I'm treading lightly with this topic, but I guess there should be another option for keeping livestock, that's apparently not present in the game. I think meat processing should be a feature for all us meat eaters. Salting, curing, fermentation, smoking or other processes for pork, beef, poultry, while it could also feature offal or meat by-products such as blood. Processed meat products might include bacon, ham, hotdogs, sausages, salami, corned beef, beef jerky, canned meat and other meat-based sauces and recipes that you can cook. What do you think?
Vegetarians simply don't have to use their livestock as food sources if they chose not to but realistically I would prefer to see meat products included. Not necessarily home butchering but a new NPC could act as a butcher for any livestock.
The idea was planned to be included and there is a significant amount of code that would be easy to "activate" for such a mod, but there are still some hurdles that need to be overcome programming wise before it can happen.
Dude, I would love this. I love meat. It'd be super cool if somehow someone made a mod with this and somehow make something where you own a farm-to-table restaurant on your property and you make dishes in the kitchen to be sold there. /hip young farmer 2016
This is not doable, but I hope it is only not doable "yet", and that modding APIs will support it soon, because in the country where I came from, farm without animal butchering is not a farm... (and I really love buying roadside animal-based products! lots of farms put up their stores near roads, so that passing people can buy farm-made cheese, sausages, cured meat, etc... directly from the farmer).
You can always play Fantasy Life.. though it's not quite the same as there's no farming. Or Rune Factory as it has meat in them.
Rune Factory doesn't allow you to slaughter animals... and it would be specially weird, considering in one of them the protagonist is a Sheep... it would be kinda like murder and cannibalism.
What one? I am used to playing Rune Factory 3, the closes to meat in the game, beside fishes, is dishes that require meat, but in the ingredients don't actually have meat. For example RF3 has "meat udon", that has as ingredients: flour, cabbage, grass, shrimp, onion...
I honestly wouldn't having the option to butcher my animals for food since it is a farm and unless you're a vegan. there's no point in even keeping animals.
Once we get the ability to add new content and have better control over menus I could see it being relatively simple. Create a butcher character -> Talk to butcher brings up butchering dialog -> Allow player to choose animal -> Wait a few in game days -> Player can then pick up butchered meat.
I was seriously disappointed when I learned that butchering wasn't in the game. If this could get modded back in, including new recipes for meat-based foods that'd be great. It'd have to be balanced so that it was worth slaughtering the animals (over just keeping them and selling what they produce). Alternatively if it could be worked out to be more realistic -- animals only produce products for X years and then they "dry up", so to speak, and are only good then for butchering -- which would add to the realism of the game. Also, I would like it if animals could get sick and die (like they can in HM) if you don't feed them or treat them right -- and them being sick should lower the quality of their products and meat (if you butcher them while they are sick).
Rather than a use by date on animals I'd rather see breeding lines introduced to produce meat animals or productive ones. Sheep that are bred to produce wool rather than meat do a better job at producing wool ( can be clipped more frequently ) while sheep bred for the table are culled at lamb, two tooth or mutton ages. Same thing with ducks and chooks. Pigs are a little different as they are mainly bred for meat so and specialization would be to breed Truffle hunters.
Anyone who doesn't like the idea doesn't have to use it. And if someone is offended by it, than they can just refrain from downloading the mod should there ever be one. I do hope, that there will be an option of caring for the animal well and letting it live a relatively nice life before dying to be made into meat. Say x amount of days and that you also get a better cut or serving if the animal was happier (because that actually correlates into real life too, happy animals taste better, so it's a mutual benefit all around.) I have mad respect for butchers who respect the animal for what it gives them and are totally against the animal cruelty associated with many meat butchering mega farms around the world. I definitely think naming the animal and then killing it is kinda a no-no. So animals that are for butchering shouldn't have a naming system and should just get a number to identify the age and measure happiness levels. Don't anthropomorphize what you eat, LOL.
Y'know, I think I remember reading somewhere that ConcernedApe would maybe be wiling to work with modders to add this back in via a mod (that way it's completely optional whether you want it in the game or not). It was fully implemented before he decided to pull it from the game for his own reasons. I might just have been imagining him saying that though? But I'm also pretty sure he said it. I don't know... Although I would personally prefer that when you click your animal you have two choices: sell, and butcher. When you sell, you sell as normal. When you select butcher you pay a fee and you get the meat products back. You should get higher quality meat the happier/more hearts the animal has. Plus, with butchery back in the game all of the recipes CA already had in the game that contained meat could be added back in. I'm seriously all for this being added back in.
Good point. I just figured it would be easier if the mod just assigned a number when you buy, so that you don't have to remember which number should come next. It's just a little thing to make it slightly easier though. Doesn't really matter.
It would be completely sensible to include meat in the game, so I vote for it to be added/modded back in. I didn't really get why fish would be used as an ingredient while meat was off the menu for a long time, although I can guess, that the whole ordeal of butchering the cute livestock is simply unbefitting the atmosphere of the game. Anyway, I'm sure a simple button click like in the case of selling the animal would be a perfectly acceptable way of sending the creature off to the butcher, and receiving the meat instantly or perhaps the next morning. Maybe use the button to mark one animal for butchering, then the player would have to go see the butcher NPC and order the processing, and he would come next morning to perform the act, like Robin, but instead of witnessing the bloody execution, we'd just meet him on the porch, and he'd give us the product.
