Butchering Breakdown: RimWorld's Dead Animal Secrets

When an animal or human corpse decays past its spoil timer, it becomes desiccated/rotten and cannot be butchered. In RimWorld 1.5, the "Allow fresh/rotten" toggle was even removed from the butcher bill interface because it was redundant.

Handling Rotten Corpses:

• Haul away: Create a dumping zone far from your base
• Burn them: Use molotovs, campfires, or a crematorium (if researched)
• Bury them: Dig graves or build sarcophagi (for humans)

For more comprehensive corpse management strategies, see our complete corpse disposal guide.

By default, butcher bills exclude human corpses. To enable human butchering:

1. Click Details on your butcher bill
2. Under "Corpse Type," check Allow humanlike corpses
3. The game will warn you about mood penalties

Mood Consequences:

• The butcher gets: -6 "Butchered humanlike" for each corpse (stacks)
• All colonists get: -6 "We butchered humanlike" thought (stacks)
• If human meat is eaten: -20 "Ate human meat" thought
• If human leather is worn: -3 to -8 "Wore human leather" thought

Exceptions - No Penalties:

• Colonists with Cannibal trait (they get +15 mood for eating human meat)
• Colonists with Psychopath trait
• Colonists with Bloodlust trait
• Ideology with appropriate precepts (Cannibal meme, etc.)

Insect corpses (from megaspiders, megascarabs, etc.) can be butchered like regular animals. They yield:

• Insect meat: Has a -3 mood debuff when eaten in meals (-6 if eaten raw)
• Insect chitin: In some mods, otherwise no leather in vanilla

There is no mood penalty for butchering insects (unlike humans), so always butcher them for resources.

Best Uses for Insect Meat:

• Animal feed: Animals don't mind eating insect meat
• Kibble: Mix with plant matter for efficient animal food
• Nutrient paste: -3 mood penalty is less noticeable
• Biofuel: Convert to chemfuel in a biofuel refinery (with Royalty DLC)

Mechanoid corpses require a different process:

1. Build a Machining Table (not a Butcher Table)
2. Add the bill "Disassemble mechanoid"
3. Assign a colonist with Crafting work enabled (not Cooking)

Disassembling yields resources like steel and components instead of meat and leather.

Setup & Workflow:

1. Place a Butcher Spot near your camp (costs nothing)
2. Create a "Butcher creature" bill set to "Do forever"
3. Hunt animals with bows/spears and haul corpses back to camp
4. Build a Campfire nearby for cooking
5. Cook meat immediately into Simple Meals or Pemmican

Recommended Setup:

1. Build a small building with:
   • A 5×5 room for your kitchen
   • An adjacent 5×5 room as a freezer (-5°C to -10°C)
2. In the kitchen:
   • Build a Butcher Table (75 wood/steel)
   • Build an Electric/Fueled Stove
   • Add "Butcher creature forever" and cooking bills
3. In the freezer:
   • Create stockpiles for animal corpses and meat
   • Install coolers to maintain temperature - see our freezer airlock guide for optimal setup

┌───────────┐  ┌───────────┐
│           │  │           │
│           │  │           │
│  FREEZER  │◄►│  KITCHEN  │
│  (-10°C)  │  │           │
│           │  │           │
└───────────┘  └───────────┘
 ^                   ^
 │                   │
[Corpses,        [Butcher Table,
 Raw Food]        Stove]

Workflow:

1. Hunter kills animal and hauls corpse to freezer
2. Cook retrieves corpse, butchers at table
3. Meat/leather is hauled to appropriate stockpiles
4. Cook makes meals with the meat

Optimal Setup:

1. Create a large walk-in freezer (-19°C) for food storage
2. Build a dedicated butcher room adjacent to the freezer
3. Have a separate clean kitchen for meal preparation
4. Add a dining room near the kitchen

┌───────────────────┐  ┌───────────┐  ┌───────────┐
│                   │  │           │  │           │
│                   │  │           │  │           │
│      FREEZER      │◄►│ BUTCHERY  │◄►│  KITCHEN  │◄┐
│      (-19°C)      │  │           │  │           │ │
│                   │  │           │  │           │ │
└───────────────────┘  └───────────┘  └───────────┘ │
           ▲                                        │
           │                                        │
      [Food Storage]                         ┌───────────┐
                                             │           │
                                             │  DINING   │
                                             │   ROOM    │
                                             │           │
                                             └───────────┘

Features & Benefits:

• Specialized Butcher Room:
  • Contains butcher table with "Butcher forever" bill
  • Two tool cabinets for +12% work speed
  • Blood and mess contained to this room
  • Direct access to freezer for corpse retrieval
• Clean Kitchen:
  • Sterile tile flooring (+10 cleanliness)
  • No butchering = minimal food poisoning risk
  • Stove, nutrient paste dispenser, etc.
• Alternative Freezer-Butchering:
  • Some players place the butcher table inside the freezer
  • Pro: No corpse hauling needed
  • Con: Cold work environment (speed penalty)

Instead of "Do forever" (which butchers every corpse), use "Do until you have X" to maintain specific meat quantities:

Setting Up Smart Bills:

1. Select your butcher table and click on your butcher bill
2. Change "Do forever" to "Do until you have X"
3. Set a target amount (e.g., 200 meat)
4. Enable "Pause when satisfied"
5. Set a lower unpause threshold (e.g., 50 meat)

Benefits:

• Better time management: Cooks won't spend all day butchering
• Storage efficiency: Corpses in a freezer can take less space than their equivalent meat
• On-demand resources: Butcher only when you need meat

Auto-slaughter (added in RimWorld 1.3) automatically marks excess animals for slaughter, creating a steady supply of corpses for butchering.

Setting Up Auto-Slaughter:

1. Open the Animals tab (bottom of screen)
2. Click "Manage auto-slaughter..." button
3. For each animal species, set:
   • Number of adult males to keep
   • Number of adult females to keep
   • Number of young males to keep
   • Number of young females to keep
4. Toggle options for bonded/pregnant animals

How It Works:

• The game periodically checks your animal population
• Animals exceeding your limits are marked with a knife icon
• A colonist with the Handler work type will slaughter marked animals
• This creates corpses that your cook will butcher (if a bill exists)

Strategic stockpile placement can dramatically improve butchering efficiency:

Corpse Stockpiles:

• Create a high-priority corpse stockpile near your butcher table
• For freezer setups: Designate a corner specifically for animal corpses
• Use Critical priority for corpses to ensure quick hauling
• If using a butcher room, consider a small corpse stockpile just inside the door

Meat & Leather Storage:

• Keep meat in freezer at all times (spoils in ~2 days at room temperature)
• Consider shelves near the stove for a small amount of ready-to-cook meat
• Leather can be stored outside the freezer (doesn't spoil)
• For heavy butchering operations, use the bill setting "Drop on floor" to speed up the process, then have haulers move products

Butchering is a great way to train Cooking skill without risking food poisoning:

Benefits of Skill Training via Butchering:

• Each butchered creature gives Cooking XP
• No risk of failure (unlike meal cooking which can cause food poisoning)
• Low-value animals (rats, squirrels) can be used for training
• In RimWorld 1.5, skills above level 10 increase yield above 100%

Skill Impact on Butchery:

These mods improve the butchering experience without drastically changing game balance:

These mods change what you get from butchering or allow butchering of normally unusable corpses:

These advanced mods can automate the entire butchering process, from hunting to processing: