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[colonelkadaffy]

Hi there, having a werid problem that I can seem to solve by trial and error. (on .11)

Essentially, my animals seems to be behaving hyper agressively towards each other.

No matter the size of the pasture/pen, or even splitting them up into smaller pasture/pens (obviously restricting each to one solves the problem, but is obviously unideal) or even if they are simply hanging around the embark wagon. One animal seems to suddenly become aggressive and attacks the others (not simply as you would think, male bulls, they are more often the culprits than not, but are not necessarily involved) setting off a cycle of combat between the animals that seems to eventually result in only a few badly damaged animals surviving after a season or so.

As far as I can tell, having too many animals in too small an enclosure is what is meant to provoke this behavior, however I am talking 2 bulls 6 cows sort of level, in the maximum size a zone can get.

Interestingly this problem did not occur at  in 34.10 nor does it occur in DFM 1.92

Apologies if this issue is answered/reported elsewhere.

[Broseph Stalin]

This is known, if you have a few grazers in a pasture they tend to eat grass in the same general area and get into it with each other. I make mine maybe two in an large pasture and not even that with big eaters like cows.

[L3TUC3]

Donkeys seem to receive the most ire in my pastures. And I never knew yaks could wrestle.

Anyway, it seems that the animals start fighting over food after a while. the grass/cave moss doesn't seem to regrow fast enough.

[GhostDwemer]

Why is having one animal per pasture not ideal? Each animal requires a certain number of tiles of grass to graze, depending on the animal. You could make a pasture twice this size and put two animals in it. But why? What does that gain you? Why not just make one pasture of the appropriate size (which can be found on the wiki) for each animal? It uses the same amount of space as making one big pasture.

[whale_biologist]

I used to think animals had to be in the same pasture to breed, so that was the reason I used to try putting the breeding pairs in the same pasture.

Apparently breeding in DF occurs through magic, which is what I assumed breeding in real life was like until the age of 23

[Mr S]

Until he read Socrates' works on generative fluids.  Up until that point it had been:

More Paternity for the Paternity God!!           --(Jerry Springer, btw)
More Child Support for the Child Support Throne!!

[NedeN]

Donkeys seem to receive the most ire in my pastures. And I never knew yaks could wrestle.

Anyway, it seems that the animals start fighting over food after a while. the grass/cave moss doesn't seem to regrow fast enough.

Well anyone with at the very least a mouth can wrestle. I wonder if you could lose all your teeth in df and still *latch on firmly*.

[Korva]

Since the grazing update, I stopped keeping livestock other than sheep (and a few goats if migrants bring 'em) and poultry. Cows and horses just vacuum up grass too quickly, and they don't hold a candle to yaks, buffalos or goodness forbid elephants. Using many small pastures is fiddly but aside from preventing fights, it also means less hooves per pasture to trample the grass. (Besides, I remember that some players claimed to have determined that the number of adjacent grassy squares helps regrowth speed in a given square.)

[Saiko Kila]

It is quite possible to keep grazing animals without fights, you just need to experiment with their number and pasture size. In my case the size of horse is about the limit when keeping more than a handful. I can keep about 5-10 horses per 300x2 tile pasture. This "2x" means that they are moved from pasture A to pasture B to allow it to regrow. With smaller animals such pasture doesn't need to be changed periodically, or I can keep much more of them without fights.

If you don't want to bother then keep birds and pigs.

Said that, the super aggressive behaviour is something new to me, I never encountered it with very big pastures. Maybe it's a bug. Keeping every animal in single area would be incredibly tedious, better to not keep them at all.

[FourierSeries]

Might I suggest just walling off a huge area on the surface and pitting them all? Zero management until you need something from the horde. Well, almost zero management, enough grazers, of the right type, will turn even a 4x4 lush embark into a desert given enough time. You may need a reaper function of sorts.

You don't even need to execute any slaughter commands, just route the occasional invasion thru the area when you need some more fat for soap - an amusing alternative to the goblin grinder. Behold the horror of pissed off herbivores & hooves in combat.

Another favorite - 20 Z level single tile trap encrusted meandering causeway above, let the horde finish off the crippled dodgers.

My personal preference is for an area with gradual slopes that can be walled off while allowing line-of-site to the outside. This lets the ranged attackers spew away that dangerous ammunition while culling the horde a bit for you, all before they hit your main defenses.

Once you break seal on the enclosure you're going to get bum rushed by them pathing to your meeting area. I just let them do that, clean up the mess, lock everything down again, & repit them.

[WaffleEggnog]

What you could do is make a massive underground chamber with grass or cave-crap, and pitting them in it. This way they would wander freely around the area while grazing rather then be restricted by the maximum pasture size. Not sure if this would work, anyone care for !!SCEINCE!!?

[superkret]

I never really bothered with grazers at all. I don't bring any, and those that arrive with migrants are slaughtered right away. That is usually enough for some basic meat production because my migrants tend to bring a whole zoo. Grazing pets are put in the paved pen with all my pigs and birds, unfortunately they don't tend to survive very long.

For my war dogs I always assign a very small pen to encourage fighting to train them. Although I don't know if that even has an in-game effect, but when I let my dogs loose on some goblins I want them to be thoroughly pissed.

[colonelkadaffy]

Why is having one animal per pasture not ideal? Each animal requires a certain number of tiles of grass to graze, depending on the animal. You could make a pasture twice this size and put two animals in it. But why? What does that gain you? Why not just make one pasture of the appropriate size (which can be found on the wiki) for each animal? It uses the same amount of space as making one big pasture.

So the consensus here is that if I segregate each type of animal to a spesific pasture this should stop?

As far as i've seen the issue is that various cows also seem to be attacking each other, its intra-species conflict as well as inter-species.

And the reason why I say its not ideal, is that to my knowledge its couter productive to breeding if I were to go down the 1-2 animal per pasture route.

If im wrong please correct me, I don't pretend to be an expert on game mechanics.

[krenshala]

Not each type of animal, each individual animal.  If it is sheep/goat size or smaller you can put more than one per pasture, but even that still runs the risk of fights breaking out.

[Broseph Stalin]

So the consensus here is that if I segregate each type of animal to a spesific pasture this should stop?

As far as i've seen the issue is that various cows also seem to be attacking each other, its intra-species conflict as well as inter-species.

And the reason why I say its not ideal, is that to my knowledge its couter productive to breeding if I were to go down the 1-2 animal per pasture route.

If im wrong please correct me, I don't pretend to be an expert on game mechanics.

The problem your experiencing is mainly due to grazing. As they start eating the same grass they start fighting, avoid putting big eaters in the same pasture and if possible give every individual animal it's own pasture.

Animals in DF reproduce by spores. If you take one female cow and seal it in side a chamber in the literal depths of hell and a bull wanders onto your map for two seconds before turning around and leaving the female cow is still pregnant.