It’s a bit off from the topic, but anyway…
The answer to your question was just a forum search away…
While old, this still seems to be the case*.
*Based on the code, the root cellar might be slightly better if you cook or otherwise produce heat in the basement. Otherwise it’s the same.
That might be the reason. It wasn’t splattered, but I killed it with my nodachi. Is there some kind of weapon/tool that’s more useful for slaughter than whatever weapon a character may happen to be equipped with, or is it just a matter of luck to NOT get a “good” hit?
For something like a chicken, just start pelting the poor thing with rocks. Throw 'em or just beat it.
Thanks. I’ll try beating them with rocks the next time.
If ranching gets to be a more sophisticated thing, we might actually need a captive bolt gun in the game to not overkill our animals…
Or the game needs to understand that we actually try to cut the head off and not hack wildely all over that poor soul.
Yes, that would be useful for ranching purposes. It wouldn’t actually help me in my current situation, though, as the hen I killed wasn’t tamed. I’ve found that taming is actually counter productive, as the animals follow you around and can’t be kept inside their pens, so they have to be tied down in place individually. It makes sense to tame and tie down large animals, but the chicken exploding out of their eggs are too much trouble, apart from the “seed” individuals.
It’s actually better to have the free ranging birds inside the pasture flee so I can keep the gate shut, than having them follow me…
Also, after establishing a camp the (large) animals I’ve brought refuse to follow me further than just outside the camp boundary, so I can’t tie them down in the neighboring farm pasture. Eventually the camp will, presumably, get a pen of its own, but until then I retain the animals I can in the farm pasture and tie the ones newly brought in just outside the camp (the weirdness with surveying a new camp tile failing if there was a vehicle in the tile has made me suspicious of bringing anything into the actual camp without (thinking) I know where there will be free space, and only in established tiles. Really backwards that I can’t start a chop shop in the tile that will eventually be a garage one, but that’s how it is, with things being in progress and all.
Oh yeah a nodachi is overkill. Try a short bow with field point arrows, or a BB gun. Throwing rocks can work too. Basically you want minimal damage so you end up with an intact corpse.
You could lock your animal in a shed and smoke them to death. Since the charcoal smoker emits smoke that’s how I do it. Just hop on one of the cows, ride it on over to the smoking room and shove it in there to let nature do the rest.
Keep your butchering area right outside the door and you can easily full butcher the corpse and then smoke the meat without needing to haul it around.
EDIT: As for the original question, I prefer liver for my vitamin A needs, otherwise as others have pointed out veggies generally have enough if they’re a considerable part of your diet.
That’s an elegant… and frightening idea for putting down a critter. Think I’m going to call it the Cow-schwitz method.
I thought of it while burning out an ant nest one time. Figured cows and other things that have to breathe should work similarly.
I didn’t test it, but… is it possible that a taser also works?
This shouldn’t damage the corpse (or the pre-corpse) too much, I think…
I’ve never tased a cow honestly, so you’ll have to be the trailblazer in that regard.
The answer is: No.
It does kill the chicken in one “hit”, but it also damages the corpse - even up to pulping it.
I tried that with the chickens - they did not take any damage from the smoke. Even 5 smoke bombs did nothing.
Teargas did kill the chickens, but it also damaged the corpses, up to “damaged”.
…It took 6 zapps from a taser to kill a cow. And left a bruised corpse. Not ideal.
Now I don’t even want to try it in the game 
…
Honestly, there should just be a “slaughter” command for tamed animals, so long as you have a tool appropriate to the task. Chickens wouldn’t even need one; you can just wring their necks.
Maybe try getting the animal to bleed, and then waiting for it to die like that?
My character’s strength is around 35, if I use any melee weapons I usually instantly gib the farm animals I have. 
That’s why I usually resort to weaker weapons like shortbows, slings, and light caliber ammunition. 5.56 seems to work fine for larger animals like horses.
how did you get that much strength you MUST have mods to get THAT much strength without hydraulic muscles active so what mods do you have. magiclysm with its enchanted items and certain spells? stats from (s)kills and a LONG time? Crit and its EM vest?
Maxed starting strength, or at least close to it, maxed chimera mutations, and stats through skills (I have 11 in all my combat skills, 15 in dodge). I used most of my stats through kills points on intelligence so I can have an even 20 due to my mutations hamstringing my INT stat. I’ve since updated the versions and unfortunately didn’t keep my full 35+ strength, I think it’s a balancing thing that stats through skills/kills does, but i’m not too mad, I was way too over powered back then.
what I meant was without mods it is literally impossible to have 35 strength without hydraulic muscles active even if you used freeform when making your charecter to give 20 strength than got insanely strong for 9 strength than got the cbm for +2 you would have 31 strength and that is starting at an impossibly high strength.