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[schnobs]

I'm constantly slaughtering animals to keep the population bearable. All other stuff gets used somehow, but fat accumulates. I found no better solution than wanton chasming.

I'm far from making soap, is there any other use for fat? I thought it would also vanish in the kitchen, but that appears not to be the case.

If I ever make soap, will my dwarves use it or can I only trade it away? I'm not exactly short of trade goods as it is.

[Chthon]

Fat can be cooked into tallow.  Tallow can be cooked in meals as an ingredient.

[Jaqie Fox]

Yeah. rendering fat in the kitchen makes a great ingredient for the fancy meals the cook can make and gets rid of it very fast if you have a high skill cook.

[schnobs]

Well, this will only shift the problem. The demand for bones creates lots of meat as a byproduct already; my dwarves hardly get to eat any greenstuff anymore, the only reason why they're still farming is booze.

Turning fat into meals will therefore not help me to get rid of the stuff.

[Jaqie Fox]

*shrug* so start exporting food  :p

[Paul]

you could try controlling the animal population by not letting it get so out of control  

Keep the pets at a minimum, cage up any excess ones to keep them from reproducing. Immediately cage any newborns (especially kittens). Then they can't be adopted, so no more pets, and no overload.

I usually don't even keep pets. I don't really find vermin to be a problem, and I can take care of invaders with military and traps without the need for dogs. Every horse I get at the start gets immediately caged or butchered. If I get immigrants with a bunch of pets, I'll arrange for them to be incinerated (send owner into magma chamber, let pet follow, send owner out, lock door, etc.) The dwarves get over it - at least I'm not burning THEM up.

-edit- ah, I just read one of your posts more carefully and realised you said the need for BONES. If you really need the bones (and only the bones), you could turn off automatic butchering, make a flood room near a refuse pile, add in a few chains, and just assign extra animals there, flood the room, and let the bodies decay to bones. Although it may be easier just to chasm the extra fat every so often.

I never really need extra bones myself, I always get piles and piles of them from frequent chasm attacks (mostly ratmen) and especially sieges - that last goblin siege left me with 150 extra bars of iron and more bones than I could count. I also got a bunch of caged goblins which I stripped down (chasming/melting items off them) and used for target practice for my marksdwarves.

[ March 23, 2007: Message edited by: Paul ]

[Gaulgath]

Here's what I do with animal fat: make sure all of my food stockpiles forbid it, and make a fat stockpile outside. Simple.  

[Pacho]

Isn't there an animal cap of like 50?

[GrimmSweeper]

For each species, yes. Once one of them hits that limit, the check for birth does not pass.

[Mea Culpa]

* Herd his animals into a great Hall with splendid statue and great draw bridge aside...

[Jaqie Fox]

wait a sec... I heard that anything below a drawbridge coming down gets instantly destroyed, and leaves no items behind.  Maybe you could take advantage of that?