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[Felius]

I've been using an animal heavy strategy, and of course, pasturing the animals in 1x1 zones to avoid them fighting with each other.

What I'd like to know is if I need to have the pastures away from each other, with a buffer zone in between, or if I can just pasture them contiguously.

[jcochran]

They only fight is they're in the same tile at the same time. So contiguous is good enough.

[Linkeron]

By the time I get my first invader, I typically build a large wall from my entrance and set up a second gate. Inside of this wall I pasture all of my grazing and fortress defense animals. One big pasture. After doing this, I've never had a problem with infighting or an invader getting very far into this area without getting detected (Read: slaughtered) by these animals, and unless I need wood or a caravan, I typically leave the gate closed so they can't even get in. Remove ramps on the inside of the fortress so that the outer gate is the only entrance, otherwise it's pointless because an invader will just path around and come in from those ramps.

[SixOfSpades]

Animals usually only fight if they're competing for scarce grazing plants--which happens more readily with larger & larger animals, a pasture full of cows & horses will get denuded before a similar pasture full of sheep. Then again, if your pastureland isn't all that fertile, your livestock may render it barren sooner than you'd think.

Small pastures are pretty much irrelevant--if you've got enough animals to be fighting over the largest single pasture you can make, you're asking for a livestocksplosion anyway.

[Larix]

What kinds of animals are those? The 1x1 pastures suggest they're not grazers, and you can just stick those in large pastures, because they'll simply spread out. You can also stick all non-grazers that aren't needed for breeding/egg-laying/fortress guarding/milking into cages, they won't hunger and won't suffer adverse effects. Males inside cages can still impregnate females outside of the cage.

Infighting in roomy pastures is a specific problem of grazers, because they're programmed to prioritise the 'first' tile containing grass and don't put enough stress on finding an _open_ tile. You can usually still fit five or six grazers in a single pasture.

[Sutremaine]

I rarely have problems with fighting grazers, even when there are enough of them to eat faster than the pasture can regenerate itself. I do tend to use 30x30 pastures, so perhaps odd bits of grass pop up often enough to draw individual animals away from each other.

Another thing I like to do is dig a room full of up stairs instead of a room full of floor. Stairs won't grow anything but grass, but won't get denser than 'sparse'. This doesn't really matter if it's being chomped on before it could have grown much further.

[RLS0812]

All of mine die of starvation, even though they are never in a pasture.

I have long ago given up on grazing animals, and instead raise herds of cats.

[SixOfSpades]

All of mine die of starvation, even though they are never in a pasture.

Sounds like they're starving because they're not in a pasture. Animals not assigned to a pasture will hang out in your meeting area . . . which is probably a bare stone floor. No food, dead. Do not be surprised that animals are this stupid. In this game, you should never be surprised that something is stupid.

[_Ivan_]

This is why I don't keep grazers. I will keep anything else and I have nearly an entire level reserved for animal pens. When I get something new I dig out a new pen and put them in there. 20x20 is big enough to leave them breed like cats and they wont fight with each other.

I sure would hate to have to make 500 1x1 pens. My poor fingers. Maybe you could save yourself some time and pain by making 5x5 pens and adding 10 animals to each? They shouldn't fight in that big of an area.

[mirrizin]

I just slaughter the ones that start fights, also build huge underground forests for my sheep.

The larger animals, in my eyes, aren't worth it once you have a reasonably steady food supply.

[Repseki]

I usually throw all the grazers and pets into one large pasture just to keep them in one place. First above ground, sometimes in a channeled area to get more even growth, then into an underground area after I breach the caverns and get moss.

Fighting doesn't really become an issue, but I also tend to slaughter most of my animals after a few years to clean up the pets list.

[Snaake]

Grazers get a pasture outside the surface fort initially, maybe inside if I make a grazing area expansion wall for it. Or sometimes I've done a separate walled off area that was connected to my fort via an underground tunnel, who says they should be part of the same contiguous fort...

For non-grazers, I generally use 1x1 pastures for egg-layers and maybe for the breeding-stock males of dogs etc. Females and any disposable males get tossed into bigger ones by species, or kept in cages while the young are growing up/if I want to stop females from breeding. Female kittens always go in cages, and I only keep 1 female cat loose if I want to breed them, assuming I have a choice.

I've also sometimes used 1x1 pastures for non-grazing pets (or cavies/bunnies on a grass-growing tile), with the assumption that it would be better for pathing fps, not that that should matter much with ~5 pets compared to 100 dwarves. Does anybody know if there's any science that's been done on this? The wiki (meat industry article, section management) mentions that restraints will allow animals to path with the 3*3 area of the restraint, but doesn't comment on pastures smaller than that.

[Mushroo]

I put a Sculpture Garden in a mined-out soil layer (having first breached the caverns). My animals naturally congregate around the statues and eat the cave plants. No starvation, no animal fighting.