Editing v0.34:Milk

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'''Milk''' is a product [[extract]]ed from milkable [[creatures]]. Milk can be made into [[cheese]] or used in [[cook]]ing [[prepared meal]]s. It cannot be consumed "as is".

Female versions of certain animals are milkable. In order to perform milking, you must have a dwarf with the [[milker|Milking]] labor active, a [[farmer's workshop]], an empty [[bucket]] and a mature, non-pet, milkable animal.

Confirmed to be milkable:{{catbox|DF2012:Milkable}}

*[[Camel]], both [[One-humped camel|one-humped]] and [[Two-humped camel|two-humped]].
*[[Cow]]
*[[Donkey]]
*[[Horse]]
*[[Purring maggot]]
*[[Pig]]
*[[Sheep]]
*[[Goat]]
*[[Water buffalo]]
*[[Reindeer]]
*[[Yak]]
*[[Llama]]
*[[Alpaca]]
*[[Tapir]]
*[[Kangaroo]]

Order your [[Farmer's workshop]] to Milk Creature. The milker will not necessarily pick the closest animal available. Caging, pasturing or restraining the milkable creatures near the workshop might be a good idea, but is not mandatory. The animal must also have milk available.

Milk will eventually be transferred from its bucket into a [[barrel]] or [[large pot]] for long-term storage.  If you plan to make [[cheese]], it's a good idea to let the milk accumulate so that you get stacks of cheese (up to size 5) instead of single (size 1) cheeses.

Once milked, the creature will be free to roam.  If the creature was previously caged, pastured or restrained, some dwarf will be assigned the job of taking it back.

The frequency with which animals are able to be milked is defined in the RAW files with the tag [MILKABLE:LOCAL_CREATURE_MAT:MILK:20000]. All milkable creatures currently have this tag set to 20000 ticks, which, at roughly 1200 ticks per day, means they all can be milked every 17 game days. Due to this time-out, you cannot use [R]epeat orders to Milk Creature if only few milkable animals are available. Alternating Milk Creature and Make Cheese orders tend to work poorly, since transfer of the milk to storage can interfere with continued work, so that sooner or later the cheesemaking job cancels out while milking keeps going.

Because milk is not considered a drink, dwarves will not drink it, even if they are dying of [[thirst]].

A trick to maximise embark point returns is to take a minimum of 1 of each kind of milk. Milk costs only 1 point at embark and comes with a separate barrel for each type, effectively giving you free barrels.

==Bugs==
* After finishing a milking job, the milker may generate a cancellation message if trying to take another job immediately: "Urist McMultitasking cancels job, handling dangerous animal". They will subsequently just leave the milked animal to wander away on its own and retask anyway.
* It is unclear why pets cannot be milked; this seems to be a bug because milking is a requirement for some animals and presumably the Animal Care dwarf would be aware of this and oversee their regular milking. Perhaps there should be an option to assign a cage or restraint to milking so that it will be used automatically for pet animals?
* Tamed [[purring maggot]]s can't be milked. {{Bug|3670}}
* After being milked, [[purring maggot]]s are left inside the workshop as an item. {{Bug|3668}}

{{Category|Food}}
{{Category|Extracts}}
{{Category|Creature attributes}}