Prevent animals from eating haygrass when natural grass, tallgrass, and dandelions are available?

Sowing, harvesting, and storing haygrass is more expensive than just letting my herbivores graze on the natural grass, tall grass, and dandelions outdoors.

Is it possible to instruct animals to only eat my stored haygrass if they can't find nutrition elsewhere?

Solution 1:

Unfortunately I've been running mods for so long I can't remember what is or isn't vanilla, but I believe you can restrict your animals to an area the same way as you can with your colonists. If the area you set for doesn't include your farms, haygrass crops, or food storage areas, they'll be forced to eat any wild grass inside their area. But once all the wild grass in their area has been eaten, you'll have to either unrestrict their area, switch them to a new grazing area, or move stored food into their allowed area to prevent their starvation.

Restricting animals from your food storage and freezer areas is a good idea anyway to stop them from eating your important food and meals.

Other than using areas to control where they can eat, you have no way to control what your animals eat.