Mussel rope in Farmstead World — animal in the game, and what it is on a real farm.
Mussels are bivalve shellfish that pump seawater through themselves and filter out plankton, so a farmed mussel needs no feed at all — the water does the feeding.
They are grown on ropes or long-lines hung in coastal water and reach market size in a year or two, which makes them one of the lowest-impact farmed proteins: no feed, no fresh water and no land.
Farm facts about mussel rope
Fish farming is ancient - China's oral tradition tells of carp culture 4,000 years ago, and the oldest fish-culture manual, Fan Li's 'Classic of Fish Culture', dates to about 475 BCE. (en.wikipedia.org)
Ancient Chinese fish farmers fattened their trapped carp on a diet of insect nymphs and silkworm droppings. (en.wikipedia.org)
Aboriginal Australians may have farmed eels on engineered volcanic floodplains as early as 4,580 BCE - one of the oldest known aquaculture sites in the world. (en.wikipedia.org)
Romans bred fish in ponds and farmed oysters in coastal lagoons before 100 CE; medieval monks later kept fish ponds for the roughly 150 meat-free fasting days each year. (en.wikipedia.org)
In the 1700s, German naturalist Stephan Ludwig Jacobi hatched brown trout using artificial fertilization, earning a reputation as the founder of artificial fish-rearing. (en.wikipedia.org)
In the 1940s, US trout farmers learned to manipulate the day-and-night cycle, tricking their fish into spawning year-round. (en.wikipedia.org)