Meat based foods in Towns are some of the most nutritious and frustrating to start creating, there are many benefits to switching from baking to cooked foods including not needing to feed townies as frequently, food taking less time to consume, and fewer steps in the meal creation process which frees up time for exploring, crafting, and building.

This guide aims to bring you into the wild and wacky world of farming animals for food and save players the frustration of starving herds, hungry residents, and supply shortages.

Many of these tips are fleshed out in more detail in the full guide found below but checking this handy list when you run into problems can save a great deal of heartache and rumbling stomachs:

• Farmed animals must be fed and unwalled farms lead to wandering livestock, always wall in farms with either farm fences and a farm gate or x2 high walls and a door. Decorative doors such as an arch will not prevent animals from wandering.
  
  
• Building farms with no wheat fields can potentially cause your residents to feed all of the wild wheat on the map to your livestock. Wheat can be repurchased from travelling caravans such as the food merchant to replenish supplies.
  
  
• If you have run out of wheat and animals are not starving but citizens are not being fed, slaughter animals ten at a time to slowly decrease population levels.
  
  
• Keeping raw wheat in reserve amounts of at least twenty can keep you from mass animal starvation when your residents are focusing on other tasks such as mining, crafting or building. Setting wheat harvesting at a minimum of x5 at all times will help avoid any issues. These numbers should be tweaked as your population grows.
  
  
• All farm animals that starve provide bones, if you need large supplies of bones, consider letting your population of animals self correct. This is also helpful when trying to determine whether or not to build more wheat fields in order to sustain your populations growing number of citizens. If animals starve before your food stockpiles hit the required number, consider planting more wheat.
  
  
• Townies feed animals before themselves, dedicated wheat fields for animals and dedicated fields for baked foods should be made.
  
  
• If playing on Jungle or Snow maps, dig down to hit dirt, add a ladder, and till for planting wheat.
  
  
• Place your dedicated livestock fields close to farms for quick and easy access by citizens. If you build your kitchen on one side of your city and bakery on the other, this facilitates easy movement of wheat for animals and baking.

So you think you're ready to become farmer of livestock and reap the benefits of omelettes, steak, meat pies, soups and roasted badger...but have you adequately prepared for the great responsibility of stockpiling delicious food?

Animals need to be fed which means you will need to provide for their well-being in order to collect their delicious lives and sustain your own. Wheat is the only substance that your animals will eat and your residents will make every effort to supply your livestock before themselves - being that they probably, like all of us, do not want to eat a starving animal. This can be maddening, dangerous and lead to mass starvation of your burgeoning civilization.

Before building any farms you must prepare wheat fields. Till the ground in a minimum 4x4 square for each farm you are going to build. Then select planting and place wheat. It is very important that you have wheat growing before you build any farms as your dedicated citizens will gather the wild wheat on the map and feed it to the animals leaving your world barren. Your 4x4 farms (or 16 squares of wheat) should be considered dedicated to livestock - if you are also baking be sure to provide enough additional fields for the creation of flour.

If you do accidentally run out of wheat on your map, make sure to buy some from the food merchants who will visit your marketplace. Before you buy any wheat be sure to turn off or destroy existing farms and have fields prepared with flour production turned off at any applicable mills. Your residents will plant this wheat providing you an unending source of nutrition.

A new map probably will not have enough wheat to fill a 4x4 field. However, as your people gather wheat the excess (above and beyond your set stockpile limits for flour and raw wheat) will be planted on the empty squares. This can take some time and does require patience, the more wheat you have the faster you can build new fields.

It is often helpful to start your Town relying on baked goods for food before venturing into farming as this allows you to build up sufficient reserves of prepared meals for when you start the switch to an omnivorous or carnivorous society.

Your fields are built, your wheat supplies are bursting and your people are well fed but still not enjoying delicious roasts and hearty stews. You still have an important step to take before you order your minions to create farms.

Walling in your farms is essential and best done in advance of placement. If you have no walls surrounding your farms all your succulent pork roasts will wander across the map. This is a huge cause of death, starvation, and frustration. Your residents do not care that the escaped chicken is frolicking in a field of froggy or that your prized porker is putting the moves on a werepig. Even well-equipped citizens who fend off a horde of monsters may starve en-route to the animal or back to your city.

If you have escaped animals be sure to right click and select the "Kill" option, this will send your townies out to slaughter them, solving the issue and providing free food. Please note, your residents will only feed animals that were born on your farms, they will not attempt to fatten up any animal with the "Wild" tag. There is no need to clear your map of native creatures.

There are two fundamental ways to wall in your farms, the first is to simply build any form of wall x2 high making sure you have a door in place for your residents to walk through when harvesting from your livestock. The other option is to create farm fences which need only be one level high and can be easily closed with a farm gate. Your animals will not wander from either of these unless the level of animals is so high they can squeak past your townies when they travel through the door. The choice is pure aesthetics on your part and either method is adequate. It is important to note that farm fences and farm gates use less wood than wooden walls, and stone is often a valuable resource when starting out - so pick your wall and door choices wisely.

A good option for smaller towns is two farms of the animal you wish to use for your primary food source and in order to keep a population of the other native animals alive on your map - one farm for each of the remaining.

If you are building two farms together with x2 high walls placing them side-by-side centered in a room with a 7x10 perimeter will keep the farm graphic from pushing through your walls. If you are building farms inside of farm fences leave a square of space on all sides of the farm before you place fence to aovid this potential graphical ugliness.

Farms are built and walled in, fields are full of wheat, it's time to ditch that jungle salad, bread, and snowcherry pie isn't it? Nope! If you're harvesting eggs or milk it is wise to allow your livestock population some time to grow before you switch off of harvested and baked foods. So, sadly, that pretty kitchen you've built is going to sit empty for some time longer. Feel free to start harvesting (found under the Food menu then Harvesting, then Animals) milk and eggs but avoid cooking this new food before you have adequate amounts in reserve or you will be playing a constant game of catch-up.

It would be wise to set your egg/milk stockpile amount to fifty and allow at least twenty of either to build up before you turn on cooking of the food product. Depending on your total population you may need to set this number higher or lower. It is always a good idea to have at least five meals in reserve for each resident so that tasks like building new walls or mining materials does not completely deplete your food supplies.

Once your raw materials are prepared and you have food in reserve it's time to start cooking! Renewable food that requires milk or eggs is easier to sustain a population on than pure meat. If you prepared two farms for your primary animal and one of each for secondary animals (those not needed for your new main food choice) feel free to turn on butchering of the secondary animals. This will ensure you do not have a buildup of livestock that will deplete your wheat supplies. For example, if you're going with omelettes, set butching of cows/unifallow, badgers, and pigs to x5 at all times and cooking of their flesh at x5. If you need to build more farms for secondary animals simply prepare fields, build walls and place farms, then finally turn off butchering until they are completed.

Eventually animal populations cap, without building more fields your chickens or cow/unifallow will begin to starve. There are two ways to handle this, one is to turn on butchering of the animal in question. It is helpful to do this slowly if you are making renewable food, butchering x10 of the offending critter and waiting to see if the starvation of livestock continues will help manage the amount you slaughter off and leave enough animals to keep your food supplies level. Remember to turn on cooking of the primary animal so that their remains are turned into delicious food.

At times you may not have starving animals but those who slip their confines due to an open door and the best of luck and good timing on the part of your livestock. If you notice citizens carrying wheat away from your farms it is best to follow them very quickly and once you have spotted the offending critter kill it by right clicking and selecting the option. This can and often does send two civilians after the creature, the one carrying food may or may not manage to reach the offender first, and the second will then slaughter Bessie right before their eyes. Do not panic, unless the animal is in the midst of hostile creatures.

You can pause your game using the space key or selecting the pause/play icon located in the upper right hand corner of the screen on the compass and convert several citizens to soldiers. Add these soldiers to a group, change them to a patrol group and lastly - set a patrol point near the animal. Once the game is no longer paused, while they will not butcher the animal they will slaughter the offending hostile creatures. Be sure to convert these soldiers back to civilians or, if you have no military force consider leaving them as such and changing their option to guard. Make sure what ever choice you make to remove the patrol point by right clicking on the square and selecting the appropriate option.

If you mix and match renewable meat based foods and pure meat dishes you should no longer need to use a bakery unless making meat pies or heaven forbid cookies. The bakery can in fact be a hinderance. While it is a good idea to have flour and plant based materials such as apples or pears in a reserve stockpile for a meat based food meltdown, setting the option to bake foods and cook foods can cause an unneccessary strain on your population leading to decreased happiness due to no idle time. It also changes priorities for building because food comes first, and changing those priorities can lead to mass starvation. As such it is best to pick one main food along with auxilary treats from secondary animals and stick to it. Too many food options while appealing can overwork smaller populations and lead to long creation times for crafted objects and new buildings.

This guide is v9b compatible and does not aim to provide solutions to farming in previous versions of Towns. This guide will be updated regularly to contain pertinent new information and changes as versions of Towns are released to the Steam community.

Special thanks to TheFunnyOne1125 for the tip regarding resource consumption when building walls - added to the Building Farms section.

Thank you, as always, to the Steam users and Towns players who post their valuable experiences on the discussion forms, share them in the Steam Towns chatroom, and send them in private messages I hope you find this information helpful but as always:

If you think of something that should be added to this guide, or have a question that this guide does not address please feel free to comment or message suggestions and feedback.

For more detailed information on mass starvation and immigration of new residents please see the guide Town Population.