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[Randy Gnoman]

My breeding pits typically use bars, rather than doors.  The result is that, when the bars are down, there's no path, and the animals don't bunch up by the door (they're also never accidentally released en-masse by a dwarf that opens the wrong door).  It's not terribly inconvenient, since the only time that I want to open the bars is mass-slaughter time, and everybody ought to be coming out anyhow (four usually get tossed back in, but it's not hard to toss four animals back into the pit).  Not as handy as that doors-and-path solution, but better for those that don't want to mess with that particular game mechanic (though I think I might switch, now).

It also works just as well on Dwarves, which has been endless fun since I started playing with the idea of a Dwarven Prison (think a hermit game, but instead of turning immigration off and killing your extra starting dwarves, you toss them all into a pit and have them work in soul-crushing conditions to churn out goods which they then toss out for the Warden to trade for supplies and luxuries- setting it beside an underground river leads to great fun with giant cave crocodiles and swarms of unarmed, starving dwarves, attempting to fish and drink from the river).

[Dasqoot]

I had something of a dogsplosion in this fort. I used the pasture workaround and put a kennel in the middle and went from 14-30 fps. The puppies were caged in the pasture and were released when they became dogs. There was about 50 wardogs in their last time I checked and the back way into my fort leads through the door they want to go out through...so it's pretty much the most awesome room in my fort. So thanks to everyone who figured out how to keep animals in one place!

[LegacyCWAL]

I guess you could call what I do "half-caging".  There's a cage right near the butcher's where I put all the cats and the baby animals, which makes it convenient should I decide to slaughter them the moment they grow up.  Otherwise, I just release grown ones (other than cats, of course) because I try to have multiple, ridiculously large meeting areas, and spreading out the strays like that significantly reduces pathfinding problems*.



*There's still as many critters, but they aren't crawling all over each other.  So there's only the "find path from A to B" calculation, rather than the "find a path from A, over, under, around, between, and through 500 animals and dwarves, to B".

Edit: And no, 500 is not an exaggeration: my current fortress has 233 dwarves and ~255 animals.  Though admittedly, that number does include chained animals, zoo animals, and the youngsters in the kitchen-cage.

I don't understand why people let so many animals take over their forts, personally.

I keep about four breeding animals of each type around; these are the only ones who will live to any sort of notable age. I let them have twenty or thirty offspring and then slaughter them all simultaneously. I always have plenty of meat around (and no FPS problems).

The more you have, the faster they breed, and the faster they breed, the more practice ammo my marksdwarves get

[Teeto_K]

My breeding area uses Chains.

My "Growing up" area is a cage.

I keep a fixed number of animals of each type for breeding, 1 male and 4 females.

Newly grown pets are moved to the chains to breed. The previous generation is slaughtered one by one as they are replaced.

Chained animals have no problem breeding, so I don't see any need for an elaborate pit system. My butcher shop and kennels are right next to my breeding room, so it's all good.