multiple options for a single product, with stock control

I have had a look around the forum for an answer but have had no luck so here goes...

I am hoping to enable different choices of cuts from a particular section of a lamb. For example for the leg I want customers to be able to choose one of roast, steaks or diced lamb. The complication is if i have say 1 leg in stock and a customer chooses one of the options say roast, then i need the srock level for steaks and diced lamb to go to zero.

I can't seem to make this work - any ideas?

Two options i can see are

• a category (leg) with multiple products (roast, steaks or diced lamb) but I cannot work out how to link stock levels between products
• a product (leg) with multiple choices for type (roast, steaks or diced lamb). once again i cannot fnid out how to do this although i assume the logic is similar to choosing colours or sizes for products in clothing shops.

Thanks for any help!!!!

If you stock these products as whole legs etc. and cut them as orders come in, you would do best to have the product Leg of Lamb with attribute radiobuttons for roast, steaks and diced. When a customer orders it in whatever form, the Leg inventory goes down.

In Catalog > Option Name Manager, make an option named Cut, type radiobutton. In Option Values Manager, give it values of Roast, Steaks and Diced, then in Attributes Controller add the values as attributes.