RAW BEEF

A cow farm is the one animal setup most survival worlds build without thinking twice about it, since the same drop feeds a family and props up leather armour on the side. The Butcher is what turns the surplus into something spendable. He does not care whether the meat is raw, and he never asks for it cooked, so the pile you have not eaten yet is worth exactly as much to him as the pile you will.

The jar names cows and mooshrooms as the only sources: no recipe builds it, so a plate of raw beef always started as livestock. Mooshrooms are the odd one in that pair, more useful sheared for mushroom stew than farmed for their beef, but the drop table does not discriminate between them.

What makes this row worth remembering is where it sits. Reach journeyman on a Butcher and it is simply there, no second roll standing between a full cow pen and the emeralds it can become.

One villager, one number. A Butcher asks 10 raw beef per emerald once he reaches journeyman, and it does not move: no roll, no range, and no second Butcher who happens to quote cheaper.

The best rate any villager offers is an emerald per 10 raw beef, from the Butcher, and 4 of the other 7 pay out faster. No villager sells raw beef back, so it is emeralds out and nothing in.

One slot at the Butcher takes 10 raw beef a trade, 16 trades, 16 emeralds. 8 of the 72 villagers that pay emeralds, emptied out:

16 acacia boats against 416 flint for the same 16 emeralds, 26 times the carrying, and the shortest wait is the Butcher at 10 real minutes of shelf, gathering not counted. Raw Beef itself pays 10 an emerald, so 31 of the 72 ask less and 36 ask more.

Journeyman is level 3 of five, and the same trade file that opens beef at that tier opens mutton alongside it. A Butcher who has climbed that far is not choosing between the two: he offers both, and whichever one you happen to be sitting on a surplus of is the one worth using first.

The slot itself runs 16 trades before it locks, refilling only once the Butcher visits his smoker again, up to twice in a Minecraft day. Nothing about selling raw meat instead of cooked speeds that clock along.

16 sales close the slot, and the wait after that runs 2 real minutes, the same clock every Butcher runs on. A Minecraft day stretches 20 real minutes and holds two of those refills, which is the whole ceiling on how much beef one villager can move.

Stand there for the full day and one Butcher clears 320 raw beef for 32 emeralds. Come back tomorrow instead and the slot is exactly where you left it, unbothered by however many days passed in between.

Do not walk in with a single stack. The slot wants 16 separate trades to run dry, and turning up short just means a second trip for the last few emeralds.

Where the emeralds go back: rabbit stew is the Butcher's cheapest sale, a single emerald for a meal that restores more than any one food item on its own.

Also on the Butcher's list: dried kelp block, sweet berries, raw chicken, raw porkchop, raw rabbit and coal, the rest of what one smoker can put on offer.

A cow gives beef and leather, and both have a villager waiting for them, so a pen of them feeds the Butcher and the Leatherworker from the same herd. Wheat breeds them, which the Farmer also buys, so a single field runs three trades.

What the Butcher will not take is the cooked side of this animal: cooked beef appears nowhere on a villager's sheet, so the steak stays yours. Cooking it is worth doing anyway, since it feeds better than almost anything else in the game.

A cow gives leather when it dies, and leather is the ingredient behind every book in the game. A serious enchanting setup is measured in bookshelves, and bookshelves are measured in cows.

Milk is the other half: a bucket used on a cow clears every effect you are carrying, and the bucket comes back. Three of them make a cake.

Cows breed on wheat, so the same field that makes bread makes the herd bigger, which is why a farm and a pen tend to be built next to each other.