40d:Meat industry

This article is a quick guide to running a leather industry.

Kill and butcher animals to separate bones, raw hides and meat. Tan the hide before it goes bad, and then convert the leather into an end product. Because many steps require materials which can rot, this industry requires slightly more micromanagement than other industries.

Animals

Your raw material source are animals. You can either hunt for animals, or raise your own animals. Each option has its own considerations, and neither produces regularly. Alternately, you can simply buy leather from traders, bypassing many of the time-limited steps at the cost of infrequent, large influxes of source material.

Buying from traders

If you wish to import leather in sufficient quantity to keep your leather workers occupied year-round, then you must request leather from the the trading liaisons. Request every type of leather as a low priority to ensure they come back with sufficient quantity next year. You can only buy leather from humans and dwarf caravans.^[Verify]

Hunting

Requires a weapon, a hunter/ambusher and wildlife

In order to hunt for animals, you must place your fortress in a biome which contains wildlife. You will also need to assign a dwarf to the hunting labor.

A dwarven hunter will wear leather armor, and equip himself with the weapon indicated in the military screen. Note that a hunter who is also a wood cutter will hunt with an axe. Ranged attacks reduce the potential for injury, so using crossbows is preferable. Note that failing to assign a weapon to your hunter will cause the dwarf to attempt to wrestle animals to death. As wrestling generally takes longer to kill than other forms of combat, and the randomly-chosen target of a hunt may be part of a pack, it is extremely unwise to forget this step.

You may also wish to assign one or more trained dogs to your hunter to provide backup. Hunting dogs will sneak alongside your dwarf, while the easier-to-detect war dogs do twice as much damage once they get into melee range.^[Verify]

Any dwarf who owns a pet, including assigned dogs, should have the animal caretaker labor activated.

Before sending your hunter out, you should draft him into the military and train him in wrestling (to dodge incoming attacks) and his weapon of choice. In order for your hunter to spar, you will need a barracks (room designated from a weapon rack, armor stand or bed. Sparring unarmed will train wrestling, which is used to dodge. Sparring with a melee weapon will train the weapon skill. Both forms of sparring will also train Armor Use and Shield Use, if the hunter has been assigned such things. Archery targets and bone bolts will train marksdwarfship. Sparring requires a partner also drafted in the military (both must be off-duty). Archery practice does not.

When your hunter selects the Hunt task, he will choose a specific animal, approach it, engage in combat with it. Hopefully, he will kill the animal. Then he will Return Kill to a refuse stockpile.^[Verify] The hunter may have to defend himself against other wilderness animals while hunting. If he does so, he will not return any of those kills. In order to avoid wasting these kills, you will need to set your general orders to gather refuse from outside, although this choice carries its own set of risks.

Because of the time-sensitive nature of the rest of the production tree, it is not recommended to have more than one

Trapping

Requires cages and a mechanic

It is also possible to acquire animals through judicious use of cage traps. This is a very subtle science, and outside the scope of this article. Animals (and sentient creatures) caught in cage traps will be delivered to an animal stockpile. The trap will then be reset with a fresh cage.

Livestock

Rather than subjecting your hunter to the dangers of cave adaptation and wild beasts, you can raise your own livestock. You will need one male animal and at least one female animal of the same type, acquired through the starting purchase screen or from caravans (you can request live animals under the pets menu when speaking to the liaison).

Some immigrants may arrive with pets of their own which will happily breed with any available animal. Slaughtering pets will generate bad thoughts and therefore is to be avoided.

Animals purchased through a trader will come in a cage that is left in your animal stockpile. You do not need to build the cage in order to slaughter the caged creature, you can slaughter it through the stock menu. However, caged animals will not breed.

Breeding

Requires tame animals, one male and at least one female of the same type. Optionally requires chains.

Although horses and donkeys can mate to create mules in the real world, they will not do so in the game.^[Verify] Owned pets can be slaughtered through the stockz menu, but will cause your dwarf owner to become upset at the animals death.

Animals do not need to be in the same room or come into contact with each other in order to breed.^[Verify]

You can let your tame animals wander your fortress freely, or chain them to a particular spot in order to reduce processor load on the game. A large number of free-roaming livestock can seriously impact game performance.

Trained war dogs are incredibly useful, so it is not recommended to consider them part of your livestock.

Cats reduce vermin and keep dwarves happy, but can quickly breed to the point where it seriously affects game performance. Quickly caging newborn kittens overcomes this problem (see Zoo, below).

Zoo

Requires a cage, and several chains/ropes

In order to breed, animals must be uncaged, but too many free animals can affect game performance. On the other hand, only adults can breed, so animal children can be caged. A zoo is an excellent solution.

There are many reasons why your zoo should contain one, and only one cage:

• Cages can hold an unlimited number of animals, so you only need one
• Caged animals do not affect processor speed
• Distinguishing between breeding animals and butcherable livestock is easier when clearly separated.
• Caged cats cannot adopt owners
• Zoos have additional benefits to overall fortress wealth, dwarven happiness, etc

Place several chains/ropes in your zoo as well, and assign breeding animals to these chains. An animal which is chained can be available for adoption, while remaining chained.^[Verify] This can assist you in making sure you don't accidentally kill your only male of a particular type. Whenever you see an announcement indicating that an animal has given birth, assign those baby animals to the cage. This is especially important with kittens, as kittens can adopt owners, taking them out of the leather-pool.

Animals provide the same amount of meat, bones and hide when they are children, so you do not need to wait until they grow up. However, the more females of each animal type, the more often you will get more animals of that type.

Ten (10) free-roaming cats should be more than adequate to keep vermin under control. On the other hand, if you keep kittens caged until they grow up, you can be sure to maintain your cat population. Admittedly, this is rarely a problem.

Butchering

Requires a Butcher's Shop, a butcher and animals. Ideally, the animal should not be a pet.

Once an butcherable animal has been killed, you have a limited amount of time to actually butcher the corpse before it rots.

A Butcher's Shop will automatically queue tasks whenever an animal is available to be butchered. However, this still requires an available dwarf with the Butcher labor enabled, and that dwarf may not get around to it in time if he has many other labors enabled.

Once butchered, an animal will yield a quantity of meat, bones, raw hide and one skull. If the corpse is left too long, it will rot, yielding the same amount of bones and a skull, but depriving you of the meat and hide. Because none of these items have a quality rating, and the amount produced is independent of skill, any untrained dwarf is suitable for the task. Skill ratings only affect the amount of time it takes for them to complete the task.^[Verify]

Meat goes to your food stockpile. Bones and raw hides go to the refuse stockpile.

Tanning

Requires a Tanner's Shop, a tanner, and raw hide

Like the Butcher's Shop, the Tanner's Shop will queue tasks automatically, generates a set number of items independent of skill and this task is time-sensitive, as raw hides can rot.

A single dwarf can be assigned the butcher and tanner task, as you will never need to tan until you butcher. You can also make this same dwarf your Leatherworker, but then it is wise to only slaughter (or hunt) for animals after you have depleted your current supply of tanned hides. In this manner, you decrease the chance of any material rotting before it can be processed

Once a hide has been tanned, it goes into the Leather stockpile.

Leatherworking

Requires a Leather Works, a leatherworker, and tanned hide

Once you have tanned hides, you can use them to produce leather goods in the Leather Works.

Summary of Requirements

• Hunter / Hunting
  • a crossbow or other weapon
    • bolts
      • bone bolts for practice
      • any bolt for hunting
  • leather armor
  • a shield
  • Barracks
    • A sparring partner
  • Archery Target
• cages
• chains or ropes
• Butcher / Butchery
• Tanner / Tanning
• Leatherworker / Leatherworking

See Also

• Leather

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