I'm biased towards Goats. I love them IRL, too. Everything I've learned leading up to this guide was to prove Goats are the best. They are.

I'm not a developer, and I have no "inside scoop". I haven't even decompiled the code to peek under the hood. Everything I know about this game has come from observation, experimentation, & inference.

Even though I state things factually, please keep that in mind. If you have to, mentally preface everything with "in my tests" or "in my experience" or "roughly" -- whatever you need to remind yourself there may be wiggle room.

There are many factors that affect herd efficiency, so your mileage may vary. I'll discuss later some of the factors that affect herd efficiency. I'll also go into detail about my research methods at the end of the guide.


Finally, when I reference a "standard season", I'm talking about 25% of the year. In The Northlands scenario, winter is 40% of the year, so you'll need to adapt accordingly.

For those of you wanting the high points without the rhetoric, this section is for you.

• It's more efficient to tame a wild animal than kill and butcher it in the wild.
  
• Children can tame animals
  
• Animals which die of disease can still be safely butchered.
  
  
• Young animals and Old Females play no role in reproduction.
  
• The AI maintains a 2:1 ratio of Females to Males when slaughtering.
  
• From slowest reproducing to fastest: Donkey, Horse, Cattle, Goat, Sheep, Pig.
  
• Animals still reproduce during Winter while in the Stables.
  
• Stabled animals marked for slaughter will be kicked out of Stables.
  
  
• Many animals are often born all at once in early Winter.
  
• Birth rate in early Winter is especially high for Pigs and hardly noticeable with Cattle.
  
  
• Goats reproduce slower than Pigs but provide more food, since they produce Milk.
  
• Milk can be harvested by children.
  
• Milk does not restore Hydration. (Ironically, Beer does.).
  
• Milk and Wool production cease while the animal is Sheltered (including Blizzard & Alarm).
  
  
• Sheep produce Wool; Wool Outfits are extremely valuable in Trade during all Eras.
  
  
• Milk is always consumed raw. Meat must be cooked. Eating Raw Meat lowers Morale.
  
• One meal restores 0.5 Nutrition (animals & humans).
  
• Humans don't exhaust Nutrition while Resting or Recovering Morale.
  
• Factoring for R&R, Humans require ~2.15 Nutrition (4.3 meals) per year.
  
  
• Cattle need 1.6 Nutrition (3.2 Meals) per season.
  
• Non-Cattle need 0.8 Nutrition (1.6 Meals) per season.
  
• Domestic animals eat in the wild except during Winter -- during which they eat Straw or Grain.
  
• Non-Cattle can sometimes survive all Winter without eating any Straw.
  
• Cattle must eat twice per Winter.
  
  
• All domestic animals need 0.8 Hydration per season.
  
• Domestic animals can only drink in the wild from Rivers and Lakes.
  
  
• A Cow, Donkey, or Horse attached to a Cart/Plow requires no food, water, or shelter.
  
• A Cow, Donkey, or Horse attached to a Cart/Plow still reproduces.
  
• A Cow attached to a Plow produces no Milk.
  
• Horses have a slight speed bonus when pulling carts.
  
  
• Goats are the most Straw-, tool- & task-efficient breed.
  
• Cattle are the most space-efficient breed.
  
• 100 Goats can support ~85 villagers.
  
• 65 Cattle can support ~85 villagers.
  
• 100 Goats produce 15% more Skin & Bones than 65 Cattle.
  
• 65 Cattle consume 30% more Straw than 100 Goats.
  
• 65 Cattle consume 35% more tool uses annually than 100 Goats.
  
  
• A Goat produces 1.78 Meat, 2.06 Milk, & 0.46 Skin/Bones per year.
  
• A Sheep produces 1.8 Meat, 0.48 Skin/Bones, and 1.9 Wool per year.
  
• A Pig produces 2.28 Meat & 0.59 Skin/Bones per year.
  
• A Cattle produces 1.6 Meat, 4.31 Milk, & 0.62 Skin/Bones per year.
  
• A Donkey produces 0.74 Meat & 0.33 Skin/Bones per year.
  
• A Horse produces 0.87 Meat & 0.38 Skin/Bones per year.
  
  
• Dogs produce no resources, except if butchered after death.
  
• Dogs can be trained from young Wolves.
  
• Training young Wolves is not necessary; Dogs will simply appear and join your village.
  
• After learning Dog Training, Dogs will join hunting parties and defend against Raiders.
  
  
• On a side note, I've seen 18 villagers simultaneously cooking and eating around a single Hearth!

Click the big (?)uestion mark on the menu or press F1 on your keyboard to open "Help". Then, click the 'Domestic Animals' tile under the "Topics" section. Read all that. Then, click on the tile for each different domestic animal and read all that, too.

Seriously, the help files are really good in this game.

Even if they don't seem to make sense, click through and read them anyway. At the very least, it'll prime you for the rest of the guide.


Just as farming crops allows your villagers to become independent of foraging wild plants, animal domestication allows your villagers to transition away from hunting wild animals.

A healthy stock of animals provides a safe, consistent, and reliable supply of food, raw skins, and bones. (In comparison to hunting, animal husbandry is also less laborious.)

Your domestic animals will multiply through breeding. When the animal population exceeds whatever limit you've set, the eldest will be slaughtered -- providing Raw Skin, Raw Meat, and Bones. Additionally, Goats and Cattle can be periodically Milked, and Sheep Sheared (for Wool).

Domestic animals essentially convert unnecessary excess Straw into necessary resources.

Once your village reaches the Neolithic Era and learns Goat Domestication and Thatching, it may take its first steps into animal domestication.

Goat Domestication is the first of the animal domestication techs. It allows the taming of wild Ibex to Goats as well as trade of Goats with the Trader.

Thatching enables the construction of Stables, where your animals will need to take shelter and be cared for during winter.

Completing the trinity is, Cereal Domestication. Your animals will need to be fed Straw or Grain while sheltered in the Stables, so planting and harvesting cereal crops is a requisite.



Domestic animals breed, but you first need to obtain a small group of animals to begin that process.

Purchasing animals from the Trader is expensive, so most of your initial livestock will be obtained through taming (capturing) young wild animals.

Domestic animals don't exist in the wild. Instead, there is a "wild variant" which becomes its respective domestic variant once captured.

For example, the Goat's wild variant is Ibex. Once you've located a Young Ibex, select it and click the Capture button.

You can also command a specific non-weapon-wielding villager to tame a young wild animal by selecting the villager and then right-clicking on the animal.




During non-Winter seasons, domestic animals will roam in and near the village. When hungry, they'll eat from the grass beneath them. When thirsty, they'll find the nearest river or lake and drink from it.

During Winter, domestic animals will seek shelter in the village's Stables. While sheltered, they will need to be cared for by the villagers; when a stabled animal becomes hungry or thirsty, villagers will be tasked to bring food and Water.

Straw is the defacto food for domestic animals. If there is no Straw, villagers will begin feeding Grain. If there is no Straw or Grain, the animals may begin to starve and can die if not adequately fed.

NOTE: All non-Cattle breeds consume about 1.6 meals per season. Cattle eat twice as much.


While Donkeys and Horses provide meat like any other domestic animal, they are not intended as a food source. They are work animals.

When a Cart is constructed, the nearest work animal will go and hook up to it. That animal can then be led around by a villager to carry large loads -- such as all of the Logs and Sticks from tree cutting.

A Cart cannot be disconnected from an animal unless it is destroyed or its animal killed. (EDIT: This is no longer true since the introduction of the Plow.)

A work animal pulling an attachment (Cart or Plow) does not require food, water, or shelter. A Cow attached to a Plow produces no Milk.


It's possible to have too many domestic animals. Because each animal mandates a certain amount of work, every animal increases the village's task count. Too many animals can also eat all of your Straw and leave none for repairs and new construction.

Until you're comfortable with animal husbandry, take it slow.

Build only as many Stables as are necessary to shelter as many animals as your current limit. Increase to the new limit at the end of Winter, so you have ample time to get more Stables built and crops planted.

TIP: If the village runs out of Straw before the next harvest, that's a good sign more cereal crops are needed. Generally speaking, before Masonry, plant two cereal plants (or 3 Barley per 2 animals) per non-Cattle animal.

In no particular order...

• Taming (Capturing) can be performed by children, but you have to manually command the child to do it. (EDIT: The AI Task Manager now assigns children as a preference for automated taming.)
  
  Hunting Tip: If you hunt manually, circle children around back and command them to tame the young animals. They'll scare the herd towards your village and right into the hunting party.
  
  
• Taming a wild animal is more efficient than killing it in the wild. By capturing it, you essentially "trade" it for one of your adult animals back in the village. You save the village on weapon uses, and the slaughter occurs in or near the village instead of away in the hunting grounds.
  
  
• Since non-Cattle animals only need 0.8 Nutrition per season, some animals will enter the Stables with 0.8 Nutrition or more and not need any food all Winter. One food is 0.5 Nutrition and lasts the animal 5/8 of Winter. So, once Winter is past its first third, you can safely disable auto-feeding in the Stables and ride it out.
  
  
• A significant number of animals are born during Winter. This can't really be avoided, since animals become adults and start breeding all at the same time in Spring. (I noticed this especially with Pigs -- where population often increased by 20% right at the beginning of Winter.
  This can be seen as beneficial, since it pushes a lot of the slaughtering to a time when workload is typically low.)
  
  
• To decrease time spent caring for animals during Winter, build Stables near a Hay Stack and Warehouse limited to "Food and Drink" only.
  
  
• Goats and Cattle can be used as an "emergency" storage of food (Milk). By limiting Milk production to an amount lower than the herd's maximum production amount, you guarantee that a certain minimum amount of the herd will always be at 100% production. If/when needed, you can increase your limits and draw the excess Milk.
  
  
• At the end of each Summer, note how much Meat, Grain, Straw, and Wool the village has in stock. If Grain and Straw are increasing, you may either increase your animal limits or decrease the number of crops planted. If Meat is also increasing, you may decrease your animal limits instead. (Vice versa in they are decreasing.) If you trade a lot of Wool Outfits, Wool should be slowing increasing; else, if it is increasing, you may decrease your Sheep limit.
  
  
• If a group of domestic animals become diseased, temporarily raise the population limit of that breed for the duration of the disease. This will allow the group to overpopulate in preparation for the inevitable deaths that will occur. After that, reset the limit to its initial state. (Thanks to Ronald Gordo for pointing this out.)
  
  
• Animals which die of disease may still be butchered.

Because Nuts, Fruits, Berries, Vegetables, Fish, & Bread are all a thing, it's not necessary -- or even preferable -- to solely rely on domestic animals for the village's food.

There is no magic, one-size-fits-all formula for your animal ratios. The size of your herd in relation to your population, quantity of carted-up Donkeys or Horses, how far your animals wander, how often your village goes into alarm, the number of knives available, the workload when Milking/Slaughtering is needed, & distance of Stables to storage are just a few of the factors affecting how productive your herd is.

Workload is the #1 efficiency-killer. Distance is #2. The latter is exacerbated by the former.

The information in this guide should get you close, but you'll need to remaing cognizant of how your particular herd is performing in your particular village.

• Goats use the most Stable space but are otherwise the most efficient animal. They breed fast enough that a massive death-by-disease event is not a village-ending catastrophe. They have roughly equal Meat-to-Milk ratio. A 1:1 ratio is plenty; a 1:2 ratio is typically good when combined with hunting, gathering, Bread, and trade
  
  
• Sheep are needed for Wool; it's as simple as that. Up until the Iron Age, keep as many Sheep as plausible for trading Wool Outfits. Otherwise, a 1:10 ratio of Sheep to Humans is generally sufficient.
  
  
• Pigs are terrible. They consume 60% more resources across the board but only provide 28% more Skin and Bones -- the latter of which isn't even necessary in the late game. Because of their high reproduction rate, the herd's ratio of Young-to-Adult fluctuates, which also causes food production to fluctuate. They also tend to reproduce all at once in large quantities right at the beginning of Winter. A 0:1 ratio is best.
  
  
• Cattle consume 34% more Straw than Goats but are 34% more space-efficient than Goats. Their reproduction tends to be much smoother with only a small Winter spike. Cattle produce about 3 times as much Milk as Meat; this makes their food supply more volatile and prone to spoilage sans Cheese. A ratio between 1:2 and 3:4 is good.
  
  
• Donkeys and Horses are not for Meat production. What's important is that when pulling a Cart, they require no food, water, or shelter but still breed as usual. There is almost no downside to maintaining an infinite limit of these and of Carts.

Pigs tend to reproduce in large quantities all at once at the beginning of Winter, which I initially attributed as a negative. However, that naturally shifts a significant amount of the slaughtering to a typically slow season, and to a time when all the animals are sheltered within the village and thus don't have to be chased down. Both very good things.

Meat also lasts significantly longer once dried. In an agricultural village subsisting primarily on Vegetables and Bread, yet another volatile (fast-decaying) food source like Milk may not even be feasible. Pigs offer the best conversion rate of Straw to strictly Meat.

In a village where agriculture is the primary focus, Straw will always simply exist as a bi-product of Grain production. Therefore, the labour involved in its production is a not a factor in keeping domestic animals. Similarly, water-collection can also be considered a non-factor, since it occurs almost entirely during Winter -- a slow season -- shortly after it's given to the animals.

Excluding those tasks, a Pig becomes 27% more task-efficient than a Goat at generating food:

A Goat generates 2.52 tasks yielding 3.83 food, for an efficiency of 1.52 food per task. A Pig generates 1.18 tasks yielding 2.28 food, for an efficiency of 1.93.

However, Milk can be consumed raw, whereas all Meat (even dried) must be cooked. Adding 1.73 tasks from meat-cooking gives Goats 3.83 food per 4.3 tasks (0.89 efficient). A Pig's efficiency becomes 2.28 food per 3.46 tasks (0.65 efficient). That gets even worse if the meat had to be dried as well.

I'm also compelled, to point out again how children are eligible for Milking -- which makes up 82% of those Goat-related tasks we just considered.

IMO, the best games have solid counterplay and trade-offs (pros and cons). So, that's what I look for when I think of "balance".

Maintaining an infinite limit on Donkeys, Horses, & Carts has no downside. It's all upside: free resources. Madruga has already stated this is by design, so it's unlikely to change. If carted-up animals didn't breed, the player would be forced to balance their Carts in relation to their herd size.

Pigs need a buff. There is no significant upside to maintaining Pigs compared with the other domestic animals. IRL pigs are very good at huddling up and keeping warm in the winter. A nice buff would be to make Adult Pigs not need shelter in Winter; a new "Pig Trough" structure could give them a place to eat during Winter.

Conversely, Goats could use a nerf -- perhaps to birthrate and/or Milk production. The strength of Cattle is their smaller footprint. Closing the food gap would make that benefit stand out more.

I don't know how to decompile code. The best I can do is decompress the save files and tinker with those.

Everything I've learned has been from editing saves for the default scenarios to create a specific testing situation and then playing it out within the game as well as just normal playthroughs.

My first tests were in Creative as I tried to understand the reproduction mechanics and rates. That eventually led into testing large herds of a single breed with controlled resources in Continental Dawn.

My most recent sandbox begins with a completely walled-off village of 100 Goats, 90 Humans, 11 Stables, 19 Roundhouses, 3 Wells, 1 Food Dryer, 1 Hearth, 1 Wood Pile, and 10 of each: Dolmen, Menhir, Granary, Warehouse.

All resources are controlled through never-decaying animal corpses seeded with extractable resources. When I need more of resource XYZ, I simply find the right corpse and harvest it until I have what I need.

The seeded food source is Dry Fish, so I can account for how much food was seeded versus generated by the herd.

All of the buildings of each type are built in the same spot, so it's an impossible village. It's way easier to make villages like that when editing the save, and it also ensures a near-optimal setup.

You can view and download it here[drive.google.com]. (EDIT: This file is gone; IDK what happened to it, but I doubt I rebuild it.)

You can also view the spreadsheet I finally started keeping track of things in here[docs.google.com]: (I have no explanation of it; I'm hoping if you're inclined to view it that you can figure it out yourself.)

maybe in a real village milking is less efficient

At your mention, I tracked my village of 250's Milk production (solely from goats) over 6 years. The average Milk production was 2.02 per Goat per year -- just 0.04 lower than in my sandbox tests.

pigs are the least labor intensive

It's not even close, actually. To get the same amount of food, Pigs require 52% more Tasks annually. On top of that, Children are eligible for Milking, Watering, Feeding, & Gathering -- which make up 35% of Goat related tasks versus just 9% of Pig-related tasks.

I've experienced this anecdotally within the game, but here's a bunch of math behind it also:


In this village, there are 60 Children, 75 Adults, & 107 Elders. The average carrying capacity of the village is 2.06 per villager. Children make up ~12% of the total carrying capacity.

Barley generates (on average) 1 Grain + 1.5 Straw = 2.5 resources. 2.5 resources / 2 resources per carrying task (on average) = 1.25 Gathering task per Barley plot. 100 Barley plots should therefore generate 250 resources, and children will have executed 250 * 0.12 = 30 tasks worth of them.


A Goat produces 1.78 Meat, 2.06 Milk, & 0.46 Skin/Bones per year.
A Pig produces 2.28 Meat & 0.59 Skin/Bones per year.

As far as the food breeds are concerned, Pigs are the most labor intensive

100 Goats produce annually 178 Meat + 206 Milk = 384 "food".

206 Milk = 206 Tasks

100 Goats * 1.5 Water each per standard Winter = 150 Water
150 Water = 150 Tasks
150 Water / ~2.0 carried per feeding = 75 Tasks

100 Goats * 1.5 Straw each per standard Winter = 150 Straw
150 Straw / ~2.0 carried per feeding = 75 Tasks
150 Straw / 1.5 Straw per Barley = 100 Barley
100 Barley * ( 1 planting * 1 harvesting * 1.25 gathering ) = 325 Tasks
100 sickle uses / 50 uses per Steel Sickle = 2 Steel Sickles
2 Steel Sickles * 2.5 Tasks (ish) per sickle = 5 Tasks

178 Meat / 4 meat per Goat = 44.5 Slaughters = 89 Tasks
89 knife uses / 50 uses per Steel Knife = 1.78 Steel Knives
1.78 Steel Knives * 2.5 Tasks (ish) per knife = 4.45 Tasks


206 + 150 + 75 + 75 + 325 + 5 + 89 + 4.45 = ~829.45 Tasks annually for 384 food provided by 100 Goats.


168 Pigs produce annually 383 Meat

168 Pigs * 1.5 Water each per standard Winter = 252 Water
252 Water = 252 Tasks
252 Water / ~2.0 carried per feeding = 126 Tasks

168 Pigs * 1.5 Straw each per standard Winter = 252 Straw
252 Straw / ~2.0 carried per feeding = 126 Tasks
252 Straw / 1.5 Straw per Barley = 168 Barley
168 Barley * ( 1 planting * 1 harvesting * 1.25 gathering ) = 549 Tasks
168 sickle uses / 50 uses per Steel Sickle = 3.36 Steel Sickles
3.36 Steel Sickles * 2.5 Tasks (ish) per sickle = 8.4 Tasks

383 Meat / 4 meat per Pig = 95.75 Slaughters = 191.5 Tasks
191.5 knife uses / 50 uses per Steel Knife = 3.83 Steel Knives
3.83 Steel Knives * 2.5 Tasks (ish) per knife = 9.575 Tasks


252 + 126 + 126 + 546 + 8.4 + 191.5 + 9.575 = 1,259.478 Tasks annually for 383 food provided by 168 Pigs.

I posit again that Pigs are terrible.

Q. Cattle attached to a plow doesn't consume straw during winter , do you think Cattle is more desirable in the long run ?

A. Yes and No. EDIT: I'm amending this to a hard "no". I actually think Cows pulling Plows is a bad idea from the standpoint of food production.

Only a mature (adult or old) Cow can pull a Plow. Only a mature Cow can produce Milk. The greatest benefit of the Cow is defeated by attaching it to a Plow. (The workaround this is to micromanage Plow attachments at the end of every Spring. But for me, this defeats the relaxed, laid-back nature of the game.)

In terms of "free food" (exploiting the attachment mechanic to avoid feeding/watering the animal), Cows are better at this than Horses and Donkeys, since Cows produce twice as much meat when slaughtered. Fewer Cows are necessary per Meat produced at slaughter.

If your goal is to exploit "free food" to its maximum, fewer Cows are be required. Workshops need fewer Logs for Plows, fewer Plows are needed, and less Stable space is needed to house the young Cows.

Even though half as many Cows are needed for the "free food" exploit, their young require twice as much nourishment -- so Straw/Grain needs for the young are equivalent compared to Horses & Donkeys.

Wool is immensely valuable!

1 wool = 5 trade vale
1 wool = 2 woollen suits = 10 trade value

So a tech costing (say) 250 can be bought by 50 wool (or 25 if they are outfits). Which will be replaced in a season or two with no player effort. That's how I got all techs in under 6 hours: sheep.

I wrote this guide almost exclusively with efficient food production in mind, but this point is definitely worth highlighting here.

For as long as a trading economy is vital, you should keep as many Sheep as plausible -- possibly even at the expense of Goats!

"What limits should I set for the different animals?"

There's no hard and fast rule; you can do whatever you want. But, there's a simple method for fine-tuning a balance in your village as it exists the way you've shaped it:

First, take note at the end of Summer how many Meat, Skins (including Raw, Dry, & Leather), Wool, Straw, Grain, Flour, Bread, Beer, Milk & Cheese are in inventory. (Take a screenshot.). Then, let your village run as usual, but don't trade away any of those items. The following Summer, take note again of those same values and compare them.

Review also the "Food" and "Straw" graphs.

In a perfectly balanced village, the inventory values & curves of the graphs will be nearly identical from year to year.

Make sure "Food" isn't on the decline. And, if any value is increasing, decrease its production or increase its usage (such as through trading). It's as simple as that.

In general:

• If Food & Straw are both increasing, reduce farming.
  
• If Food is increasing while Straw is decreasing, reduce the herd.
  
• If Food is steady (or slightly decreasing) while Straw is increasing, replant some Barley as other grains instead.

Within each category of food type -- herding (Meat, Skins, Wool, Milk/Cheese) and farming (Straw, Grain, Flour, Bread, Beer), you can fine-tune the balance with more/fewer production buildings.

For example, if Grain is increasing, but Beer is decreasing, build more Brewers. Same with flour/bread.

For Wool, set the limit to infinite (∞). You'll find 20-25 Sheep are more than enough to stay ahead on Wool Clothing. (Fewer than 20 Sheep risks losing a critical mass of Sheep from aging and/or disease.)

---

The "balance" I create is to use Grain for Beer and feeding animals only. This causes a Straw deficit for most of the year and requires a greater building footprint in the form of more Stables.

I think it's worth it, because Goats are "food positive" -- meaning that even if fed only Grain, the amount of Meat & Milk they produce is still greater than if the Grain had been used for Bread. (Goats are the only "food positive" breed in that respect.)

Generally, farming enough Straw to cover all the needs of the village and never running a deficit results in excessive Grain production that just goes to waste or gets traded off on the cheap.

My goal is always to minimize workload, so I plant crop fields according to the animals kept.

I plant only as much Rye and Barley as necessary to keep Grain and Beer consistent while still maintaining a slight positive to "Food" production and enough in storage to last an extra year just in case of untimely diseases.

The villagers will only feed Grain when there's no Straw left. So, all maintenance and new construction occurs only during Fall and early Winter. For the rest of the year, there's no Straw in inventory.

I keep about 75% Goats, 20 Sheep, 0 Pigs, and 20% Cattle/Donkey/Horse. Carts and Plows are at 20A and 50A respectively -- just enough to keep the adults attached.

NOTE: If I'm focusing on a trading economy (Wool Outfits), I set Goats at 33% and Sheep at 100%.