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[Ai Shizuka]

I know the most common/convenient way to get some quick food going is via farming and it's what I do myself. Usually with a 5x5 plot with sweet pods, sweet pods, plump helmets, plump helmets.

What are other ways to get early, indoor (no hunting), sustainable food sources?
Butchering seems impratical in the early stages of a fortress and probably inadequate when the third migrant tsunami arrives.

I'm asking because the same old 'start farms asap' is getting boring and also because I'll probably embark on a glacier for my next fortress, so farms may take a while.

Can eggs be eaten raw?
If not, can a fortress feed on meals from eggs/milk/cheese in the early stages?

[Garath]

eggs can't be eaten raw, but they can be used in meals with whatever else you've got. For me, early farming is actually geared to booze and some cloth production before I get complaints.

But yes, a turkey egg with sheep cheese biscuit does fine.

[I am Leo]

I often tell an untrained dwarf to gather plants from a large section of map, then just have my dwarves cook seeds until the first migrant wave turns up and I can put some of them to farming. In a wooded area you can find a hell of a lot of food just sat on the floor.

[Laurin]

Birds are fine, I usually have lots of eggs which the cooks seem hesitant to use.

Besides that, pigs are good because they can be milked and don't need graze pastures. They are a bit costy though.

[Garath]

Birds are fine, I usually have lots of eggs which the cooks seem hesitant to use.

Besides that, pigs are good because they can be milked and don't need graze pastures. They are a bit costy though.

disable other cookable stuff, it'll do wonders

[Laurin]

Yes I know, but as long as there is other stuff they will seldom use eggs, maybe because they are at the end of the list. ;-)

[dakenho]

I usually bring about 5 turkey hens which usually lay about 12 eggs each * 5 = 60 eggs / 8 dwarfs * 2 meals a season = 60 / 16 = 3.75 seasons worth of food on one harvest, it should be enough to get you started. ( i always butcher my pack animals and what ever animals come during migration)

[guitarxe]

For VERY early food butchering whatever wagon animals you got will see you through to the winter at the very least.
Then, as has already been mentioned here, if you don't want to do farms then bring some turkeys or hens with you. The eggs they produce will easily feed your fort. You simply need to make meals out of them, which is very quick, and you have supplies for the next few seasons.

[Mohawk_Bravo]

Well immediately after breakind dirt you can pretty easily set up a butchery and butcher your pack animals for a small boost in food. The problem with butchery not involving trading for or butchering animals is that it's not a renewable resource unless you are breeding, and that takes so much micromanagement that I coudln't be bothered. Either way, farming is probably the best. I suppliment with fishing and butchery early on, but if you want to remain indoors, I'm not exactly sure what you can do.

[Leonidas00]

You could tap a lake, build a underground lake in your fort, get fish into the fortress, then go fishing without leaving the fort

[Quietust]

I often tell an untrained dwarf to gather plants from a large section of map, then just have my dwarves cook seeds until the first migrant wave turns up and I can put some of them to farming. In a wooded area you can find a hell of a lot of food just sat on the floor.

You might be interested to know that plant gathering is very inefficient outdoors - a flat 80% of all above-ground shrubs will yield nothing, regardless of skill level. Subterranean shrubs, on the other hand, will always give you something (unless your herbalist's skill is so low that it results in a stack size of zero).

[Snaake]

I do tend to butcher at least one of the draft animals ASAP (unless they're a breeding pair). Yaks and Water buffaloes have quite a bit of meat, not really what I'd call "a small boost". They'd only end up starving on a glacier anyway, and if you want grazers you can order and buy them from caravans once you've established underground pastures (or just tame some Dralthas). If you have a female(s), you can squeeze an extra food out of them by milking them before butchering, then making cheese.

Eggs are nice, but don't really have anything to add regarding them. I don't know how much sweet pods cost to take on embark, but you could take some and make syrup (1 pod = 5 syrup). Could also use quarry bushes in a similar way, but then you need bags (Harder to get than rock pots).

[Garath]

Yes I know, but as long as there is other stuff they will seldom use eggs, maybe because they are at the end of the list. ;-)

most likely your kitchen is above your food stockpile and first takes from wha is closest - the barrels of plants you had for some time etc etc. just disable enough stuff and place your kitchen in a smart place

[greycat]

Or make a small stockpile directly above/below or surrounding the kitchen, and have that stockpile only accept the kinds of foods that you want cooked first (dwarven syrup, eggs, whatever).

[Panando]

For VERY early food butchering whatever wagon animals you got will see you through to the winter at the very least.

This.

Also if you invest in a military (i.e. 2 dwarves, proficient weapon users, put in squad of 2, have train permanently) then such elite dwarves can easily run down wild animals and kill them. Shooting wild animals is also very good marksdwarf training and again has the benefit of filling producing more meat than the dwarves can possibly eat.

The other major, very major, food source, is caravans. The thing about caravans is they always bring what you lack. So if you cook all your meat and fish and cheese into prepared meals, then they'll see that you have none of those foods and bring you heaps and heaps of it. So you can produce a massive stockpile of food just by buying up everything the caravans bring, and processing it so they bring more. An advantage of caravan meat is it always comes in stacks of 5, which becomes size-20 roasts. That's way more food than you can fit in a barrel, so storing such prepared meals in a barrel-less stockpile is a very space-efficient way to store food.

Caravans will also easily supply your booze industry. Again the trick is to brew all the plants you have, then the caravans see you have no plants, and bring heaps and heaps. Dwarves only bring plump helmets, but humans and elves will bring a wider variety of plants for brewing. An added advantage of this kind of plant supply, is you can additionally cook all the seeds. Actually because dwarves drink twice as often as they eat, and brewing plants produces about 2 seeds per plant, you could just about both booze and feed your fortress by brewing plants and cooking the seeds. That'd be a nasty diet though because seeds are low value. But cooked seeds are a good food source in a pinch, because the seeds are so readily replaced by buying more plants from caravans. You could easily get 200 plump helmet spawn just by buying all the plump helmets from the dwarvern caravan and brewing them. So don't be afraid to cook such seeds. And also consider that embark plump helmets are a good buy, because when brewed you get 5 booze and about 2 spawn per plant - that's worth 12 embark points, but the plump helmet only costs 4 points. So seed cooking is nasty, but it's a dirt cheap food supply.