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[Pinstar]

The wiki is very fuzzy on this subject, so I figure I'd ask here:

If a dwarf adopts a grazing animal as a pet, will they feed them? Will this prevent a grazing pet not assigned to a grassy pasture from starving to death, and when/if a dwarf 'feeds' their pet, do they use actual units of food?

[mek42]

Grazing pets are fed.  Not sure if real food is used.

[smjjames]

If you have breached the caverns, the pets might feed themselves. I don't really know, though the owners are supposed to feed them.

[Broseph Stalin]

Pretty sure they do feed them and do use real food.

[Larix]

Edit: in short, it can avoid starvation, but isn't fully reliable, thanks to the screwy job acquisition code and because only the owner will ever consider giving food. Putting the animal into a pasture is a much better choice.

A pet not assigned to a pasture will follow its owner around everywhere. In this mode, a food-dependent pet will not graze and become hungry, until it either starves to death or the owner decides to feed it. I haven't bothered too much with it, but dwarfs do use proper food (can't remember if only raw-edible plants or prepared food, as well) and will usually only consider feeding their pets when they're well into 'starving'. If the owner is extremely busy or on break, this can lead to a starved pet. Whenever i watched, the owner was the only dwarf who ever thought of feeding the pet.

Since such pets will just follow the dwarf around, contributing to fortress traffic and offering nothing but a slightly increased chance of 'comforted by a pet' happy thoughts, it's generally better to just stick adopted grazers into a pasture; this way, they won't starve and won't get into the way of traffic. And it's generally best not to allow grazers for adoption in the first place; you can't prevent them as immigrant pets, but there's no need having additional non-slaughterable bulls or like nonsense wasting pasture space.

[Button]

Wait, does this mean that by keeping the owner of an egg-laying grazer idle, we could prevent brooding starvation?! 

[Di]

In my fort they have been feeding them just fine. By the way, when feeding happens all creatures that share tile with pet are fed, so put all your elephants in one basket.

Wait, does this mean that by keeping the owner of an egg-laying grazer idle, we could prevent brooding starvation?! 

How many egg-laying grazers do you know in game?

[wierd]

I can't think of any, and it would kinda defeat the reason for keeping egg layers to begin with. (Infinite food supply with minimal effort, coupled with built in population control)

If there are grazing egg layers, they must be exotics of some kind, or the products of modding. Why anyone would put [grazer] on an egg layer I don't know, but putting the vermin hunter tag on chickens might be amusing. [Loves_fighting] on geese would also be a hoot.

[Larix]

I can't think of any,

Elk Birds are grazing egg-layers in vanilla.

and it would kinda defeat the reason for keeping egg layers to begin with.

It sort of does, yes. Thanks to their decent lifespan, the egg supply isn't too shabby, but breeding is a gamble with dubious success chances. And you really want them to reproduce, because elk birds give a goodly amount of butchery returns and have a value multiplier of 3x.

I don't know if petting them will actually get a dwarven owner to feed them while brooding. Might be worth a try.

[mek42]

Are elk birds gender specific for petting?

It strikes me that if I asked this question anywhere else but here it would be interpretted completely differently, even forgetting the problem of "elk birds".

[Broseph Stalin]

I can't think of any, and it would kinda defeat the reason for keeping egg layers to begin with. (Infinite food supply with minimal effort, coupled with built in population control)

If there are grazing egg layers, they must be exotics of some kind, or the products of modding. Why anyone would put [grazer] on an egg layer I don't know, but putting the vermin hunter tag on chickens might be amusing. [Loves_fighting] on geese would also be a hoot.

[GRAZER] is the reason it's not possible in vanilla to breed elk birds. The mother always starves sitting on the nest.