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[loose nut]

I started up a fortress in 0.34.06, and everything's pretty much fine, but I'm getting a lot of single bones lying around. It's as if the bone carvers use all the bones in a stack except the last one – there's a bunch of single bones in my craftsdwarf workshops. Anyone else notice behavior like this?

[WaffleEggnog]

Most likely just vermin remains from letting your cats roam freely.

[NecroRebel]

Most likely just vermin remains from letting your cats roam freely.

...That's something completely different. How could you get "vermin remains" from "single-bone stacks," anyway? They're two completely different things. Anyone who could identify this problem wouldn't confuse the two.

Anyway, I've noticed this behavior for several versions. Even back in 31.x it happened. It does, in fact, appear that bone carvers will often use every bone in a stack except the last one, which is then completely useless, and if you only have these one-bone stacks and set a bone-using reaction, your dwarves will simply cancel because they don't have the materials. My guess is that bones still have a size and too-small bones are unusable, but I've never watched a carver's bone use carefully to see if they take more than one off a stack on some jobs or not. Regardless, all you can do with them is dump them. Even moody dwarves ignore them.

[SuicideJunkie]

I've seen it too.

Started out with:
Sheep Bone [7]

Ended up with a decent set of stacks of  -Sheep Bone Bolt [5]-  and +Sheep Bone Bolt [5]+
Plus one left over "Sheep Bone" that they refuse to touch.

I tossed it into the forest to rot, myself.

[Stoup]

Hmm, perhaps bones operate in a similar manner to thread in some cases. When suturing, for example, a single unit of thread that can be manipulated by a dwarf actually counts as several thousand, at least in number, for hospital stockpiles. Maybe something similar is applicable to small parts of bones used to make bolts and other small objects?

[ydaraishy]

I've also been able to task "make bone crafts" only a few times before they either run out of bone or leave a single one.  I'm not sure if it has something to do with handling clutter in this version? because this didn't happen in any other one.

[psychologicalshock]

What are you trying to do with it? If you're making bone bolts it should work fine but if you're doing something else with the bones it might work differently, I don't know as I never use bones for anything else and it's working as intended for me.

[NecroRebel]

I just had a thought: we know that differently-sized creatures make different numbers of bones. What happens if a creature is bigger than the size needed to make, say, 7 bones, but not big enough to create 8? Say a turkey is big enough that they make 7.4 bones. That might show up as a stack of 8 bones, even though it's not really 8 bones. Then, that stack is used to create bone bolts 7 times. There's still .4 bones left in the stack, so the stack still appears, and might well still show up but it's not big enough to use for anything because all bone jobs take 1 or more bones to perform, thus leaving you with useless "1"-bone stacks.

Testing this theory would be difficult, because we don't know for certain how big a creature is needed to create a given number of bones. IIRC Toady gave some information someplace that suggests that it varies depending on body plan. To test the theory, you'd need to identify what size produces exact integer numbers of bones and then see if stacks of them produce useless single bones, then go between two integers and see if those do.

[loose nut]

I'm usually just grinding out bone bolts. Occasionally I switch to something else.

As data points the animals I'm getting single unusable bones out of include: rhesus macaques, turkey hens, dingos, wombats, cougars.

These aren't vermin remains. The fortress kitty is killing fireflies and tree frogs and peach-faced lovebirds ( ) and those rot away as usual.

Never saw it in 0.31.x, I don't think... I'd get unusable bones but those would be tied to dwarven ethics one way or another.

[SuicideJunkie]

Update:

I just caught my bonecrafter working on a "Stray Ram bone", with a second Stray Ram bone left over in the workshop from previous work.
After he finished, there was:
"Stray Ram bone"
"Stray Ram bone"
"-Sheep Bone Bolts [5]-"

Therefore!
You're not getting hosed on that last bone.
Its probably actually a "Stray Ram bone

• " that isn't deleted properly.

[krenshala]

Update:

I just caught my bonecrafter working on a "Stray Ram bone", with a second Stray Ram bone left over in the workshop from previous work.
After he finished, there was:
"Stray Ram bone"
"Stray Ram bone"
"-Sheep Bone Bolts [5]-"

Therefore!
You're not getting hosed on that last bone.
Its probably actually a "Stray Ram bone

• " that isn't deleted properly.

You should update the bug report on Mantis with this information.

[loose nut]

Therefore!
You're not getting hosed on that last bone.
Its probably actually a "Stray Ram bone

• " that isn't deleted properly.

Interesting. I don't care about being hosed on bones, because, you know, there's always more :D ...but it does mean you have to babysit those refuse stockpiles a bit.

[Marshall Burns]

More data:
I have two refuse stockpiles, one by the butcher's that accepts only butcherable bits (and things like cartilage and nervous tissue, because there's no way around that), and one by the craftsdwarf's that accepts only craftable bits. After a bone stack is exhausted, a single item called a "[animal] bone" is left, and gets transfered to the *butchering* stockpile (where it doesn't generate a butchering job; not that I expected it to). This suggests that it's not even classed as a bone anymore, but rather as a body part.

[Absentia]

I noticed this behavior as well. I think the idea that they're actually fractions of a usable bone seems plausible; either 1.7 bones or .7 bones would likely display as one bone, so if the remainder isn't getting deleted it would behave like this.

[FrisianDude]

I assume the remnant bone might simply not be enough to make bolts from. See if you can use it for something else, like bone crafts or so?