Hi, all. I'm fairly new to Dwarf Fortress, just started a couple months ago (after hearing about it for a year or two.) Switched to the newest version(s) as they came out the past several weeks. I've gotten the hang of the basics, but haven't figured out everything, so I have two questions, which I've combined in one post because a superficial search of the forums suggests that maybe there's no solution to one of the problems.
Problem #1: I have a dehydrated baby in a fort of 160 dwarves, about fifty of whom are idle. The baby's been fed recently, but no one is offering water (or booze... do babies drink booze?) Father's still alive, but the mother was killed by a vamp, and it looks like in the past, if the mother dies, the baby will die, because no one will take care of it. Is this still true?
Problem #2: I only recently figured out how to get the pigtails and rope reed processed into thread (used to be constantly short of bags, now I typically have so much thread I run out of places to put it...) What I'm doing is frequently checking z -> stocks -> plants to see if any process-able plants are present, then queuing Process Plant (repeat) at the farmer's workshop. This seems a little micro-manage-y, though. Is there a better way? I know you can't just leave it on repeat, since it will cancel when you run out of pigtails and rope reeds, so you have to keep checking.