#sandwings store fat and skywings and icewings would end up as the best butchers

[wof-reworked]

For me I think a lot of like. wof husbandry comes down to the idea of like. the tradeoff of hunting vs animal upkeep. If this is a world where most dragons do hunt for their food (with a lot more ease than irl humans have hunting), then any animals being kept have to be more convenient to keep. Chickens, and eggs, could be a staple of poverty living (which is also not dissimilar to real life), and I would think, since dragons can more easily corral birds, pigeon colonies and other homing birds would be a popular, reliable food source. It also depends on how literally we take animal size to dragons- I'm using the Clay Measurement System(tm), which is how Clay describes eating and the portions because his book is. 99% food (sorry buddy someday you'll get real characterization 😭).

So using the CMS (lol), we can imagine a cow, just normally, is a solid basic meal for an adult dragon, and probably good for like. 2-3 dragonets. I talked about wof cooking (too lazy to link post rn will probs edit with it) but I think, like humans, cooking meat would be beneficial to dragons in terms of nutrient intake, which is why the dragonets are like. starving 24/7 and Clay talks about eating whole cows like they're goddamn sandwiches. Animals like this would be,,,, big, but probably older-dragonet sized, based on how Tui describes the guardians bringing them food and the hunting chapters in Moon Rising with goats where they can, with some effort, grab them fully in their talons. So roughly a human-to-animal scale but with more favor in the dragon corner due to their size and build.

I think it'd be likely also that dragons would keep semi-domesticated species like bison, because they can reliably butcher them and pasture them with more ease than us hairless monkeys with our fragile skin n bones. Herds would be more independent and something you could feasibly "check in on" more than modern farming irl which is. super dedicated in terms of energy and manpower. Ranchers would need to prepare their meat to make it last meaningfully (like salting, curing, etc), but could live off of that with minimal weekly hunting. And of course, you can apparently bargain off your kid for a herd of cows. good to know the cow to kid economy is thriving, thx Cattail

Got any more wof animal husbandry ideas?

Not much I haven't already covered in one form or another !!! I think most of the livestock in wof remains pretty one-to-one with real life, tho I love the diversity in like. whether or not dragons have pets. It's funky when everything is a food source and there aren't those hard lines of "food animals" vs "luxury animals".

I love Skywing falconers and the idea of dragons having beasts of burden (like camels, oxen, etc) bc it's such a cool tradeoff when everyone can just straight up fly. I think it depends on the terrain and the goods being traveled with but hunting birds would be useful.

I think Icewings (and some Seawings) would farm seal colonies, ala real world seal hunting. I don't have any real thoughts I just think they deserve some responsible animal husbandry. as a treat. Seawings would also probably have some amount of fish-herding (I wonder if you could incorporate sharks into that,,,, maybe some animus gift from the past for sharks able to corral fish like herding dogs. much 2 think about)