Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[greycat]

Somebody should edit the wiki, as it's currently spreading the misinformation that probably led to this thread.

You could have done it.  But... I've done it now.

[Kweri]

You can also milk horses and donkeys to produce milk of the same value (horses are cheaper on embark). However, I always like milking cows because it seems like that's the way it should be, milking donkeys feels a bit off. This is similar to the way I (and I'm sure I'm not the only one) build floodgates to hold back liquids even though doors perform better, it seems more authentic.

Something more to consider - If you are interested in selectively breeding your livestock, cows are a much safer choice than horses or other animals that merchants haul their goods with. If merchants bring their own male horse with them and your female horses are out, for example, that "foreign" horse could impregnate your females instead of your gigantic muscular stud you have chained up.

[Nilik]

Wow, a lot of good information here! I didn't realise you could milk caged animals, so that makes things quite a bit easier! The only issue with this is that they won't breed when caged, but as they apparently reproduce via spores they should be able to get pregnant in the short period they're let out for milking, right? All I need to do is make sure i've got a bull or two roaming about the place.

On a tangent; someone mentioned locking a farmer in a pit with the cows, and throwing him down supplies. This sounds needlessly complicated, but how would I actually go about passing said supplies down if I ever wanted to do the pit thing for any other reason (i.e, isolating difficult / infected dwarves)?

Oh, and one more thing; does breeding for muscle / fat actually make a difference in the amount of meat + fat obtained?

[cyks]

Dump zones can allow dumped items to be dropped down to pitted dwarfs.

Select foods for dumping and then designate them to be dumped.  Be sure to reclaim the foods.

[Nilik]

What if i'm already dumping stone elsewhere? Wouldn't I get stone being dumped in my food dump and vice-versa?

[Absentia]

Oh, and one more thing; does breeding for muscle / fat actually make a difference in the amount of meat + fat obtained?

Yes, and the difference is quite significant, particularly for large animals like cows.

[Sphalerite]

Wow, a lot of good information here! I didn't realise you could milk caged animals, so that makes things quite a bit easier! The only issue with this is that they won't breed when caged, but as they apparently reproduce via spores they should be able to get pregnant in the short period they're let out for milking, right? All I need to do is make sure i've got a bull or two roaming about the place.

I have seen some evidence in 31.13 to suggest that male animals who are in caged can still get uncaged female animals pregnant.  If this is the case it means that you don't need to have the male animals uncaged, but it would also make it more difficult to control which bulls impregnate your cows.  I remove all bulls from their cages and cull the undesirables ASAP to deal with this.

I am fairly certain that only uncaged cows can become pregnant, but the trip between the cage and the farmer's workshop to be milked seems to be more than long enough to permit this.