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[Halceon]

I'm consistently having a butchering problem. I can't force my dorfs to butcher corpses that aren't already in the butchery.
Things I've tried that don't work:
*Refuse stockpile and adjacent butchery outside
*Refuse stockpile and adjacent butchery inside
*Stockpile linked to workshop
*Stockpile not linked to workshop
*Butchery next to a corpse in the wild
*Butchery next to a corpse underground (former stockpile)
*Gather refuse from outside on and off
*High skill and no skill

At best I can successfully butcher one corpse out of 100. All corpses are fresh. Some are killed by military, some are non-hunt kills by hunters. And these aren't small birds, which are supposed to be sometimes too small to butcher. I've had coyotes, gazelles, giant keas. "No unrotten butcherable nearby corpse" is all I get.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[grody311]

A lot of creatures get "mutilated" when not manually slaughtered.  1 out of a 100 seems a bit extreme, but not unheard of.

Best thing you can do is to just leave autobutcher on under the workshop orders and hope for the best.  Don't bother with custom stockpile settings.  Either your butcher will use the dead bodies in the outside refuse pile, or he won't.

[Halceon]

Mutilated means having body parts missing. I'm pretty sure that shouldn't be a problem, at least the wiki has led me to believe that both parts should be butcherable seperately.

[AutomataKittay]

Mutilated means having body parts missing. I'm pretty sure that shouldn't be a problem, at least the wiki has led me to believe that both parts should be butcherable seperately.

Mutialated means the corpse's smaller, which can go under butchering size.

I don't think it's the case for Halceon, but I can't figure out what's wrong.

[Tirion]

Is "gather refuse from outside" on?

[laularukyrumo]

I have this same issue, personally.

One thing that drives me nuts is that I've had a butchery shop above ground, and an above ground refuse stockpile, and dwarves set to gather refuse from outside, no burrows, no give/take orders on the workshop or stockpile. Dwarves will take a corpse to the corpse pile and then butcher it. HOWEVER, if I move the shop underground and change nothing else, put a stockpile with same settings right next to it, dwarves won't ever take the corpse inside or butcher it. It drives me nuts, because I don't want to have to go outside every time I want to butcher something. It's fairly stupid.

[Halceon]

After what Laularukyrumo said, I hypothesized that maybe for some reason "gather from outside" had become an exclusive setting, making dwarves ignore anything that wasn't outside.

That didn't work. All combinations of outside/inside/underground with gather from outside on and off checked out as not working.

[smjjames]

I'm having a bit of a problem in that I have a bunch of wild animals that got caught in cage traps that I want to butcher and have marked as ready for butchering, but the job is refusing to activate.

I haven't had any problems with butchering from cages as I did that with tame animals.

I'll try building the cages and see if that works.

Edit: Nope, didn't work, do I have to tame them a bit first or something? I am able to put the ready for slaughter tag on animals that are 'not tame', so I don't know what is going on there.

[WhimsyWink]

train the animals to semi wild then butcher before the training wears off

[smjjames]

Oh that's what I need to do with the current taming mechanic? ok.

[Merendel]

Oh that's what I need to do with the current taming mechanic? ok.

well that or let em out of their cage and have your military/hunters kill them.

[greycat]

A couple shots in the dark:

1) Animals that were tame, which have been killed in any way other than slaughter, cannot be butchered.  Because that's the way the game was programmed.  Even though that makes no sense at all.

2) Maybe burrows are causing some problems?  There are some known bugs with burrows and workshops.  If you have any burrows at all, whether they're active or not, try making sure that the burrow covers both the butcher shop and the corpses.

3) If the corpse is tasked for hauling or dumping, it won't be available to butcher.

Personally I don't use refuse stockpiles at all.  I don't do a lot of butchering, and what little I do, is done by marking a corpse for manual dumping to a spot that's quite close to the butcher shop.  Then I manually unforbid it after it's been dumped.  If there's a large corpse somewhere that would take weeks to haul to the butcher shop, I'll just order a butcher shop to be built near the corpse instead.

[greycat]

x

[Sutremaine]

If there's a large corpse somewhere that would take weeks to haul to the butcher shop, I'll just order a butcher shop to be built near the corpse instead.

Sometimes I like to set up a couple of special stockpiles, one next to the butcher's shop and allowing wheelbarrows and the other underneath the large corpse and giving to the stockpile with the wheelbarrows.

You could also have a bunch of small stockpiles with enough wheelbarrows between them to be available to your whole working population, which in most cases would add a little hauling time (the dwarf has to walk to the wheelbarrow before walking to the corpse or body part) but would automate the timely return of large corpses.

[laularukyrumo]

butchering ..... is done by marking a corpse for manual dumping to a spot that's quite close to the butcher shop.  Then I manually unforbid it after it's been dumped.

The problem is that I've done that, and it still won't work. I'll have an unforbidden corpse RIGHT NEXT TO THE SHOP and they won't touch it. It's not tasked for hauling/dumping. It can be dumped directly into a stockpile, and they still won't touch it. But the same corpse above-ground is workable.