Butcher's shop

V · T · E Workshops, furnaces, and farms
Workshops bo	Ashery · Bowyer · Carpenter · Crafts · Jeweler · Stoneworker · Mechanic · Metalsmith's forge (Magma) · Screw press · Siege workshop · Soap shop
Clothing and Leather bol	Clothier · Dyer · Leather · Loom
Farming bof	Farm plot · Butcher · Farmer · Fishery · Kitchen · Quern · Still · Tanner · Vermin catcher's shop · Nest box · Hive
Furnaces bou	Glass furnace (Magma) · Kiln (Magma) · Smelter (Magma) · Wood furnace
Other	Building token · Clutter · Millstone · Trade depot

Butcher's shop
	Shortcut: b-o-f-b
Icon
Job Requirement
	Butchery;
Construction
Building material (non-economic);	1 of Butchery; Small animal dissection; Trapping;
Materials Used
	Tame animals; Corpses of untamed non-sentient animals;
Goods Created
	Skin; Fat; Meat; Bone; Prepared organs; Skull; Scale; Hooves; Ivory; Tooth; Hair; Wool;

!!UNKNOWN!! · xTATTEREDx · +FINE+ · *SUPERIOR* · ≡EXCEPTIONAL≡ · ☼MASTERWORK☼

v50.14 · v0.47.05

This article is about the current version of DF.
Note that some content may still need to be updated.

More Info · V

The butcher's shop is used to slaughter tame animals, or to butcher the corpses or skeletons of slain wild animals. A tame animal can be designated for slaughter in the u Creatures menu under the Pets/Livestock tab.

Slaughtering is instantaneous once the animal has been led to the butcher's shop. Pets cannot be slaughtered.

Wild animal corpses, body parts or skeletons can be butchered as long as they are sufficiently close to the butcher's shop, and sufficiently large to yield results. Butchering is not instanteous.

Industry

A butchered animal results into various items with different uses:

Item	Uses
Meat and Prepared organs	Eaten raw or cooked
Fat	Cooked to tallow
Skulls	Crafting skull totems
Bones	Crafting bone armor, bone bolts, bone crafts, bone decorations, and strange moods
Hooves, Horns, Teeth	crafts and decorations
Shells	Crafting shell armor, shell crafts, shell decorations, and strange moods
Skin	Tanned into Leather
Wool	Spun into Yarn
Hair	Spun into thread, but not woven into cloth
Cartilage	Currently no uses.
Nervous tissue	Currently no uses.
Feather, Scale, Chitin, and Nail	Currently no uses.

Tasks

Butcher an animal

Renders a dead animal into its component parts of meat, fat, skin, bones, and skulls. Usually used on animals that your hunter brings back, or tame animals you chose for slaughter. The animal must be in a stockpile (anywhere) or lying on the ground within 20 tiles of the edge of the butcher's shop in the same z-level (i.e. a 43x43x1 box centered on the workshop).

Catch live land animal

Requires an animal trap and trapping. The trapper will take the trap and chase vermin until it catches one. This task is also available in the vermin catcher's shop.

Extract from land animal

Requires a caged fire snake, cave spider, or phantom spider and animal dissection. Contrary to the name of the task, the vermin must be alive (though it will be dead once the task is done). Produces liquid fire and venom, respectively.

Common Uses

Produce meat for food.
Produce skin for leather.
Produce bones for bolts or bone crafts.

Helpful Strategies

Hauling and stockpile considerations

One thing to beware of is that butchered creatures will practically explode into piles of meat, bones, fat, organs and more; this can quickly clutter up a butchers shop or risk rotting the entire pile if not enough haulers and a suitable stockpile are available. Refuse also can not be stored in containers, so every item will use up one stockpile tile. For any jobs, such as cooking meat, rendering fat, and carving bones, the entire stack will become tasked and unavailable to other workshops.

The initial corpse or body part must be in a stockpile close enough to the butcher's shop to automatically trigger the Butcher a dead animal job. Similarly, there is a maximum distance for the Tanner's shop to notice a skin and automatically trigger a Tan a skin job.

Clutter Reduction and Rotting Prevention

A good way to cut down on clutter and to prevent your butchered animals from rotting is to build a Quantum stockpile right by your butcher shops and then place a stockpile at the bottom. This way as meat is produced you can order it dumped into the stockpile so it is stored easily and will not rot. To prevent rotten meat from producing miasma channel out a shaft above your butcher shops and build a wall around it on the surface. This way if meat rots it will not produce miasma.

Notes

A butcher's shop is operated by any dwarf with the 'butchery' labor.
Corpses left to rot will become skeletons. Only those of wild animals (typically killed from hunting or traps) can be processed at the butcher's shop. Products will be bone, skull, hoof, horn and the like (no meat, fat, prepared organs or skin).
Partial corpses as well as mutilated corpses do not provide the "full set"; the number of bones may be lower, organs may be missing.
You can't butcher vermin fish, that is done at the Fishery. But you can butcher underwater creatures. For instance, you can butcher 'Carp corpse', but you can't butcher 'Oyster'.
Tame animals that die by any reason, be it starvation, old age or violence, are unbutcherable. ^Bug:1275

Bartolomeo Passerotti - The Butcher's Shop

Butcher's shop

Contents