Matthews animal husbandry farm

Matthews Animal Husbandry Farm is a location in Fallout: New Vegas.

Background
Once inhabited by a well-off family tending to herds of bighorners and brahmins, the Matthews family would have prospered under NCR rule. A mother, a father, and a child, living a quiet life on the frontier. It all ended when the parents left on a routine trip to get supplies from Camp Searchlight, trading steaks for necessities. Their visit happened to coincide with the Legion attack on the Camp that unleashed radiation on the town and turned both of them into feral ghouls. Their offspring, after waiting a few days, decided to go look for them in Searchlight. They found them and were forced to gun both their mother and father in self defense. The last Matthews buried them both by the house and was left alone in maddening isolation. After a moment, their mind started to crack. Fear of ghouls resulted in questions whether animals could become ghouls as well. This gave way to paranoia, which culminated in the last Matthews setting fire to their family home, in a desperate bid to escape the fiendish conspiracy by the ghoulifying animals.

Thus, the animals were left without a caretaker, to slowly die of starvation.

Layout
The farm is quite large, with two corrals to the south and two large barns in the northeast. The remains of the family home face Searchlight, with the burned body of the last Matthews laying ignobly on trop of a pile of charred debris. Their parents' graves are just beyond the wall - what remains of it - and can be pilfered. The barns contain quite a bit of loot in the attics, including a copy of the Wasteland Survival Guide and a star cap.

The animals in the corrals and barns are a mixture of malnourished brahmin and bighorners, with stunted brahmin and bighorner calves accompanying them. The animals are suffering and with nobody to take care of them, a bullet to the head seems merciful (not to mention, it provides the necessary ingredients for delicious steaks).

Notable loot

 * Wasteland Survival Guide: Northern barn's attic, near the metal boxes.
 * Sunset Sarsaparilla star bottle cap: Northern barn's attic, by the bottles.
 * Torn diary page 1, 2, 3 and 4: in the bighorn barn on the steps leading to the second floor, the back of the truck to the northeast, the northernmost barn on the 2nd floor on the wooden crate and in the burnt down farmhouse to the northeast of the farm by the truck, near the skeleton, respectively.
 * Part 1: Found on the steps leading to the attic in the southern barn.
 * Part 2: Found in the bed of the truck parked in front of the ruins of the main house.
 * Part 3: Found in the northern barn attic, on top of a crate.
 * Part 4: Found in the burned out house, by the body of the late owner.
 * Both graves contain randomized loot. The western one is a burial mound and can be dug up without a shovel.

Appearances
Matthews Animal Husbandry Farm appears in Fallout: New Vegas.