Beginners Tips: Keeping Animals

1: To buy animals you have to visit the Ranch building in the Town screen while you are in your home town. Below your listed Animal Attitude skill levels is a link "Buy a new Animal". This opens your towns Animal price list where you can buy animals to keep in your own ranch slots.

Citizens of the towns have to breed these animals themselves: if your animal of choice is not in stock you may want to lend a hand to your towns breeding program in the Labourhall or ask the local Council member responsible for animals listed right above the link to Buy new Animals.

2: You can have up to 9 ranch spots and keep 1 animal per ranch spot. Upgrading your personal ranch requires iron nails and wood, for exact amounts see: http://the-grail-lords.wikia.com/wiki/Town_Ranch

3: All your animals require 1 stamina daily just to keep alive (feeding). You can hire Porkard the Pig Tenderer as a follower in the Labourhall to take over this task.

4: The easiest animals to keep are:

Chickens - produce 2 eggs every 3 days and a 30 day maximum age. When slaughtered they give Poultry.

Cows - produce 4 milk every 3 days and a 70 day maximum age. When slaughtered they give Meat and Leather Squares.

Sheep - produce 6 wool every 3 days and a 50 day maximum age. When slaughtered they give Meat and Leather Squares.

5: Chickens and Cows are generally the best choice for a new seeker: eggs are an easy source of food once you can no longer eat for free in the Restaurant and milk increases your Physical Resistance or can be made into cheese.

6: Sheep are better suited for seekers with ambitions in the Tailor workshop as they will have a use for the large amounts of wool.

7: Horses are very expensive for a town to breed and therefore for seekers to buy. The only function for a horse is to be trained into a Warhorse, it provides no resources. Training a horse requires a daily stamina investment of 50 stamina (this cost decreases with higher Horse Attitude skill) for a total of 100 days (does not have to be in a row).

A Warhorse reduces travel cost on the map with 1 stamina on every land tile. Horses have no maximum age and a Warhorse cannot die and requires no more food. A good but very expensive long term investment. There are seekers that specialize in training horses that can sell you a trained horse, if you can afford this option just ask your Mayor or some of the helpful tavern patrons and they should be able to point you in the right direction.

8: Pigs produce meat and writable skins, but only when slaughtered: the only extra action available for pigs is fattening them with corn (max of 1 per day). The amount of meat and skins received depends on its weight when slaughtered (best to slaughter when they are at their maximum weight) and your Pig Attitude skill.

See the Help file for the exact amounts of meat and skins when slaughtering at different weights and Pig Attitude skill: https://thegraillords.net/help.php#72

9: Increasing your Pigs' weight requires corn or Pig Boosting potions (they can also gain weight through regular feeding, but this is quite rare).

Pig Boosting potions will increase the weight of a random number of your pigs for the next 5 resets after drinking and they have a chance to kill the pig (the higher quality the potion, the lower the chance of pig explosions). Pig Boosting potions are best used when you have a large amount of pigs in your Ranch and it is generally best not to use low grade Pig Boosting potions on heavier pigs because of the chance to lose them. Corn is usually the better option to fatten a lower amount of pigs (up to about 5-6)

The need for corn or potions makes pigs not the best suited for brand new seekers, but they are a great source of larger amounts of meat if you are well prepared.

framer wrote:[...] Pig Boosting potions will increase the weight of a random number of your pigs for the next 5 resets after drinking [...]

I got this from the help files:

  + When using a Pig Boosting Potion, all the pigs in the ranch will gain one weight level for the next 5 days.

I know it's from experience, so there's an inconsistency somewhere.

It's definitely not all pigs. With 9 pigs in a full ranch I usually get a bonus on 3-4 pigs per daily reset when using a potion.