Silly thread titles aside, this is about ranches in Skyrim.

I like how they have vegetable farms around Skyrim, but I have yet to find a livestock-centric farm/ranch. We have chickens, but no real chicken farms. We have cows, but no ranches. I would have preferred it if we had a good mix between these three farm types of cattle, chickens, and vegetables. I know that many vegetable farms have some livestock, but I have yet to encounter one where livestock production was the primary objective.

The tundra around Whiterun would have been great for a cattle ranch, and I was surprised we didn't see one.

What do you guys think? Discuss!

Maybe the people of Skyrim get their meat from the bountiful wild beasts that roam the countryside enmasse.

And the cats, where are the cats? Every countryside house has a cat or two or three or

Lol the only cat that can handle the rats (or Skeevers) in Skyrim are Khajiits.

Valid point, but livestock ranches should still be present somewhere.

According to a loading screen, Cows are the top choice for Hide and Meat in Skyrim. I found it surprising too, it would be neat to see man and a few dogs herding some cows out to pasture.

or how about a spider farm or skeever farm.

there is also the owl engravings on tombs, but mo owls in game. Let alone snakes or swine.

i wonder if those are for future xpacs? or left out on purpose.

Also a valid point. Skyrim could definitely use a greater range of farms than what it currently has. It isn't a big deal though, I would just have liked to see a bit more variety in farms.

The area aroun whiterun would be perfect for that

Agreed. With so much space, a free range cattle ranch would have been fairly easy to implement.

I do agree, in part at least, to the notion that there ought to be more ranches, or specifically, more farms with more cows. The issue with the idea of ranches is that the areas around most of the civilized cities are either not conducive to raising livestock bigger than chickens, or are surrounded by hostile entities/creatures. Ideally, the farmers ought to be herding cattle across land to graze, but with the hostiles everywhere, each head of cattle would need at least one competent mercenary, if not a whole team, depending on whether or not it was giant territory. There's the other thing; giant's have been herding their massive mammoths all over the Whiterun tundra, which means any edible plant matter has either been eaten or ground into the dirt.

I think that a good compromise would be to have farms that grew different grasses for hay, then transported the hay to ranches close to the cities where livestock were in a large protected pen (for those who played Morrowind, Dren Plantation, anybody?), and then have farmers transport hay form one farm to the ranches with cattle. It would make for a nice economy move, could introduce alchemical ingredients (different grasses to be made into hay), and you could occasionally see farmers transporting hay, which could introduce random encounters of saving farmers from attacking creatures/bandits. Also, you could decide to go slaughter massive amounts of cows, which could be fun. Maybe even turn that into a job opp? Turn in raw beef for gold?

They are selling stuff. I bought a good sheild from one the other day. When they are not running the travelling store they are killing dragons. Now that is some cool cats, I don't care who you are that thaar is sum reel cool katz!