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[Bihlbo]

It's been about a year and my pasture is very nearly depleated of grass. I don't know how to get more to grow. I tried muddying some squares, but so far there's nothing new. Rain seems to come often, and it stands to reason that would make the grass grow, but it hasn't yet.

I'm trying to explore options for making an underground pasture, but so far I haven't quite worked out how it is you're supposed to make moss grow underground. I have a room with muddy floors that has been sitting there for almost a year and so far no growth.

Any suggestions?

[MythagoWoods]

Need to break through a cavern before underground gets moss/grass.  As for how to allow above ground to regrow grass... it happens automatically but you need to pasture somewhere else for awhile and make sure people/animals stay away from the area you are trying to regrow.

[CaptainArchmage]

To make grass grow underground, you need to dig out an area in the soil layer, and open the caverns. Muddied stone does not grow grass.

[Keldane]

To get moss to grow underground, you first have to breach one of the caverns. You can immediately wall it up again if you'd like, and that's a necessary first step.

Concerning your pasture on the surface, do you have a lot of animals in it, and/or lots of dwarves traveling through it? High traffic can trample down grass and prevent it from regrowing. I'd recommend, if this is the case, using traffic orders to designate your pastures as Restricted (d -> o -> r) to limit dwarves traipsing across the grass, and try spreading out your animals and/or rotating which pastures are in use in order to encourage grass regrowth. I've also heard it said that removing the pasture designation in alternating tiles, so as to create a checkerboard pattern, can help grass regrow by always ensuring there's an adjacent grassy tile to 'seed' the ones your animals are feeding from.

[Nidokoenig]

I use the values from this table to set pasture sizes, and I don't have to move animals around. One animal per pasture. I can keep water buffalo alive indefinitely with this, as well as a mod creature I made that is almost as voracious and produces 5 to 10 live young.

Checkerboards are useful and they cut down on grass removal substantially, but they're a long-term plan. You need to be able to wall in your animals with the shearer, milker and butcher, since you can't restrict the pen/pasture large animal labour, and you'll get literally anyone and everyone doing it, paralysing your fort. You should be able to compromise by tearing out small strips or just removing little islands from the pastures, though.

[wuphonsreach]

Easier then checkerboards is to use 2-tile wide pastures with a fallow tile line between them.  Which works fine for all the critters up to about goat (and maybe alpaca) size.  With the fallow tiles between the pastures you still get most of the benefits of "tile being near a dense tile", but without the hassle of creating a checkboard.

Goats need about a 2x8 and maybe a 2x10 using that style.

For the bigger animals, you might have to go with a 3xN pasture.

[Jelle]

Grass should regrow eventually. Make sure your pasture is a low traffic area so absolutely no dwarf decides to trample the grass. If your beasties are eating it faster then it regrows you need a bigger pasture.

[Bihlbo]

Thanks everyone! The caverns have been really hard to find in this map but I'll keep at it. I really had no idea that moss wouldn't grow at all unless the caverns have been found. Also it looks like the one 30x30 pen for all my animals isn't going to come close to being big enough (like, it's not 1/10th the size I need).

[MythagoWoods]

You're working on a single pasture? Heck, before I got sick and tired of feeding my animals and removed their [GRAZER] tag I think I had about 5-6 completely walled in 30x30 or so pastures and still found it wasn't enough.

[slink]

There also seems to be a problem with grass not growing back in mountain biome meadows.  In one mountain biome section I had a lot of fire clay exposed by grazing that never grew anything back, even when it was left alone for three or four years.  Possibly it wasn't supposed to be growing there in the first place, although the plant names seemed to indicate that they were alpine. 

[Nidokoenig]

That's more to do with having 5 or 6, I reckon, they're each doing their own pathing to grass they can feed on and they all prefer the top-left corner. 30x30 is 900 squares, which should be enough for five horses, but probably isn't due to pathing. So yeah, just keep them split up. If you've got big animals like cows, horses or water buffalo, you can leave them out on the surface to fend for themselves until invasions start coming, since weighing the better part of a ton means they can probably deal with the local wildlife. My tanks are quite happy stomping on skeletal giant eagles and mountain goats, and if they get put down, I get a load of shell and bone at least. Put some dogs or honey badgers out there with them if you think they need more protection.