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Author Topic: What do you do with your caged animals?  (Read 941 times)

skarr12

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What do you do with your caged animals?
« on: August 18, 2010, 09:52:00 pm »

First of all, yes this is sort of a question. But, i just captured a couple of buzzards who dared to enter my fort. Right now their siting there snugly in my animal stock pile. So my question is, what can i do with them? I want to eat them, since i dont think they would be a very good defense against a horde of goblins Crocodiles. Also, what do you do with your caught animals/humanoids?
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I killed a dragon using a wolf eye tooth as a weapon once. It was satisfying.
What a coincidence. I was just on my way to slay a dragon with an eye tooth as well.

skarr12

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Re: What do you do with your caged animals?
« Reply #1 on: August 18, 2010, 09:58:55 pm »

Anyone?
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I killed a dragon using a wolf eye tooth as a weapon once. It was satisfying.
What a coincidence. I was just on my way to slay a dragon with an eye tooth as well.

EpicPhayl

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Re: What do you do with your caged animals?
« Reply #2 on: August 18, 2010, 10:06:36 pm »

I have some Macaques in 40d and was wondering if there was anything interesting i could do with them as well.
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GuudeSpelur

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Re: What do you do with your caged animals?
« Reply #3 on: August 18, 2010, 10:11:21 pm »

You could try breeding them for a renewable meat source, butcher them right away because you can just buy your food, or use them as goblin/FB bait.
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This fortress is turning into some kind of supervillain lair or something.
You do remember that you've been farming gigantic wingless dragon-fish for profit and Fun, right?

AdeleneDawner

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Re: What do you do with your caged animals?
« Reply #4 on: August 18, 2010, 10:11:45 pm »

If you have a kennel, you can tame most animals - not sure about buzzards specifically. If you can, you can breed them for meat or to sell to traders. For local animals, you only really need females to breed them - any wild males that come onto your map will release spores that will fertilize any females on the map, and any babies that you get from tame mothers will also be tame, regardless of the status of the father. You can also use low-value tamed animals as watchdogs, especially if you're breeding them and have a good surplus.

If they're not tameable, or if you just don't want to bother with it, you can release them in a sealed room with your military, as a training exercise. I think dropping them down a death chute gives you a butcherable corpse from untamed animals, so you might want to go that route, but check with one before you chute your whole supply - I'm pretty sure this doesn't work with tamed animals, so it might not work with wild ones either.

In either case, you can build the cages into a room somewhere and set it up as a zoo, where your dwarves can go on their breaks. This will help keep your dwarves happy. They'll also throw parties in zoos, I think, so if you're using a zoned meeting area to avoid parties, this might not be the best idea.

Personally, I tame and breed them. Untameables get piled into a cage in the corner of my animal district, and someday I'll let the military play with them.
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Dying (ceasing to be alive) is also not a Moodable skill. Even totally unskilled Dwarves seem to do it correctly.

skarr12

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Re: What do you do with your caged animals?
« Reply #5 on: August 18, 2010, 10:17:25 pm »

Yeah, i think i might use them for a military exercise since one of my dwarves died from a buzzard scaring them into a river to drown.
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I killed a dragon using a wolf eye tooth as a weapon once. It was satisfying.
What a coincidence. I was just on my way to slay a dragon with an eye tooth as well.

skarr12

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Re: What do you do with your caged animals?
« Reply #6 on: August 18, 2010, 10:22:11 pm »

Or maybe i might breed them and then kill the parents in a military exorcise. Which leads me to two more questions; A: Do i just put the animals in the same cage for them to breed or what? B: How can i tame wild animals? (Unless i cant tame buzzards, then this question would be pointless)
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I killed a dragon using a wolf eye tooth as a weapon once. It was satisfying.
What a coincidence. I was just on my way to slay a dragon with an eye tooth as well.

gtmattz

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Re: What do you do with your caged animals?
« Reply #7 on: August 18, 2010, 10:33:56 pm »

Animals need to be outside of cages to breed.  That being said, if you have one male of a species anywhere on the map, he will impregnate all the females, regardless of whether he ever gets near them (everything in DF reproduces via spores, see).  What I usually do is keep 1 male and 3 or 4 females chained up somewhere with a cage nearby, every time babies are born I put those in the cage.  The offspring then just live in the cage until they reach maturity and I butcher them.
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Quote from: Hyndis
Just try it! Its not like you die IRL if Urist McMiner falls into magma.

skarr12

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Re: What do you do with your caged animals?
« Reply #8 on: August 18, 2010, 10:47:33 pm »

I see... Well thats too much complicated for me, so i'll just get them to be trained on.
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I killed a dragon using a wolf eye tooth as a weapon once. It was satisfying.
What a coincidence. I was just on my way to slay a dragon with an eye tooth as well.