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[Vexorg_the_Devourer]

In anticipation of the day wherein Toady codes animal poop and the resultant unhappy thoughts, I hate having animals roaming all around my fortress, but I love +cat tallow roasts+ and -mule leather high boots.-  So how do you keep your animals in a pit where they can be retrieved and butchered without letting all the other animals out every time your dwarves want some beef?  I normally have a 5 X 5 animal pit with a lever locked door one level below, like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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If the animal population is high enough, I may have species-specific pits.
When I want to butcher some animals, I designate them to be killed, open the lever-locked door, undesignate them all from the pit, and wait until all the designated animals have been butchered.  I then re-designate all the animals to be pitted.  This of course takes forever.  So does anyone have a way of getting the animals to be butchered out of the pit without letting all the others out?

[Skorpion]

I don't pit them. I stuff everything in a cage, first off, and I mean EVERYTHING. Then I chain up breeding pairs in high-traffic places, plus a few females around.
As soon as anything is born, it goes into the Cage.
All the dangerous animals (big cats, camels, etc.) go into a different cage, all the trained dogs into another. Once things mature, they can be tagged for slaughter as food stocks run low.
Or rather, meat stocks. I order a fuckton of meat from caravans in the first few years, and process it all into meals, supplemented with hunting, fishing, and plants and seeds I'm not farming but are gathered during my periodic outdoor plant purges to get more saplings.
Cheap food is provided by the plants from the three farms available between harvest and them being brewed into booze, and the ingredients that haven't been cooked yet.

[Zancor Mezoran]

You could use them for a number of things:

1. Make a zoo! Everyone knows that dwarves love zoos.

2. Have your carpenters or blacksmiths make about a billion cages, and put them all over your map (above ground).  Then put one animal in each cage.  You now have a foolproof thief/ambush detection system.

3. Construct about 100 chains around your front entrance, and put an animal on each.  Any invaders will be distracted killing them, which gives your military more time to assemble, and your marksdwarves more time to kill the troublemakers.

4. Have a squad of peasants, each with a bunch of pets.  When a siege comes, recruit them all, form them into a squad, and send the squad out to meet the invaders.  When all the animals get killed, the dwarves will tantrum (or something), and possibly inflict some damage on the enemy.  Not only does this serve as a distraction to give your military time to assemble, but when the animal corpses decompose, you have a huge pile of bones and skulls.  And if a dwarf in the squad did tantrum and survive the battle, then he/she is most likely happy from the slaughter.

[freeze]

I've been trying to come up with a working pit for my next fortress.

Code: [Select]

##########
#BBB  FFF#   
#BBB  LLL#
#BBB  RRR#
A        #
#TTT   #B#
#TTT  ^#P#   
#TTT   #P#
##########

B T F,L,R = butcher tanner small food/lthr/refuse stockpiles pre-binned/barreled to full
P = animal pit area.
A = door controlled with lever (inside and outside planned, may be only 1 needed)
B = door forbidden to pets
^ = ramp/stairs

the key is a wall placed in such a way that the ramp/stairs next to the pit cannot be used to get to the upper level. Your butcher/tanner comes in, locks the door behind him, butchers tans and otherwise has fun as needed, re-pits via the ramp any animals that got out of the pit and are running around the "processing facility", opens the levered door and gets mauled by a cave alligator. Er, goes about his business.

[Loki]

That's an awesome idea which I think I'll try implementing myself

[Porpoisepower]

I've never bothered with any thing really advanced, I just mark them for slaughter as soon as their born.

[Aldaris]

I've never bothered with any thing really advanced, I just mark them for slaughter as soon as their born.

I have 3 breeder pairs of dogs walking around and I do the same. I can't get rid of the food produced by this and my small farm plot fast enough.

[Awayfarer]

I have cages for individual types of animals. That is to say I have a wolf cage for all of my wolves, a cat cage for all of my cats, etc.

Wolves and dogs are made into guard animals or sold.
Excess cats, hoary marmots and raccoons are sold to merchants.
Livestock animals fetch pretty good prices, so I usually sell my excess muskox, cow and donkey populations. I may slaughter a few.
Deer and mountain goats are mostly used as meat animals.

I have four of most animals chained up in my zoo, with a special "hall of vermin" to the south of it.

[pushy]

My livestock farms are ridiculously simplistic.


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I'll carve out rooms like that for every type of animal I have that I wish to breed (read: every animal type I have except for cats). To help me keep track, I try to have two males in the restraints I've coloured green in the above pic, and females in all the pink restraints. By default, the door to the right of the cage (cage is in yellow) is forbidden, the door to the left is not.
When a female gives birth, all her young are trapped in a tiny 3x6 room, which makes for easy collection. A dwarf gets drafted and stationed on top of the cage. Door access is switched so now the left door is forbidden (preventing youngsters from escaping through the door just opened by the dwarf) and the right door is open so the (undrafted) dwarf can get in to do his job; he catches the puppies/foals/calves/whatever and cages them all. When he's done, he's free to leave and door access is reset. Requires a bit of micromanagement with the doors, but I'm not too bothered about that.

Any young animals will always be allowed to grow into adults in the cage before being butchered unless there's a desperate need for food/bone/leather/whatever, as young only provide 60% of the goodies that their adult counterparts provide. The only time butchers can't access the animals is when young of the same species are being caged.

I also sometimes keep 1 of each animal caged for a zoo, if I feel that way inclined.

[Thadeus Rains]

I just stuff mine in a cage. I have quite a few running around free though. I haven't gotten around to caging them. I've never really concentrated on doing anything special when it comes to my livestock, just cage them all on and go on about my everyday dwarf stuff.

[Murphy]

Make a two-door airlock. Set both doors to keep tightly closed. Place a cage in the room behind this airlock, connect it to a lever. Place all your livestock in the cage, pull the lever.

That way you have a holding pen where all your livestock is restrained, yet able to breed. No hassle ever after that. The cubs/calves/foals/whatever will all be born in the pen too, and remain there.

The only problem will be when your dwarves' pets give offspring. When this happens, use your butcher. Or another cage. I prefer the latter because I never butcher dogs or cats.

[LegacyCWAL]

I've never bothered with any thing really advanced, I just mark them for slaughter as soon as their born.

You get less meat and bones if you do that.

[death]

I've got two gaint cats, I seal them in a room so they can breed. When the young grow to maturety, I was chain some up near the enterence to my fort and slaughter some.

I dont have a animal pit, I just put all my animals in a cage outside of the butchers area. Simple.

Hell, I've jsut remembered, im breeding dragons

[Wahad]

Hell, I've jsut remembered, im breeding dragons

I find that hard to believe, but if it's true...what's the birthrate on those things?

[RedKing]

4. Have a squad of peasants, each with a bunch of pets.  When a siege comes, recruit them all, form them into a squad, and send the squad out to meet the invaders.  When all the animals get killed, the dwarves will tantrum (or something), and possibly inflict some damage on the enemy.  Not only does this serve as a distraction to give your military time to assemble, but when the animal corpses decompose, you have a huge pile of bones and skulls.  And if a dwarf in the squad did tantrum and survive the battle, then he/she is most likely happy from the slaughter.

That's awesome. Charge of the Kitteh Brigade.