Yak

Yaks are tameable herbivores with a medium movement speed. Yaks are one of the easiest pack animals to tame. Males of the species can be distinguished by their horns and lack of udders, while females have the opposite.

Obtaining

Yaks can be found in temperate forests, temperate swamps, boreal forests, and cold bogs. They can either be tamed by a handler or self-tame in a random event.

Yaks can be bought and sold in other faction bases and from bulk goods traders. Yaks purchased from traders will be already tamed.

Summary

Yaks are pen animals. Once tamed, pen animals cannot and do not need to be trained any further. But if left outside of a pen or caravan hitching spot, pen animals will eventually roam outside your colony. Making a caravan is not required to tie animals to a caravan hitching spot.

A female yak can be milked for up to 11 units of milk per day (depending on your pawn's Animal Gather Yield).

Yaks are also pack animals, and will carry up to 73.5kg of weight in a caravan.

Analysis

Milking

Female yaks produce 11 per day, or 0.55 nutrition in milk per day. A yak consumes 0.86 nutrition per day. This results in a nutrition efficiency of 64% from milk alone (or 12.79 per day per 1 nutrition consumed). Yaks are better for milk than dromedaries or caribou.

Meat

When slaughtered, a yak yields 59 meat and 23 leather as a calf; 147 meat and 42 as a juvenile; or 294 meat and 84 leather as an adult.

When slaughtering yaks as babies, and including the production of milk, the nutrition efficiency of a population of yaks varies from 58% to 116% depending on how many more female yaks compared to males.

If the yaks are allows to grow to adulthood before they are slaughtered, this changes to 32% - 122.9%.

Comparisons

Cows produce more milk and more meat than yaks. However, yaks are pack animals, and fare much better against the cold. Yaks can also be found in the wild, while cows must be bought.

Dromedaries are a more direct competitor to yaks. They are both pack animals that produce milk, but yaks produce 22% more milk on average, while dromedaries allow riders to speed up caravans. They are otherwise very similar - carrying the same load and eating the same amount. Dromedaries can be found in warmer biomes while yaks can be found in colder biomes.

Training

This animal can be trained as follows:

Guard:
Attack:
Rescue:
Haul:

*As of version 1.1.2610, all animals can be tamed. The percentage of likelihood of success depends on factors such as the Animals Wildness Percentage, Pawn Handling Skill, and others. More information can be found on the animals page.

Health

Body part	Health
Head	38
Skull	38
Brain	15
Nose	15
Neck	38
Jaw	30
Eye ^[1] (left, right)	15
Ear (left, right)	15
Body	60
Kidney^[2] (left, right)	23
Lung^[2] (left, right)	23
Liver^[2]	30
Heart^[2]	23
Spine^[2]	38
Stomach^[2]	30
Limbs (left, right, fore, hind)	45
Appendage (left, right, fore, hind)	30

↑ Located inside of Head.
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 ^2.2 ^2.3 ^2.4 ^2.5 Located inside of Body.

Version history

1.1.0 - Added as part of the integration of the Vanilla Animals Expanded - Livestock mod into the basegame.
1.1.2559 - Decrease minimum comfortable temperature