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[Niyazov]

I just realized that kangaroos and tapirs are now milkable and you can get the milk from dwarven traders even though they are not domestic animals; this immediately made me imagine hunters stalking down herds of tapirs, wrestling them to the ground, and milking them. Given that more wild creatures are milkable when tamed, and that dwarves are not known for discriminating palates (they will eat cheese made from maggot extract), let's make a few more suggestions for more milk!

• DEER AND ANTELOPE MILK - Spanish explorers reported that some native americans kept herds of deer which they milked and used to produce cheese. In South Africa domesticated elands are milked. The Soviet Union experimented with moose milk and there is still one existent moose dairy.
• PENGUIN MILK - emperor penguins produce a product known as "crop milk" for their young; this is not regurgitated fish but an actual glandular/crop secretion and is extremely nutritious. It is not evolutionarily related to mammalian milk and is an example of convergent evolution. It may even convey disease resistance like mammalian milk. Also produced by columbidae (doves) and flamingos, whose milk is allegedly dark-colored. Both males and female birds can secrete crop milk.
• INSECT MILK - ants have been cultivating aphids for honeydew for millions of years. In a world where insects grow as big as bears there's no reason that dwarves couldn't either. Tsetse flies also "lactate" internally to their young prior to implantation.
• CAECILIAN MILK - legless amphibians that secrete a product called "uterine milk" which is consumed by fetuses within their bodies, unlike most live-birthing animals that rely either on yolks or a placenta.
• FISH MILK?! OH YEAH FISH MILK EXISTS - ok it's not quite milk, but some cichlids secrete nutritious mucus for their fry. Both males and females participate in raising the fry and secrete the milk. Milkable fish would be an interesting aquaculture challenge, as would...
• WHALE MILK HECK YES - unlike most of these whales are genuine lactating mammals; some whalers and scuba divers have sampled milk from nursing whales and reported that it tastes rich and fishy which sounds about right; it is also semi-solid with about the consistency of "loose, runny cheese" It is 10x more concentrated than cow milk due to the need to conserve water but a blue whale can apparently produce around 100 gallons a day. Source.

Anyone have other suggestions?

[Corai]

'Whale milk"

"100 galleons"


One whale, I never need to farm nor brew again.

[Kathemenos]

It's not milk, by various cultures without reliable access to milk or clean water have been know to drink the blood of their livestock, and other will cook it (e.g. blood pudding).  That would be a nice use for all of those stupid barrels of goose blood and butterfly ichor that show up with caravans, and make butchering slightly more productive.

And, since you asked for a gross suggestion, dung is a useful fuel source and building material in certain climates.  Making a wall (or a well!) out of dung blocks would be fairly dwarfy, especially if you ignored the giant mountain to focus on gathering enough livestock to fuel the expansion of your crappy fortress.  Also, xXtroll fur socksXx, creatures, and bloodstains haven't quite trashed my framerate yet, so my cpu should have to capacity to track the digestive systems of a few hundred creatures.[/troll]

[Niyazov]

'Whale milk"

"100 galleons"


One whale, I never need to farm nor brew again.

given that butchering a sperm whale yields over 1000 units of food and they are fully grown in one year, breeding whales would be an even more attractive proposition.

[orius]

'Whale milk"

"100 galleons"

Wow.  Got a whole fleet of whale milking ships there.

[Niyazov]

'Whale milk"

"100 galleons"

Wow.  Got a whole fleet of whale milking ships there.

A dairy cow produced 6 gallons of milk a day. A dairy cow weighs 3/4 ton and a female blue whale weighs 190 tons. A dairy cow is seemingly about 15x more efficient at producing milk. However, blue whale milk is 10x as concentrated as cow milk, so the advantage is really only about 50% to the cow. However, dairy cows have been bred over the course of thousands of years to not undergo separation anxiety when their young are taken away, which is definitely not true for whales and would probably have a major impact on any prospective whale dairy. Also a whale dairy would need to follow the whales around since there's no way you could pasture them, and they migrate all over the globe.

In 1957 Arthur C. Clarke wrote a novel about whale farming called The Deep Range in which whales were domesticated for meat and milk. Killer whales were also trained as herding animals, similar to sheepdogs. IIRC the milk needed some sort of treatment before it was edible.

[NW_Kohaku]

The problem is that regular cows don't produce as much milk as they really should in this game - you can milk a cow for a bucket of milk only about 20 times per year. (Assuming you milk a cow the instant its milking cooldown takes place, and you won't.)  Cows produce the same amount of milk at the same rate as any other creature, including pigs.  (In fact, pigs have the notable advantage of not being a grazer.) 

So, you whales would really just be producing milk the same as a cow, given the lazy implementation of milk right now. 

In fact, if you adjust the amount of milk a cow in their full milk-producing years should be able to provide to the "serving size" of what a dwarf should be able to eat, a single cow should be able to produce 33 times as much milk as they do now.

(And incidentally, that's why egg-farming is overpowered and milking provides amounts of milk so paltry as to be useless.)

[lordcooper]

Dwarf milk.

[Kathemenos]

Dwarf milk.

You win.

[jaxy15]

Dwarf milk.

..Dwarf breastmilk roasts??

[Niyazov]

The problem is that regular cows don't produce as much milk as they really should in this game - you can milk a cow for a bucket of milk only about 20 times per year. (Assuming you milk a cow the instant its milking cooldown takes place, and you won't.)  Cows produce the same amount of milk at the same rate as any other creature, including pigs.  (In fact, pigs have the notable advantage of not being a grazer.) 

So, you whales would really just be producing milk the same as a cow, given the lazy implementation of milk right now. 

In fact, if you adjust the amount of milk a cow in their full milk-producing years should be able to provide to the "serving size" of what a dwarf should be able to eat, a single cow should be able to produce 33 times as much milk as they do now.

(And incidentally, that's why egg-farming is overpowered and milking provides amounts of milk so paltry as to be useless.)

excellent point. Food and drink need to be better quantized the way that bones have been, rather than having 1 unit = 1 serving. 1 rattlesnake egg does not a meal make but 1 elk bird egg could probably feed a large family.

[Geb]

I have heard it said that blue whales can lactate hard enough to break human bones. They can't just dribble fluid out, since they and their offspring are floating in water, so it has to be fairly lumpy, and squirted out with force.

[lordcooper]

Dwarf milk.

..Dwarf breastmilk roasts??

Why not?  There's nothing other than weird hangups preventing humans from doing this IRL.  Hell, even men can apparently express milk with a little persistence.

[Argonnek]

I have heard it said that blue whales can lactate hard enough to break human bones. They can't just dribble fluid out, since they and their offspring are floating in water, so it has to be fairly lumpy, and squirted out with force.

Ewww....

What about small mammal milks? Like hamster, guinea pig, and rat milk? There are giant versions of each, so why not?

[dree12]

The problem is that regular cows don't produce as much milk as they really should in this game - you can milk a cow for a bucket of milk only about 20 times per year. (Assuming you milk a cow the instant its milking cooldown takes place, and you won't.)  Cows produce the same amount of milk at the same rate as any other creature, including pigs.  (In fact, pigs have the notable advantage of not being a grazer.) 

So, you whales would really just be producing milk the same as a cow, given the lazy implementation of milk right now. 

In fact, if you adjust the amount of milk a cow in their full milk-producing years should be able to provide to the "serving size" of what a dwarf should be able to eat, a single cow should be able to produce 33 times as much milk as they do now.

(And incidentally, that's why egg-farming is overpowered and milking provides amounts of milk so paltry as to be useless.)

Time is messed up in this game (I've suggested something to fix this as my first post, but it didn't go too well). It takes a week to get to the cow and back, 2 weeks to store the milk in a stockpile, and another week to cook the milk.