It's a Really Nice Abattoir!

[TaterBoy]

For those of you who wanted a block of flats, my apologies. I had this mad desire to see many cows being slaughtered in a very interesting way. It started out a simple project, I thought I'd just see about the basic aspects, then I got carried away...Ended up awake at 3:00am with an overly elaborate slaughterhouse.

I know it's not very neat in its appearance, but it does work rather well and I think the oddness is interesting in its own way. I always wanted to make complex and diabolical machines as a child...Thank you FC for making my dream come true!!!

The killing floor engine started like this, but I ended up adding a total of 8 additional saws just to give the cows a more humane end.

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Some of the more stubborn cows needed a push by these twin pistons to get them properly down the chute.

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Yeah, I went all mad scientist by about 2am, but I managed to set up a working flow that carried the meat and leather to hoppers and then to a chest for storage.

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So, I don't know if I'd ever build something of this scale in Survival, I'll probably find ways to tweak it and make it much smaller and more efficient, make use of a breeding harness and perhaps a way to carry young cows to a whole other room to grow up before being slaughtered...This is just the start, it was a lot of fun.

Also, I'd love to hear any suggestions you guys might have.
-Tater

[Elektrohawk]

While I can see there being a number of ways to make it smaller, and more compact, I think part of the appeal of this machine is in its inherent big-ness. By Enbiggening the apparatus through multiple waterwheels, it almost takes on the appearance of a tank, mercilessly setting out to beef and leather your world =)

[TaterBoy]

Yeah, I had this idea somewhere in the wee small hours, what if a machine just built itself for the single insidious purpose of bovine genocide, no engineer, no operator, just gears, blades, and merciless resolve. Kind of like The Mangler...Sleep deprivation+Minecraft=(win+immense strangeness)

I've already created a cow mill by the way; Breeding harnesses+block dispensers on a 5 minute timer+floodgate harvested wheat delivered directly to said dispensers=Many Cows *nodnod*

Feeding time!

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PETA would not be happy with me about this.

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That'll be it for this morning I think.

[Itamarcu]

I suggest adding a lens at the cow breeding room, 3 blocks high, which unpowers pistons and create a hole in the floor through which drops the cow. It will only be blocked by grown cows.

Also, you can use Vine Traps for aesthetics.

[Elektrohawk]

I will have to show my idea later, but for now, wouldnt that classify as veal, given that you are killing the cows when theyre very young, and keeping some of them tied up? ^^

[TaterBoy]

XD I like my meat nice and tender, hence the room made of saws. I had an interesting new idea too, I'm going to try to make a setup where calves are dropped directly into a place that once they grow up they will be forced into a river and led to slaughter. Still trying to map it out in my head, any ideas about how I can make a baby cow drop to a lower floor while its harnessed parents remain in their breeding room?

[Gargantuan_Penguin]

XD I like my meat nice and tender, hence the room made of saws. I had an interesting new idea too, I'm going to try to make a setup where calves are dropped directly into a place that once they grow up they will be forced into a river and led to slaughter. Still trying to map it out in my head, any ideas about how I can make a baby cow drop to a lower floor while its harnessed parents remain in their breeding room?

like this

C=cow
B=block dispenser
c=baby cow
D=block detector
if you have your cows like this


B B fill the dispenser with wheat.
C C they can still breed while having an empty space between them.
D the block detector senses the baby cow as it drops and sends a pulse to the block dispenser which drops wheat on the grown cows.
c the baby goes where ever you want.
this works to have 100% automatic breeding since items take longer to despawn then it takes the cows to "recharge"

[TaterBoy]

Awesome, thank you so much, I thought the cows had to be side by side, now it is easy as pie to drop the little ones. As for feeding, just last night I found a tutorial to make a 5 minute timer, it works amazingly well; feeds the cows exactly when they are ready to mate again.

[TaterBoy]

So, I realized that I was being a bit melodramatic with the conceit of a slaughterhouse requiring a floor of power saws. With much thanks to everyone, especially Gargantuan, I've made a much more efficient killing machine.

The cows breed, the young fall past a detector block to the floor-which is made of two powered hoppers-at which point the detector block sends a signal to three pairs of block dispensers to feed the breeders. When the cows have grown up, a flick of the switch triggers two sticky pistons which suffocate the cows and automatically store their by-products in a chest. :)

The whole machine:

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The wiring:

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This is a design I definitely see myself reproducing in survival, and eventually making it a much larger scale operation with dozens of breeder cows, and instead of storing the meat and leather I'll probably set it up to be ejected onto a waterway to be divided, to possibly supply meat to a large puppy mill/dung factory.

*steeples fingers, malicious grin* This is merely the beginning....Muahahahahahahahah...*coughcough*

[TheAnarchitect]

I could use a shot of the inside, so I can see the arrangement of the cows in harnesses.

[Elektrohawk]

I'm genuinely a little bit upset that you strayed from the beautiful saw machine on (water)wheels you initially had to this 'humane' gently choke them to death tower.

[Cuchonchuir]

In your final pic with the breeding pairs - how do you keep the babies from nudging the parents out of their stalls? I had the problem that my babies always seemed to get the parents out and near an edge of doom, apparently being very murderous towards their progenitors.

[TaterBoy]

I could use a shot of the inside, so I can see the arrangement of the cows in harnesses.

As requested, hopefully this explains a little about how I keep the cows from moving, I've found that even with a harness, if they are able to jump at all then they can be moved out of place, so I give them a single block which is only open to the empty block in front of them, across from their mate, their baby can only drop into the hole and cannot spawn in their single square and thus cannot move them.

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I'm genuinely a little bit upset that you strayed from the beautiful saw machine on (water)wheels you initially had to this 'humane' gently choke them to death tower.

I'm genuinely sorry, however in my survival game I'm only just beginning my whole tech tree and starting to get stuff produced in larger quantities, I could never build something like that at my current stage....One must walk before they can run...I promise, I will eventually build a massive survival slaughter house, every single stone pulled from the hot loins of Mother Earth and yea it shall create much carnage, the meat and leather will rain upon me...And the villagers shall rejoice.

[Elektrohawk]

I'm genuinely a little bit upset that you strayed from the beautiful saw machine on (water)wheels you initially had to this 'humane' gently choke them to death tower.

I'm genuinely sorry, however in my survival game I'm only just beginning my whole tech tree and starting to get stuff produced in larger quantities, I could never build something like that at my current stage....One must walk before they can run...I promise, I will eventually build a massive survival slaughter house, every single stone pulled from the hot loins of Mother Earth and yea it shall create much carnage, the meat and leather will rain upon me...And the villagers shall rejoice.[/quote]

excellent.