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[Frag_Dad]

I'm a bit confused over my butchers at the moment. I've brought along a couple of turkeys to provide poults for meat, leather, bones etc. However, when my butchers slaughter a poult, I usually only get a skull. Occasionally I'll get the meat, fat, skin etc. as well, but it seems to happen perhaps 1 in 5 times.

Why is this?

[Quietust]

The creature you slaughtered was so small that the butcher wasn't able to get anything out of it - the skull is the only thing you're guaranteed to get.

[Frag_Dad]

Ah, OK, thanks for that. I did think it might have been the case, but couldn't find any information about it anywhere.

Good to know!

[Garath]

DF tries to be pretty realistic in many if not most cases. Just ask yourself: if they'd be butchered for real, would you actually get anything usefull? Fish have less bones in their own way so even not too large fish can make a meal, but a poult... well... Or a kitten. One mouthfull and it's gone and that means all of it including all those things you usually get from slaughtering animals like eyes, brains, meat, fat, spleen, whatevers. So butchering a kitten won't get much either. Butchering a baby elephant after a year gets results though.

[Sutremaine]

Turkeys are good to bring on embark because you always get full-grown adults, but if you're breeding for meat and bones and such dogs are a better bet. You can bring three and slaughter the male after he gets the females pregnant, and then at the end of autumn you should start getting puppies.

Pigs are good too, though a little expensive for embarking with. Their newborn size is much larger and they grow twice as large as dogs, though this may not necessarily translate into twice as much meat.

[Telgin]

I had similar experiences with breeding turkeys in my current fort.  I tried butchering some after they grew into gobblers and hens, and I still didn't get meat for about half of them that I butchered.  Ah well.

The plus side though is that turkeys lay an insane number of eggs.  10 turkeys can keep 100 dwarves fed, easily.

[Sutremaine]

Did you butcher them as soon as they grew up, or when they were two years old? Many animals that mature at 1 don't reach full size until 2.

[Telgin]

It was immediately after they grew up.  I had a hunch that they wouldn't be full size then, but tried it out anyway.  I'll wait longer before butchering them in the future.