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[Urist McManiac]

Hey folks,

I'm currently in the process of getting my fort up and running and slowly approaching the point where I'm looking to provide my dorfs with some luxus. Specifically, I'm looking to set up a few ranches and stables with livestock, to provide meat, fat and leather (amongst other things). However, I'm not sure what kind of animals I should try to raise.

Currently I have underground stables with pigs (for meat and bones), geese (for meat and leather) and turkeys (for eggs). I also have two above-ground pastures with goats and and breeding pair of Yaks, although they are mostly superfluos right now. In essence, I have all the animals I actually need... but there's still room to raise some cool critters, right?

Basically I'm looking for good suggestions on what kind of animals I could add to the mix. My main requirement for them is to have something 'extra' that differs them from normal livestock. It would also be cool if the animals in question could be acquired without too much hassle.

Two good examples of what I'm looking for are wild boars and grizzly bears. Boars freely roam my map, so it will be easy to get a pair of them and they have the advantage of providing my craftsdwarves with ivory. Grizzly bears should be buyable from the Elves and could act as solid war animals.

An example of what I'm NOT looking for are the two giant wolves I bought from the tree-huggers. While they might be cool, they aren't war trainable. They do have a value multiplier of two, but so do the muskoxen (muskoxes?) I'm planning to breed soon.

On a related note: what's the verdict on breeding yaks instead of cows? I got a breeding pair of yaks from migrant waves and they succsessfully mated, but I'm not sure if they offer a great benefit over cows. From what I can tell, they're just a little bigger and graze more than regular cows.

[Luriant]

I pack Bluepeafowl for eggs/leather/bones/male meat/animal observers (15-30 lifetime)
Sheep and Ram provide wool for Strange Moods.
And inavoidable cats for kill vermin.

Cave Crocodiles give Gizzard stone for encrusting crafts, a insane amount of eggs, a insane amount of tame Crocodiles for defending your fortress. Available in wet caverns under your fortress, kill all creatures and wait for the next group. Use a wood door surrounded with cages.
Elk Birds give gizzard stones.
Wild Giant Cave Spider can provide infinite silk.
Cave Dragons, without fire but can provide fireinmune leather and bone.
Magma Crabs in fortifications give basalt spit machinegun.

Search in the wiki, without info about your biome i only search in the cavern biome.
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Cavern

[Quarque]

Pigs also yield leather and fat (in fact nearly all animals do). Pigs are nice because they require no grazing and produce a good amount of meat and bones. (Milk too IIRC, but I personally don't bother.)
 There is a lot of redundancy in the stock you have right now.
You don't need geese when you already have turkeys for the eggs. Yaks are hard to maintain (they require large pastures to graze) and breeding them is not practical. Goats don't add much either.

The important one you're missing is cats, they kill vermin. A single cat pastured on top of your food stock is recommended. You might want to geld your male cat(s) to prevent the infamous catsplosion.

So to cover your basics, the following is easily enough:

Cats for vermin,
Pigs for meat / leather / bones / fat,
Sheep for wool,
Either chickens, peacocks, or turkeys for eggs

Any of them that don't graze can also be used to detect intruders.

Then you might want some war animals. The easiest to get are dogs and I always embark with a pair of them.
To get better ones you have to catch them. Cave crocodiles are a step up and available on all biomes (I think).

Dependent on luck and biome, you might be able to capture even stronger ones, consult the wiki, it's a long list.

[FortunaDraken]

Cats for vermin, always.

I like starting with pigs because of their lack of needing to graze to survive, and tend to try and supplement them with boars or replace them altogether with black or grizzly bears if the biome has them or the elves are nice. Giant versions are even better.

Dogs for war creatures and scouting out thieves. They can be replaced with the grizzly bears or some of the large cats (lions and tigers, giant versions being better, are war trainable if I remember correctly; cheetahs might be too).

Eggs, I find turkeys seem to lay the most out of the starting birds, but if you can get any kind of cave crocodile, saltwater crocodile or alligator, they can produce 30+ eggs in one shot, and they're aggressive and will attack anything hostile you put them near. So while you can't train them, they'll still attack things for you. One of my forts main objectives is getting a breeding pair of them to fully tame the kids and then have eggs forever. Food problems solved.

Giant cave spiders for silk, because of how annoying getting that stuff is if you're relying on cave spiders spawning silk.

Sheep are best for wool that I've found. Llamas and alpacas just don't seem to do much for me. The other grazing animals I don't tend to bother with because they annoy me with their requirements, but if I get them I'll pasture them in random areas of the surface map to 'scout' for thieves and werebeasts. My birds end up on this duty too, chained up around the place.

[Urist McManiac]

There seems to be some misunderstandings...

I obviously have cats for pest control. I also realise that pigs give leather too. As I said, I have the basics covered. I'm not looking for animals that give me more of what I already have. I'm specifically looking for animals that offer a unique benefit or something I do not already get from the animals I have.

I realise that from a min-maxing perspective, crocodiles of all ilks are probably the way to go, perhaps with some alpacas or lamas thrown in for the wool and milk. I'm not looking to min-max, though. I'm looking to keep a rather diverse stock of animals, each tailored to a specific purpose.

To elaborate: I keep pigs because they give a nice amount of meat considering their growth time and the fact they are non-grazers. Sure, they do give leather too, but they're not here for that. Their job is to provide meat. I get my leather from geese already. They reproduce much faster and therefore give more animals to slaughter and more hides to tan. All other stuff they provide are just filler to me, as egg-laying (turkeys) and meat-producing are already covered by other animals.

Should that still leave questions, let me narrow down my question and split it up into multiples:

1. What's a good and reasonably easy to get animal for war-duty? I'm currently hoping for the elves to bring grizzly bears (or a giant version of them), but are there other suggestions?

2. What are some easy to get and easy to raise animals whose bones have a material value multiplier greater than 1?

3. Other than wild boars, what are some good suggestions on animals to raise for ivory?

If anyone's curious, my fort is in a temperate mountain biome, with some temperate broadleaf forests on it's fringe.

[Fleeting Frames]

If you get any ostriches, consider replacing your geese and turkeys; they can be butchered at birth on average, give gizzard stones and lay more eggs than turkeys.

You could try peregrine falcons instead of cats. Not sure if this had any issues.

1. What is easy to get depends on embark. Beyond the domestic animals there's no guarantee to have anything. Maybe aim for a fast war animal though, given their purpose as a meatshield protecting a dwarf? Otherwise, could just aim for Jabberers.

The largest large predator in temperate broadleaf is giant grizzly bear, followed by giant wolf, both moving at nearly twice the speed of dwarf. First is war trainable too. Mountains are pretty boring on this front.

2. ...Cave crocodiles have x4. Yeah, ik. Elves may have rhinoceros, giraffes and elephants (x5), but they take a long time to reach full size. Croc shares x4 with animals like giant lion, voracious cave crawler and cave dragon, but those breed lot slower.

[FortunaDraken]

I obviously have cats for pest control. I also realise that pigs give leather too. As I said, I have the basics covered. I'm not looking for animals that give me more of what I already have. I'm specifically looking for animals that offer a unique benefit or something I do not already get from the animals I have.

1. What's a good and reasonably easy to get animal for war-duty? I'm currently hoping for the elves to bring grizzly bears (or a giant version of them), but are there other suggestions?

2. What are some easy to get and easy to raise animals whose bones have a material value multiplier greater than 1?

3. Other than wild boars, what are some good suggestions on animals to raise for ivory?

If anyone's curious, my fort is in a temperate mountain biome, with some temperate broadleaf forests on it's fringe.

There are very few animals that give unique benefits outside of GCS and their silk. You can get everything from pretty much every animal, so laying out basics is pretty much what people do.

"Easy to get" war animals varies greatly depending on biome, how many cage traps you have set up, what spawns on the surface, and/or how lucky you get with the elves. Bears in temperate and big cats in tropical are the 'easiest' but yeah. Jabberers are a good one with their large size and ability to wreck things, but you have to rely on the caverns spawning them and cage traps. They also bonus as egg layers once you have enough jabberers for the military.

Ivory specifically only comes off of elephants, narwhals, walruses, warthogs, and wild boars. Elephants have the best ivory for their pet value I believe, but they take 10 years to grow to adult, so wild boars and warthogs are better. Narwhals and walruses are obviously biome restricted and less likely to get because of it. Teeth on the other hand is anything that's large enough to give them as returns - anything about the size of a grizzly bear or larger, according to the wiki.

[Zuglarkun]

What biome/s are you situated in?

It looks like you have all the basics covered, other than a source of infinite silk. If you would like to streamline your industry more, consider keeping only turkeys over geese, and only 1 type of grazing animal for their milk and other animal byproducts. Leather, milk, eggs and meat can always be bought in bulk from caravans, so you don't really need a meat industry to fulfill those needs.

However have you considered shelled creatures for their shells? In the inopportune event that your biome does not have shallow pools, streams or rivers, having some shelled creatures around would be a nice fail safe in case any strange moods require shells. Don't even need to have breeding stock, just a few to have your bases covered.

[Urist McManiac]

What biome/s are you situated in?

It looks like you have all the basics covered, other than a source of infinite silk. If you would like to streamline your industry more, consider keeping only turkeys over geese, and only 1 type of grazing animal for their milk and other animal byproducts. Leather, milk, eggs and meat can always be bought in bulk from caravans, so you don't really need a meat industry to fulfill those needs.

However have you considered shelled creatures for their shells? In the inopportune event that your biome does not have shallow pools, streams or rivers, having some shelled creatures around would be a nice fail safe in case any strange moods require shells. Don't even need to have breeding stock, just a few to have your bases covered.

As I said earlier: I'm in a mountain biome with some temperate (savage? I get giant animals, once in a while)) broadleaf forest at it's fringes. The elven civ with which I trade also seems to be located in a savage biome, as they brought me Giant Wolves and a Giant Grizzly Bear.

I actually like the suggestion of keeping shelled creatures around, even if I do have a brook which readily supplies me with fish and shells. However, I'm afraid I don't really have acsess to any shell-bearing creatures.

[StagnantSoul]

I usually just breed cows and dogs, maybe those giant purple birds if I can catch a pair.

[Immortal-D]

My absolute favorite war animal is the Giant Tortoise.  Now, it can't actually be war-trained, but you don't use it for attacking.  When the Tortoise is threatened, it immediately retreats inside its' shell, at which point it becomes virtually indestructible.  I have seen an entire Goblin army hacking at a GT and being unable to do more than dent it.  Place a few of them around your front entrance, and any hostile forces will be stalled for days, or longer.

[StagnantSoul]

My absolute favorite war animal is the Giant Tortoise.  Now, it can't actually be war-trained, but you don't use it for attacking.  When the Tortoise is threatened, it immediately retreats inside its' shell, at which point it becomes virtually indestructible.  I have seen an entire Goblin army hacking at a GT and being unable to do more than dent it.  Place a few of them around your front entrance, and any hostile forces will be stalled for days, or longer.

You're a genius!

[escondida]

A pit of poisonous snakes is always a nice touch in any well-decorated fortress, if you can catch the snakes.

[Aranador]

I once had a giant rattle snake - it was magnificent at biting kobold thieves - they would be poisoned, run, and die tired.