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[amade]

Just wondering how do you folks keep your animals penned in? I've got a relatively small area set aside and walled off with cages and restraints built in it (mostly for the look of the thing). But everytime I try to transfer an animal in or out of the pen all the animals which are swarming near the pet inaccessible door would try to break out when the door is open (so I made it a double layer door, but this only made it so that the animal is stuck in the first door and refuses to back off).

So I've resorted to "pitting" my livestock over the walls, not elegant but at least I won't have to use the door but I'd still have trouble taking livestock out from the pen. I'm letting these critters run free so they would breed, of course. Though I wonder if chained creatures can still breed? I know that caged creatures won't breed but will give birth if already pregnant before being caged.


Side question unrelated to topic:
I've got tons of dedicated planters but they aren't planting any seeds in my early plots anymore and they're focusing instead on a few new ones I've built further away from the seed stockpile (which is near my old plots). I made sure the plots are unforbidden and had crops assigned for each season. Is it a bug or did I miss something? I noticed that this sort of thing happens everytime I build new plots (either the new plot gets ignored or the old plots are ignored) so I'm assuming that once the planters start fussing over some selected plots they ignore all the others entirely which puts a crimp on my crop rotation system.

Random rant:
Curse them stupid soldiers who had to trek all the way to my underground food stores to get provisions when there's a food stockpile above ground right next to him.

[Samyotix]

a) AFAIK chained creatures do breed.

b) I just have a large zoo and a large meeting hall, most of the animals want to hang out there, next door to the butchers' ... I also have low FPS though

c) Dwarves will do jobs toward the West (left) of the map first, and work their way towards the East, in my experience.
(Last fort I started, I spent two hours designating stuff before unpausing for the first time ... and then *head->desk*'d because obviously my dwarves ran to the furthest top-left corners to remove ramps rather than start diging the down staircase designated under their feet.)

Other possibilities:
d) Did you tell the farm what to grow in Spring, Summer, Autum and Winter?
Farm plots need to be set for each season manually. q over the plot, then select the season with a, b, c, d, and make sure you select a crop to grow in each season.

(Fruit make for an easy start. Quarry bushes and Sweet Pod make for extremely valuable food to sell.)

e) Do you have seeds for the crops you're trying to grow?

(I set "Plump Helmet: Cook" to On, forgot about it, and added too many Cook Meal jobs last Spring. The result? I had to wait for the dwarven caravan in Autumn to bring more plump helmet so I could brew it, extract the seeds, and get my food industry going again.)

f) Is everyone busy hauling?
I've usually used the "Brewer/Planter and Cook/planter" setup which I think one of the Wiki Tutorials recommended. Currently I prefer 1) Cook/Brewer with most hauling labors turned off, 2) Herbalist/Planter with most hauling labors turned off.

g) Dwarves AFAIK will go grab food with a component they like. Maybe he's into Plump Helmet or something and went to look for those PH cookies ...

[Magua]

Set up an airlock of 2 (or 3 or 4 or 5...) non-pet-passable doors.  In between the doors, put retractable bridges hooked up to lever.  Underneath, have tunnel or whatnot leading back to pen.

So, dwarf goes in to do something, some animals make a break for it.  End up between doors 1 and 2.  After dwarf is out, pull lever to drop bridge, animals fall into tunnel, wander back into pen.  Problem solved.

[Jude]

I thought caged females could still be impregnated by spores?

[amade]

Thanks Magua, that ought to make it somewhat easier. Otherwise I guess I'll just chain them and hope they do breed.

Samyotix: Yes, as I specified in my post each season had been allocated for, seeds are available, over the 200 limit in fact and I'm tempted to tell my cooks to cook them. Dwarfs are indeed busy hauling as I mess around with my stockpiling to make things more streamlined (I can imagine them all grumbling about how management is making their lives miserable by getting them to move stuff around all the time in the name of efficiency) but the planters still find time to plant, fertilize and harvest my new plots  but not the old one, It's not touched at all. The new plot is indeed to the west, but a still relatively new plot to the east of the old ones are being tended to as well. Both worked plots are far away from the main hustle and bustle of the fort.

[TettyNullus]

I just mass-produce cloth ropes and chain them up, takes slightly less resource than trying to seal them in, and allows me to see -exactly- how many of 'em I have left ( not to mention the unroped ones wanders into meeting areas, so I know who's broken free  ) but yeah, I've noticed the problem with critters ganging up against the tightly closed doors, that's why I retorted to roping them up.

[amade]

I just mass-produce cloth ropes and chain them up, takes slightly less resource than trying to seal them in, and allows me to see -exactly- how many of 'em I have left ( not to mention the unroped ones wanders into meeting areas, so I know who's broken free  ) but yeah, I've noticed the problem with critters ganging up against the tightly closed doors, that's why I retorted to roping them up.

Actually I think that is a better idea. So I'll just cage up newborns so that they don't clutter up my screen and fps and leave a set number of breeding animals chained in the pen and slaughter the excess and the ones that will grow into adults.

[Tcei]

I used to ues the place all the animals in a room/pit with a locked door, but then I discovered that it kills my fps as the animals try to path thru the locked door. The best method seems to be chain the a single male and as many females as you want and let them breed any babies get locked in a cage till adulthood, Then they get slaughtered or added to the breeding program

[Ashery]

Females will give birth in a cage if they are already pregnant, but they won't get pregnant while in a cage.

Planning on using ropes for my pens. Just chain up one male and however many females you have. Butcher any newborn males (they give the same number of bones/etc when they're newborn as when they mature) and chain up any females for future production.

[TettyNullus]

Females will give birth in a cage if they are already pregnant, but they won't get pregnant while in a cage.

Planning on using ropes for my pens. Just chain up one male and however many females you have. Butcher any newborn males (they give the same number of bones/etc when they're newborn as when they mature) and chain up any females for future production.

less, actually, around 2/3 if it's a child, if I remembers right ( I haven't watched too closely lately )