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[FruitBird]

I have a Giant Cave Spider kicking its heels in a cage, how can I set up a safe, effective silk farm? Its not tame, which is apparently a requirement.

[PatrikLundell]

No, a tame GCS is not a requirement. In fact, the silk farm described on the wiki relies on it NOT being tame.
Using a wild GCS has the side effect of blocking migration in the cavern it came from, as that cavern suddenly gets a roaming member when you remove the GCS from its cage and locks it into a room.

My preferred silk farm uses undead as bait, which means the GCS can be either wild or tame, as both are hostile to undeads. In that construction, two rooms on the main level is provided for the GCS and the bait respectively. The bait one I brick closed, while the GCS one uses a stone door (a GCS is a building destroyer, but it's too close to the door to be able to destroy it, so a wooden door should work as well). These rooms have floor hatches activated by levers to allow you to disable the farm. On the level above the main one two locked hatches are placed above the rooms and the bait is pitted into the front one, while the GCS is pitted into the back one if it's hostile (if it's tamed you can just lead it to a pasture in the back room on the main level, but make sure that's done before the undead is pitted, or the undead will scare the animal herder).
On the level below the main level you have a cage trap under each hatch so the bait and GCS are recaged when dropped (again, a tame GCS can just be led away, but the undead blocking retraining means there is a significant risk the GCS goes wild). One important thing is to remember to remove the GCS from the pen/pasture before dropping it onto a cage (or leading it to one) or your dorfs will try to lead the hostile GCS back to the pasture/haul the tame GCS back and forth between the cage and the pasture indefinitely.
If you're using a wild GCS exclusively I guess you can just as well use the wiki version with dorf bait (cats and dogs are not attacked by a wild GCS, probably because they're not considered hostile to it. I don't know what animal bait would work. War trained dogs?).
Note that pitting isn't failsafe. At times the pittee will break lose and a battle breaks out, so you can lose both the GCS and the bait that way.

[GoblinCookie]

I have a Giant Cave Spider kicking its heels in a cage, how can I set up a safe, effective silk farm? Its not tame, which is apparently a requirement.

Breed ducks.   

Use them to test the machine since it does matter too much if they do die (easily replaced).  They can fly away through a hole in the roof but the cave spider cannot fly can it? 

[PatrikLundell]

A GCS can climb very well, so a hole adjacent to a wall poses no problem. I also would be very nervous if the hole is in the roof of a single Z level room.

You can also tame the GCS while it's caged, if desired.

[vanatteveldt]

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Silk_farming

[Daris]

The wiki entry implies that wild spiders will only web active military dwarves.  I have successfully baited wild spiders with captured elves and forgotten beasts.  I'm going to try with a minotaur in my current fort.

[ShinQuickMan]

Well, that wiki entry is at least correct when it says that tame GCS' won't do the trick, as I found out the hard way...

[FruitBird]

I have a Giant Cave Spider kicking its heels in a cage, how can I set up a safe, effective silk farm? Its not tame, which is apparently a requirement.

Breed ducks.   

Use them to test the machine since it does matter too much if they do die (easily replaced).  They can fly away through a hole in the roof but the cave spider cannot fly can it?

So a wild GCS will attack ducks? If they do I can just leave on in there, and harvest the goods, will that work?

[Daris]

My experience is that a wild GCS will not web any animal that it can't physically reach.  If you dump a wild GCS in a room with a bunch of other animals, webs will fly, but in a controlled environment where the spider can't reach the bait, it will just stand there and give you stink-eye.

They will web dwarves, but if you don't have a vampire or were-dwarf to use there is a lot of micromanagement involved in swapping out baits.  If you DO have a vampire or were-dwarf and no better use for them, this is a great one.  You can just wall the bait in and forget about it, and stop production by re-caging your spider.

Oh, I just remembered that I used a captured human werebeast to bait the GCS in another fort.  The spider webbed the werebeast even when it was in human form.

tl;dr - animals don't work well, you really need a sentient bait of some kind and a wild spider

[Daris]

The minotaur works as bait.

[Lightman]

That's interesting that a GCS needs sentient bait.

I managed to trap a forgotten beast that spews webs.  I cut fortifications in one of the walls where it's trapped and then tied a dog to a stake in the line-of-sight.  It will continuously shoot webs at the dog.  I use a drawbridge to block things off when I want the madness to stop.