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[kilozombie]

In fact, NOBODY gives any shits about the things in cages. I can't get them out of the goddamn cages, they're like parasites! My butchers ignore them (the animals screen lists them as "ready for slaughter" but they never get butchered) and I have no idea how to just take them out.

How am I supposed to re-use cage traps without making more cages?

[TKGP]

For general advice on removing things from cages, refer to this wiki page. You can also just (b)uild the cage, link it to a lever, then pull it.

[Merendel]

Try asigning the caged animals to a pasture zone, preferably near the butchers shop.
Other possible issues.
Ensure the butcher shop hasnt goten forbiden by accident
ensure a dwarf with the butcher labor enabled can reach the shop/animals
ensure that you dont have your 1 butcher dwarf off giveing a rock a tour to the magma sea without a wheelbarrow.  I tend to asign the majority of my dwarves butcher so it gets done right away as skill makes no difference.
Ensure the cage is actualy built (since you mentioned cage traps) Sometimes there are issues removeing things from cages in stockpiles but if you build it as a building (b+J) you should be able to assign/unassign and if its butcherable your dwarves should be able to get it.

[BlackFlyme]

I think I've had a problem similar to this before. Are all the caged animals wild?

I could never get my butchers to kill wild animals, but I was able to get around this by building a cage next to a pit zone with a weapons trap at the bottom. No-one will butcher wild animals, but I seem to have no issues with caging or pitting them.

[slothen]

butchers can only butcher corpses and tame animals.  A butcher cannot butcher a wild animal.

[blue emu]

Is the cage in stockpile, or built (the way you would build a workshop)?

[kilozombie]

Thanks for the help, I will probably make a pit with spikes at the bottom or a weapon trap or something.

[Garath]

if they are tame animals killed in any way, they won't be butchered. Only alive tame animals brought to the butcher workshop will be butchered

since you havn't said wether they are wild or not...

[laularukyrumo]

Interestingly, I've never gotten the "Butcher an animal" job to work on a corpse. Ever. After killing a wild pig, making a corpse stockpile one tile away from the butcher shop, hauling the corpse to it, I still get "Urist McFuckface can't find a god damn corpse to butcher" 50 times in a row. The only advice I've seen on the wiki is "get the corpse to the guy before it rots" and "he can't see it if it's too far away", but if 1 tile away from the shop is too far, then I don't know what to do. Autoslaughter autobutcher is the only way I can get bones.

[slothen]

a wild animal killed by your military (instead of hunters) sometimes won't be butchered if its too mutilated.  I've had pretty good results getting fresh corpses to be butchered.  I haven't done this in a while, but an execution tower/pit with butchers at the bottom works pretty well.  Wild animals explode at the bottom, and if all 4 limbs are blown off by impact, you get extra pieces of leather.

[kilozombie]

One of them was tame and I was able to butcher it, but the rest are wild. I think I might even make a gigantic pit to drop all my wild animals into, blowing off those tasty limbs.

[Larix]

That's normal behaviour - butchers won't slaughter wild animals. They must be tamed first. You can observe this easily by putting an animal up for butchering _and_ ordering it trained. The trainer will pacify it and once they're done, the butcher takes over and drags the beast to the abbattoir.

You can order your military to kill wild animals, giving them a bit of combat experience. Or you can feed them through your blender traps or dump them down a _very_ deep shaft (25+ z-levels) - if a large animal gets dismembered, you'll often get a whole piece of leather from each part. Of course, it'll take a fair bit more time to pick up all the pieces and have them butchered.

[laularukyrumo]

I still feel the need to repeat that even after putting a wild boar through my blender, the corpse itself won't be butchered. Not quite the same as OP's problem, but, it's something I've experienced that nobody else seems to. I can see this becoming more and more important to deal with thanks to the discovery of HEY FORT-BORN ANIMALS ARE SUPER MICRO DUDES.