Food in Traveller

[Timerover51]

On a periodic basis I have posted on food and rations in Traveller, and in the Classic LBB 3: Worlds and Adventures,on page 28, the following appears.

From 5% to 30% (throw one die times 5%) of an animal’s weight will be edible meat.

Now, in looking through variuos U.S. Government publications, this greatly understates the amount of edible meat you get from cattle, pigs, and sheep. Durign the U. S. Civil War, enormous number of cattle and sheep were purchased to br slaughtered and issues as a fresh meat ration. The rule of thumb was thar 50 per cent of the live weight of the animal would be usable as a fresh meat ration. One enterprising commissary officer handling livestock in Washington, D.C. decided to check this, using nimals from the National Mall herd. The result was to show the rule of thumb as quite correct. At the time, the beef tongue, heart, liver, and kidneys were discarded and sold to contractors, who presumably promptly converted them into some form of meat or meat product. Current U. S. Department of Agriculture manuals on home meat slaughter, available on Project Gutenberg, give higher values, and include pork. A600 pond meat carcass wil yield about 450 pounds of boneless meat cuts, will a good meat-type hog carcass will yield about 65 to 70 percent of meat. A meat-type lamb carcass may yield over 70 percent of its weight as meat cuts.

Based on this, you could either use a D4+2 roll, giving between 30 to 60 percent edible carcass weight, or simply say that 50 percent of a larger animal, say 100 ponds or 45 kilograms, is edible. Poultry wouldbe a bit higher, and most fish would be considerably higher in usable meat. With sardines and herrings, you pretty much eat the entire fish. Note, I do like sardines and herrings.

The U.S.D.A handbooks do go into consider detail on how to slaughter and butcher your animals.

 

[Condottiere]

Depends on whether or not someone, somewhere, decides to mutate the poor beasties.

Six legged chicken?

 

[coliver988]

or just double the percentage: 1d x 10% for 10-60%. It would really depend a lot on the type of animal I would think: grazers would probably have a higher percentage, flyers less. But I think that could be getting far too detailed and would go with the 50% and just leave it there.

Though Traveller does love its tables, and I can see adding a column on the animal encounter base types for the food percentage DM from the original 1dx5%: grazers +3, flyers -1, that sort of thing.

 

[Spinward Flow]

The rule of thumb was thar 50 per cent of the live weight of the animal would be usable as a fresh meat ration.

I would point out that ALL of your examples involve animals domesticated for the purpose of meat production in a singular biome habitat (Terra).

Wild ALIEN animals in alien biome environments may not be quite so ... productive ... in terms of meat fit for consumption as rations to feed people with. Add in the uncertainties involved in astrobiology/xenobiology relative to your own person digestive biome and I can easily imagine the 5-30% being a reasonable rule of thumb for "unknown animals" obtained from unfamiliar habitats is quite a reasonable estimate.

Things as simple as "don't drink the water, there's flesh eating bacteria living in it that will kill you" can have some pretty severe repercussions for how much meat can be recovered for consumption in alien environments. The NATIVES to that environment can probably recover more meat per animal (the above mentioned 10-60% rather than the baseline 5-30% offered in the rules), but that would be because the natives have adapted to the environment and "know it" better than any Travellers would (presumably).

And just for an added bit of fun, you can always apply Hunting skill as a +DM to the 1D6 roll if you kill the animal yourself.