrealworld.fi/wiki/index.php?title=Perch

[GrimmSpector]

do they (dogs) eat cuts from a whole fish, instead of just the whole fish, or should I be cutting everything into cuts for them?

Fish cuts do not exist.

I don't even know where to get bream, my nets only catch salmon and trout, and manual fishing has only caught me roaches and perch.

Please see the text below, which covers some of the factors deciding what kind of fish you end up with:

URW Game Encyclopedia description
The official URW in-game encyclopedia (accessed by the F1 key) doesn't have a separate entry for the perch, but in the entry on Fishing, it mentions the perch and perch-fishing in the following paragraph:

The fish to be caught depends on the fishing method, equipment and the fishing site. Different kind of fish live in shallow or deep waters, lakes or rivers. Perches, roaches, breams and pikes are the most common fish living in lakes. Salmons are found only in rivers, and especially in rapids during their spawning season. There are also lavarets, trouts, pike-perches and so on.

source: The official Unreal World wiki https://unrealworld.fi/wiki/index.php?title=Perch

Fish cuts exist with mods, but my question would still apply to a piece of game.

Ah, lake fishing, that makes sense, I've been mostly rapids fishing. As far as I understand trout and salmon are some of the best nutrionally, but pike are bigger? I'll have to try some lake fishing at the nearby lake next spring.

[ineedcords]

Fish cuts exist with mods<snip>

Well, then, it becomes a different gameworld with different rules. I do not know about that mod/its rules/its impact on dog feeding etc.
If you put the mod name someone with that mod can help you maybe. Alternatively you could post under mod's thread if there is one here (or on Steam forums/elsewhere).

<snip>As far as I understand trout and salmon are some of the best nutrionally, but pike are bigger?

On the same official wiki, on the Pike page, we see the following (emphasis mine):

Pikes are a type of large fish. They are one of the more common types of large fish and weigh around 5 -7 lbs. You get them by active fishing with an angling rod in a lake. Pikes do not fill as much hunger as a trout or salmon; nevertheless, they are an important source of food. Roasting them on a fire luckily doesn't require any devices like a cooking pot or pan.

Salmon is best, trout is second best I believe; (as mentioned on the wiki) pike is not bad either (based on size values of each fish, may or may not be the biggest but definitely not the most nutritious).
When going for maximum bang for buck (when drying/smoking/salting fish) using Salmon exclusively could be a good idea but it of course depends on many other factors whether you have adequate fishing-net network to provide that much Salmon before the first (untreated) Salmon-batch goes bad, combined with your ability to use rest of fish in a meaningful way (feeding dogs/selling fresh quickly/treating to sell -rather than keep in your stocks- etc.).

One other thing to consider is the tying equipment update. I do not know if you played in that era but tying equipment were much more valuable in some past versions (hence its permanent impact in my psyche and my nickname) so in earlier versions especially in the early days of a character, for each piece of string consumed in food treatment, you wanted to get max calories.

In contrast, these days you can relatively quick and easily convert year-round-available saplings to tying equipment which then can be used in food treatment (smoking/drying etc.) therefore at least for me, big fish sub-type does not matter that much anymore (pike/trout/salmon); I just treat them all and push to the cellar network as there is a mountain of tying equipment now.


Edit: Typo

[GrimmSpector]

Fish cuts exist with mods<snip>

Well, then, it becomes a different gameworld with different rules. I do not know about that mod/its rules/its impact on dog feeding etc.
If you put the mod name someone with that mod can help you maybe. Alternatively you could post under mod's thread if there is one here (or on Steam forums/elsewhere).

<snip>As far as I understand trout and salmon are some of the best nutrionally, but pike are bigger?

On the same official wiki, on the Pike page, we see the following (emphasis mine):

Pikes are a type of large fish. They are one of the more common types of large fish and weigh around 5 -7 lbs. You get them by active fishing with an angling rod in a lake. Pikes do not fill as much hunger as a trout or salmon; nevertheless, they are an important source of food. Roasting them on a fire luckily doesn't require any devices like a cooking pot or pan.

Salmon is best, trout is second best I believe; (as mentioned on the wiki) pike is not bad either (based on size values of each fish, may or may not be the biggest but definitely not the most nutritious).
When going for maximum bang for buck (when drying/smoking/salting fish) using Salmon exclusively could be a good idea but it of course depends on many other factors whether you have adequate fishing-net network to provide that much Salmon before the first (untreated) Salmon-batch goes bad, combined with your ability to use rest of fish in a meaningful way (feeding dogs/selling fresh quickly/treating to sell -rather than keep in your stocks- etc.).

One other thing to consider is the tying equipment update. I do not know if you played in that era but tying equipment were much more valuable in some past versions (hence its permanent impact in my psyche and my nickname) so in earlier versions especially in the early days of a character, for each piece of string consumed in food treatment, you wanted to get max calories.

In contrast, these days you can relatively quick and easily convert year-round-available saplings to tying equipment which then can be used in food treatment (smoking/drying etc.) therefore at least for me, big fish sub-type does not matter that much anymore (pike/trout/salmon); I just treat them all and push to the cellar network as there is a mountain of tying equipment now.


Edit: Typo

It's the BAC mod, if I recall it effectively makes them meat cuts with the nutrition of pike.

Geez, I should probably read more of the official wiki, thanks.

And yeah I played when getting cord was limited to leather and was super hard to get a hold of, didn't get very far lol! I suspected that's where your name originated! 19 cuts per string.

I thought withes couldn't be used for smoking/drying, I've only been using them in traps and fences which I thought was the point of them, geez I've been missing out!

[PALU]

Yes, withes are very useful for food processing, in particular very early on when you don't have any alternatives.

If I remember correctly, salmon is the largest fish, followed by trout and then pike.

[GrimmSpector]

Yes, withes are very useful for food processing, in particular very early on when you don't have any alternatives.

If I remember correctly, salmon is the largest fish, followed by trout and then pike.

I could use a lot of the cord for other things if I realized this lol, though I'm tempted to not use withes for food processing, seems too easy ... hmmm.

[JP_Finn]

New character with Spring start can get an entire elk or bear drying utilizing withes. That takes a HUGE burden of survival away. 
Makes looking for homestead location or vagabond traveling around enjoyable.
For role playing purposes, my characters do not smoke meat or fish using spruce withes, the pine pitch/tar isn’t appetizing 

[GrimmSpector]

Sorry to commit necromancy here, but I'm trying to get my dog ready to hunt, and ... it just keeps eating and still saying starving ... is this cumulative? Is there a bottom level for it's hunger or has not eating for a long time just made it impossible to fulfill its needs?

[JP_Finn]

Sorry to commit necromancy here, but I'm trying to get my dog ready to hunt, and ... it just keeps eating and still saying starving ... is this cumulative? Is there a bottom level for it's hunger or has not eating for a long time just made it impossible to fulfill its needs?

If a dog gets hurt and loses ability to walk, until healed, they refuse to eat. They're not bottomless, but normally say your dog eats 3 dried elk cuts a day, after they heal, I believe my dog(s) have eaten 12+ cuts. Please note that dogs eat spoiled raw meat, or cooked meat. They won't eat spoiled cooked meat. They'll also eat bread and fish in same conditions as meat.

Set down a pile of 20 pieces of meat, or 2 salmon or so, step aside, command! or Chat to the dog and tell it 'Eat now', then either pass time or do some activity(fishing?), the dog will eat from the pile until full.

[GrimmSpector]

Sorry to commit necromancy here, but I'm trying to get my dog ready to hunt, and ... it just keeps eating and still saying starving ... is this cumulative? Is there a bottom level for it's hunger or has not eating for a long time just made it impossible to fulfill its needs?

If a dog gets hurt and loses ability to walk, until healed, they refuse to eat. They're not bottomless, but normally say your dog eats 3 dried elk cuts a day, after they heal, I believe my dog(s) have eaten 12+ cuts. Please note that dogs eat spoiled raw meat, or cooked meat. They won't eat spoiled cooked meat. They'll also eat bread and fish in same conditions as meat.

Set down a pile of 20 pieces of meat, or 2 salmon or so, step aside, command! or Chat to the dog and tell it 'Eat now', then either pass time or do some activity(fishing?), the dog will eat from the pile until full.

It's not wounded...yet... That's a lot of meat! Ok, thanks!