Cowshed

Cowshed with hay barrack next to it

A place for breeding cows and milk production.

## Production

If at least one cow is present milk will be produced, increasing production speed with each cow.

If a bull is present new cows will be bred as time passes.

Oxen will live in a cowshed until they are used for a plow. A bull can be coastrated into an ox.

Further, slaughtering livestock allows the production of leather and beef.

### Increasing productivity

Hay and water (this water may come from either a Well or a Platform) need to be present in order for your livestock to survive. Therefore it is helpful if a Hay barrack is available close by, especially before bought cattle arrives. The Cowshed should have hay and water in stock already or your cattle may well die.

Fallow fields can be used during the summer months to feed your livestock instead of using up Hay. With Farm fields each needing to periodically be fallow, it makes sense to put all buildings nearby.

To increase productivity of shoes and meat, a Slaughterhouse, Tannery and Shoemaker's workshop should be placed close to the cowshed as well to decrease path distances.

## Sidebar

At the top, the **"Add Pasture"** button allows you to add a pasture for grazing.

Underneath, a **list of all livestock** in the particular cowshed can be seen. Sorted by age, it displays the sex, type (Cow, Bull or Ox) and age. Each individual cow can be marked to be slaughtered or protected here. Bulls can be converted to Oxen here.

Below the cattle list, you can check the option to use fallow fields if available. If selected, the cattle will be moved into nearby fallow fields to graze during the summer months.

Beneath that, you can set a livestock limit and see the current livestock amount next to it. You can set a limit up to a maximum of 20 head by clicking inside the bar.

### Storage

You can see which goods are stored, reserved and awaited. **Reserved goods** are requested by other building (usually Granary, Market stall, Slaughterhouse or Tannery) and will be picked up by workers/laborers of those later on, **awaited goods** are about to go into this buildings storage.

### Workers

You can see **workers** and/or **laborers** (if laborers are set to be able to collect items for the market stall using the resource supply menu). Hovering over those you get information about their name and current status. **Left clicking** selects the worker, **right clicking** on a worker fires them.

### Building Control

On the bottom, there are buttons controlling the functionality of the building itself:

* **"Make Empty"** assigns laborers to remove any items which have been stored here.
* **"Resource supply"** sets which citizens are allowed to haul items and by which means (hands, cart or wagon).
* **"Hire Options"** sets which gender your workers and laborers can be, their wage, and the maximum number of laborers allowed at once. "Apply All" copies the chosen settings to all Cowsheds.
* **"Demolish"** assigns builders to dismantle this building.

## In-game Help Description

When you buy cattle from neighbor towns, it will be assigned to a cowshed with more space. Make sure the cowshed is staffed and has stock of hay and water before cattle trader arrives.

In summer cows can graze on a pasture. Use "Add pasture" button to add one. They can also pasture on a fallow farm field if you allow to do so.

For breeding you need at least one bull per cowshed. You can also turn bulls to oxen for use as draft animals. An ox should be at least 1 year old to be used as a draft animal.

All the livestock is listed in cowshed's properties panel. You can relocate particular animals between cowsheds by dragging them from the list and dropping on target cowshed.

You can also build a slaughterhouse to produce beef and hides. Slaughterhouse workers will take cattle starting from oldest when livestock limit is reached or if you choose to slaughter a particular animal. Oxen and the last bull will never be slaughtered automatically.

In winter each animal consumes 25 units of hay and water per month. Build hay dryers for hay provision and hay barracks for storage.