40d:Meat industry

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This article is a quick guide to running a meat and related goods industry. If you decide to base your economy off such then keep in mind that animals are not a reliable material source - the amount available depends on the breeding rate of your tame animals, the spawning of wild animals, and/or the amount of leather that traders bring.

Note that the meat industry involves many materials which can rot and so requires slightly more micromanagement than other industries.

Summary: Obtain some animals; kill and butcher them to obtain bones, meat, fat and raw hides; the bones and meat can be used immediately but the hide needs to be tanned into leather and the fat needs to be processed into tallow; finally cook the tallow into a meal, and craft the leather into an end product.

Animals

There are several sources for obtaining animals, outlined below. Alternatively you can skip that business and just trade directly for leather. You'll miss out on meat, fat, and bones though.

Trading

Requires: A trading depot, a trader, a merchant, and some tradeable goods

You can purchase both animals and leather from a merchant. Animals can either be kept for breeding (see Breeding below) or butchered immediately (see Butchering below).

If you wish to import leather in sufficient quantity to keep your leather workers occupied year-round, then you should request leather to be imported from the the trading liaisons. It is reccomended that you request every type of leather at low priority in order to ensure the merchant comes back with a large quantity next year. You can only buy leather from humans and dwarf caravans^[Verify].

Hunting

Requires: A hunter and huntable wildlife
Recommended: A dog (or three), leather armor, and a weapon - preferably a crossbow, quiver, and bolts

It should be noted that hunters will ignore some wildlife, e.g. zombie groundhogs. Depending on where you settled your fortress, your biome may have no wildlife at all.

After equipping him or herself, a dwarven hunter will make a beeline towards the nearest wild animal and attempt to kill it, regardless of whether it is one amongst a large pack of hostile creatures^[Verify]. Upon killing the beast the dwarf will carry the corpse to the closest refuse stockpile; the nearest meeting area if no stockpile exists; or to the site of your original wagon if no meeting area has been defined ^[Verify]. Once he has deposited the corpse it will be ready for butchering (see Butchering below).

If the hunter kills other animals on his return journey while defending himself then those animals will not be carried indoors. To avoid wasting them you need to change your general orders to Gather refuse from outside (note that selecting this option may have undesirable side-effects).

Soldiers

Requires: Any number of soldiers and huntable wildlife

If so desired, you can order your active soldiers out to kill animals by enabling them to "harass dangerous wild animals" in the military screen. This is particularly useful if a large herd appears and you want to get them all before they emigrate to less blood-soaked pastures; be prepared to process them all, however (see below)

Cage traps

Requires: Cages, mechanisms, and a mechanic

It is also possible to catch animals through judicious use of cage traps. This, of course, involves building cage traps where animals will walk. Once they are trapped the caged animal (or invader) will be delivered to an animal stockpile and the trap will be reset with a fresh cage.

Breeding

Requires: One or more adult females and one adult male of each species, not in cages, and time
Recommended: Cages and restraints

If a male and a female of the same species are not currently in cages then sooner or later the male will impregnate the female, regardless of distance, physical obstacles, number of males (beyond the first), and even ownership. It is theorised that creatures in the dwarf fortress universe propagate via some kind of spores with built in homing devices and, in some cases, microscopic pickaxes. Either that, or telepathy. But everyone knows there's no such thing as telepathy!

Caged animals will not breed, although animals on a restraint will. It is recommended that you rope down all your livestock near your butcher's shop, as a large number of free-roaming animals will reduce your game speed. Additionally it reduces the amount of time it takes butchers to track down and retrieve animals they are to slaughter.

For the same reasons as above, it is recommended that you cage all your young because the neither breed nor give the same amount of bones, meat, and fat as adults. Furthermore:

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 (thus decreasing the chances of a catsplosion).
You can define a zoo from a cage, increasing overall fortress wealth, dwarven happiness, etc..

Using cage traps judiciously can sometimes snag you a breeding pair of a wild animal. Tame something unusual and start something crazy, like an alligator farm!

Butchering

Requires: A butcher's shop, a butcher, and either a stray tamed animal marked for slaughter or one killed by a hunter

Once an animal has been killed by a hunter you only have a limited amount of time to butcher the corpse before it rots. If your butcher is distracted by other tasks this is quite impossible.

By default a butcher's shop will automatically queue Butcher animal whenever an animal corpse is available, or Slaughter animal for stray animals marked for slaughter. Once butchered the animal will yield one skull (even hydras), one raw hide and a number of meat pieces, bones, and chunks - the amount depending on the animal type. The skill of the butcher only affects the time taken for Butcher animal task (Slaughter animal occurs in the blink of an eye), not the amount produced nor the quality.

Meat and fat goes to your food stockpile. Bones, chunks and raw hides go to the refuse stockpile. Chunks have no use and should be left to rot to nothingness, but you would be well put to create custom stockpiles for hides next to your tanner's shop (see Tanning below), for bones next to your craftdwarves workshop (see Bone carving below), and changing the settings on your main refuse pile to not accept bones and hides.

If the animal is butchered just before it rots, the products of the animal MAY not rot. It is unknown whether the time of rotting for butchering products is based on the time of death of the animal or the time of production of the butchering returns.^[Verify]

Overdrive

In some instances - most notably, after rhesus macaque invasions, or killing some other large herd with your soldiers - you may find yourself with more bodies and severed body parts than you can process. In this case it is a good idea to set up some temporary extra butcher and tanners' shops (and butchers and tanners) to process them all before they rot. Butchers are more important because their workshops have a tendency to get crowded really quick.

Using the animal products

Animal products can support several industries within the fortress: they provide meat and fat for cooking, leather for clothing and armor, and bones for armor, ammunition, and trade goods. The value of an animal product is multiplied by the animal's modvalue, so items made from common animals are less valuable than items made from rare animals like a giant cave spider or a dragon. An animal's modvalue can be found in the creature raw files.

Bone carving

Requires: Bone carver, craftdwarf's workshop, and some bones and skulls

Butchering an animal produces quite a few bones and a skull. By setting up a craftdwarf workshop near your abbatoir you can turn these into useful products, such as bone bolts for your archers to practice with.

The only useful thing to do with a skull is turn it into a totem for trading. Note that totems do not fall under any category in the "Move trade goods to depot" screen, and so you need to search for them.

Meat and fat

Requires: a cook, a kitchen, and some meat or fat

Fat can be rendered into tallow at a kitchen, and then used as an ingredient in meals; if you feel particularly enterprising and have wood on your map, you can instead make the tallow into soap for constructions or trade. Meat can be eaten raw, or used as an ingredient.

Tanning

Requires: a tanner, a tanner's shop, and raw hide

As with the butcher's shop, the tanner's shop will queue Tan raw hide automatically (by default), the tanner's skill has no affect on quantity nor quality of the leather produced, and the task is time-sensitive because of rot.

It is quite sensible to have a single dwarf as both the butcher and tanner, as you will never need to begin tanning until you finish butchering. You could also make this same dwarf your leatherworker.

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