johnfrum
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Animal Consumption/ Upkeep Requirements ...in particular Horse

Mon 15 Aug 2022, 10:03

Has anyone located information on animal upkeep requirements ie how much food an animal consumes per day?

I note there are table for food available after slaughter, but not daily food requirements for horses, pigs, cows, etc.

In particular, I was looking for information on daily consumption/horse upkeep for a cavalry based campaign. I have put together the following for horse consideration:

One encumbrance unit is 3kg. I would presume horse fodder would be similar to the material used for stills, so a unit of horse fodder/organic material is 3kg.

On daily horse food consumption, some internet searching says:
As a rule of thumb, allow 1.5 to 2 kg of feed per 100 kg of the horse's body weight.
Average horse weight : Most riding horses weigh in the range of 800-1,100 pounds (362kg to 498 kg).
500KG (heaviest) riding horse needs 10Kg grain a day.
So a horse needs average 9kg of grain/fodder/organic material a day. So three encumbrance units of grain.

In terms of gathering organic material/fodder, one person can gather 30 encumbrance units per shift in a field. That is halved in winter to 15 encumbrance units (p.142 4e players rulebook).
So enough feed per day for 10 horses (summer) or 5 horses (winter).
Horse movement rate is 3/2 per shift, so 30/20 km per shift. That’s 60/40km for two shift movement (in open terrain).

Twilight 4e HORSES
In game terms, horses count as vehicles for the purposes of combat (page 86). A typical horse can carry a rider (including carried gear) plus 25 encumbrance points of additional load, or a second person. If you instead lead it by the halter, the horse can carry up to 50 encumbrance units.

During travel, you can only ride a horse for two shifts per day. To ride for a third shift, you need to make a MOBILITY roll, modified by the Rider talent. If you fail, the horse goes lame and becomes incapacitated. A horse needs at least one shift of rest per day.

So an extra horse carries 50 encumbrance units. So that’s 16.6 days of fodder for a single horse. For two horse package, that is 6 encumbrance units per day. Five days for two horses is 30 encumbrance units. That leaves 45 encumbrance units per two horse team with rider plus their carried equipment.

In ideal conditions, you could have a five character party with ten horses travel up to five days (300/200 km) with internal stores. After that, 60/40km a day, with a shift spent gathering 30 encumbrance of organic material to feed the horses that day. So two shift riding, one gathering material, one rest.
 
Skunk
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Re: Animal Consumption/ Upkeep Requirements ...in particular Horse

Mon 15 Aug 2022, 16:39

This should give you everything you need to know.
The soldiers pocket book for field service.
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=LE ... frontcover
Even tells you how to keep an elephant in good working order.
 
johnfrum
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Re: Animal Consumption/ Upkeep Requirements ...in particular Horse

Tue 16 Aug 2022, 05:59

Thanks for that link. Very useful resource!
 
Jonesy64
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Re: Animal Consumption/ Upkeep Requirements ...in particular Horse

Fri 30 Sep 2022, 02:10

Here's an article about the military use of horses including what weapons would work out best. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/1 ... back-again
 
Vcutter
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Re: Animal Consumption/ Upkeep Requirements ...in particular Horse

Fri 30 Sep 2022, 13:41

Thanks Jonesy, that was informative and entertaining read!
The movie 12 Strong, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_Strong also has some riding scenes with modern weapons for those interested. Not commenting on the quality/realism of the movie otherwise but the genre of "modern military fighting from horseback" -movies is pretty limited overall so those interested might give it a shot.
 
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omnipus
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Re: Animal Consumption/ Upkeep Requirements ...in particular Horse

Mon 03 Oct 2022, 05:34

Some relevant reading within here (actually all of it is pretty relevant to a T2K campaign and if I was revisiting mine today I'd incorporate a lot more ideas from here!)

https://acoup.blog/2022/07/15/collectio ... e-problem/


In particular:
the sort of horses available in the agrarian world are bred too big and strong to eat entirely grass. Their nutrition requirements are too high and so they require feed, at least some 4.5kg of it per day assuming local grass is available along with time to let the horses graze it (during which the wagon is, of course, stopped). The Romans seem to have allocated around 7kg of barley per day per cavalryman for their cavalry, though its possible this also provided for a servant or groom for the cavalryman.

It also goes into some detail on the number of horses and attendants required (any effective cavalry force will have multiple horses per combatant, and non-combatant farriers and handlers and so on to care for the animals). The numbers can grow quite large pretty quickly. There's also plenty of info on mules (typically better pack animals), wagons, and more.
Author, Central Poland Sourcebook -- now available on DriveThruRPG
 
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FatherJ_ct
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Re: Animal Consumption/ Upkeep Requirements ...in particular Horse

Fri 14 Oct 2022, 22:18

Omnipus, those 3 articles are great. Ran into them the other month, myself.

Definitely points out something often missing in RPGs...large armies/groups need supplies and get them from somewhere. T2k convoy/supplies are disrupted severely but honestly I think would still be working to some degree. Obviously the active warzone of Poland/sweden is broken down quite more but non-active war zones would be trading/shipping as much as they could with the breakdown of gasoline/air traffic.

For a single person....farming local to supply yourself...
"The minimum amount of agricultural land necessary for sustainable food security, with a diversified diet similar to those of North America and Western Europe (hence including meat), is 0.5 of a hectare per person. This does not allow for any land degradation such as soil erosion, and it assumes adequate water supplies. Very few populous countries have more than an average of 0.25 of a hectare. It is realistic to suppose that the absolute minimum of arable land to support one person is a mere 0.07 of a hectare–and this assumes a largely vegetarian diet, no land degradation or water shortages, virtually no post-harvest waste, and farmers who know precisely when and how to plant, fertilize, irrigate, etc. [FAO, 1993]" .07 hectacres is 0.17 acres.

My house is sitting on 0.28 acres. I am not sure utilizing that fully for crops would feed us for a year...well...purely from a eat rice/corn/bread for every meal sort of subsistence.

aquaponics takes less space.

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/com ... one_human/

So a lot of that supply logistics should be going on in the background of campaigns/adventures. Often even the forefront if stores are burned/destroyed and new source of food/water desperately neeeded.
 
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omnipus
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Re: Animal Consumption/ Upkeep Requirements ...in particular Horse

Fri 14 Oct 2022, 23:13

That hits on another aspect (which I went into a bit of detail in in my book) -- if you're sitting on a little plot of farmland, it's only worth as much as you can hold on to. In a land overrun with military units and bandits, that's not much. So it makes collective defense the only viable recourse. Which in most cases also means you're giving up a % of your yield to pay for the privilege. If your defenders fall apart or move on, you've got to start over again. Fields are probably planted and then the people who were meant to harvest them aren't around to do it when the time comes. And so on. It's an ugly situation and only survivable at all at a very local level and with a much reduced population imprint.
Author, Central Poland Sourcebook -- now available on DriveThruRPG

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