Milk, butter, cheese and eggs in Project Zomboid

In Build 42 you get dairy two ways: looting it from kitchens, grocery stores and farmhouses, or producing it from your own animals. Before Build 42 every carton of milk and block of cheese was loot, so older guides that call milk a dead end are out of date.

The animals that give milk in vanilla are cows and sheep. Goats are not in the game: the Build 42.20 species list covers chickens, cows, pigs, sheep, turkeys and rabbits on the farm, plus wild deer, rats and mice, with no goat. If you have seen goat milk, it came from a mod. Pigs and rabbits nurse their own young but cannot be milked by the player.

Eggs come from hens kept in a chicken hutch, and wild eggs turn up while foraging. For keeping the animals alive and breeding them, see ranching and the animals page. This page covers what you do with the products.

A female only gives milk once she has had young. The Indie Stone tied cow milk to calving, and build42guide notes milk starting a few days into or after the pregnancy, so plan on breeding before you plan on milk. To milk, stand next to the animal, open its context menu and pick the milk option while you hold a container such as a bucket or cooking pot.

• Milk often. A full udder that nobody empties lowers lactation, and an unmilked cow with no nursing calf can dry up within days.
• A calf drinks straight from its mother, which also keeps her producing, but only if it shares her zone.
• Milking and collecting eggs both give Animal Care XP.
• Milk quantity is one of the inherited genes, and the Holstein cow is the dairy breed.

No source gave reliable liters per milking or how long lactation lasts in 42.22, so check the amount shown in the animal's info panel.

Fresh milk is perishable. Like other food it goes from fresh to stale to rotten, and the item tooltip shows which stage it is in. Cold storage is the main defense: a powered fridge slows spoilage about five times, a freezer about 25 times, and a fully frozen item stops decaying while frozen. See food preservation and appliances for power and freezer details.

Exact fresh and rotten days for milk, eggs and cheese in 42.22 were not confirmed in the sources checked, so the table at the end gives rough guidance only. Powdered milk and canned condensed milk are the long-life options from loot.

Opinion: turn surplus milk into butter or use it the same day. Raw milk from a single cow piles up faster than one survivor can drink it.

Butter: yes. Build 42 has a butter churn, a piece of furniture you build with carpentry. Players report it needs only Carpentry 0 (one source). You churn cow or sheep milk into butter; build42guide puts it at about 5 units of milk per batch (one source). Sources disagree on shelf life: one build42guide page lists butter as food that never rots, while its preservation page says to keep it cold if the tooltip shows freshness. Check the tooltip on your own butter.

Cheese: no. As of the sources checked there is no vanilla recipe that turns milk into cheese. Cheesecloth exists as an item, and players have asked for cheese since early Build 42, but cheese and processed cheese are still loot only. Cheese-making mods exist on the Workshop. Yogurt is also loot only.

Hens lay in the egg boxes of a chicken hutch. If there is no hutch, or it is full, eggs end up scattered around the animal zone. With a rooster present some eggs are fertilized. Fertilized eggs are heavier and can hatch into chicks, so leave a few in the hutch if you want a bigger flock.

Turkeys are in the game as poults, hens and gobblers, but none of the sources checked confirmed that turkey hens lay collectable eggs. Ducks and quail are not in vanilla.

Wild eggs come from foraging. They need about Foraging 8 to find, belong to the animals search focus, and the foraging tables show them as unavailable in winter (December to February). Cook eggs before eating them: raw eggs can make you sick.

Dairy matters most for baking and breakfast dishes. These requirements come from evolved recipe lists; quantities are recipe units, not liters.

Butter, lard and oil also count as seasonings in soups and stews. Sources disagree on whether plain milk can still go into soup and drinks as an evolved ingredient in Build 42; one player list says it no longer can. Milk also makes the mildew cure for crops (1,000 mL plus a spray can), covered in crop care.

Opinion: eggs and butter give the biggest jump in meal quality per item. See best meals and cooking for full dishes.

Read the tooltip for the exact stage of any item. For all foods see the food list.