Print

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

[reallyagnome]

What is the most efficient way to get leather?

I'd have thought birds, since they breed quickly and can be kept safety underground, but I have trouble keeping them breeding. Even after banning eggs from my stockpiles and stopping the kitchen cooking eggs my birds really slow down breeding after a while.

I've read there is a maximum of 50 of each type of animal, so I keep them butchered to only have 1 male adult / 1 male child / 7 female adults / 7 female children of each species (using autobutcher from DFHack), but after a few years the eggs hatch very rarely. I'll occasionally clear out all the duff eggs (trade every egg in the fortress to a caravan), but that doesn't seem to help much (still a very low birthrate from the new eggs). Autobutcher automatically butchers the oldest adults and newest hatchlings, I'm assuming a bird can lay eggs the moment it becomes an adult? If it becomes an adult at 1 year old, and can't lay eggs till 2 years old, then it would explain my breeding problems.

If the 50 of each species is accurate, then would it be better to have a breeding set of each type of egg laying bird? Is there a maximum number of livestock before they stop reproducing?

I've currently got 4 species of egg layers (1 male adult / 1 male child / 7 female adults / 7 female children of each species), and plenty of wardogs, and only get maybe 10 hatching per year. I'm considering getting some pigs, since I've read they can be kept indoors, but if the reason for the slow breeding is the high amount of livestock, then pigs would make it worse.

For leather farming, is it better to just have 1 species or many? And are birds the safest choice? I keep my population cap about 30, so food is never a problem.

[lcy03406]

I don't know, but why not cats?

[Panando]

If you let your baby birds run free with the breeding stock you'll have problems when they mature and claim nestboxes and lay eggs, because the birds which lay eggs might get slaughtered, and the ones which don't get to lay eggs, might be left as "breeders", but wont try to incubate any eggs.  If you separate the babies and lock them in a cage (they'll still mature just fine) then it should be easier to manage the breeding stock.

The most efficient way to get leather is to order it from the outpost liaison, 1 tick of each kind of leather. Requested leather only comes in bins and not as individual pieces, meaning you get 10 of each kind of leather, and there might be 30 or 40 kinds of leather, so you can easily get hundreds of leather per year that way.

Assuming you are intent on breeding though, then you might want to consider species which can be butchered as babies and still produce a hide (this tends to start happening with dog-sized creatures, it probably works with pigs). That way you don't need to wait for maturity, and wont run into problems with the cap of 50. Unfortunately most the larger animals are quite expensive to embark with, but you can order 4 individuals per year from the outpost liaison which might help to get a breeding stock up faster.
Another possibility is to capture wild creatures and tame them, they will breed just fine. Again though it's going to be hard to get a breeding stock of animals with a large litter size which produces skins as babies. Many biomes just wont have any such species at all.

[krenshala]

Ye Gods! The thought of a badger breeding farm ... *shudders*

I'm tempted to try it now.

[weenog]

I've done the badger farming thing.  They don't breed fast enough to really run an industry on their own, but they make an interesting supplement.  And they compare favorably against dogs for meat, fat, and bone returns.

[krenshala]

I've done the badger farming thing.  They don't breed fast enough to really run an industry on their own, but they make an interesting supplement.  And they compare favorably against dogs for meat, fat, and bone returns.

And we all know how effective they can be if used as war badgers.

[Cthulhu Inc]

If I wanted a bunch of leather, I'd cage trap a bunch of wild animals and drop them about 12-25z levels. They seperate into a bunch of body parts, each of which turns into a seperate pieceof leather.

Serrated disc weapon traps and axedwarfs might work for that purpose as well, but are probably less reliable.

[weenog]

Serrated disc traps are funny right up until one leaves a goblin's lower torso stuck inside a fortification.  Okay, they're still pretty funny afterwards, but also annoying when the thing starts to stink.

[Triaxx2]

A good reason to carve fortifications from constructed walls. Easier to remove and replace than naturally carved ones.

[Tsuchigumo550]

I've had an alpaca farm before. I can't remember how much leather it gave me per se, but both llamas and alpacas are great meat, bone, milk, and wool sources, and two of those don't require death.

[zilpin]

I bring 4 or 5 female dogs, and one male on embark.
After a season passes, only butcher the male puppies.  But keep a few around, in case the breeder dies.
Keep the breeder male(s) in a safe, locked, indoor pen.

After a couple years, you'll be up to your ears in dog leather, lavish dog meat roasts, dog bone bolts...
And female wardogs.
As a bonus, wherever the female guard dogs get chained down, puppysplosion will give more targets to enemies until you get around to slaughtering them.


Keep wool and milk producers around for those purposes, and only slaughter them when they get old.
(but personally, I think grazers are more of a pain than they are worth.)

[krenshala]

Actually, I'm finding that two or three llama's in an 11x11 pasture don't really need much maintenance other remembering to move new llamas to new pastures as they get older.

My three dogs became two at embark (alligator attack on 1 granite *sigh*) of my current fortress, but by winter I had four dogs. Got some pets in my third migrant tsunami (first two were mere waves), so I'm up to seven or eight dogs now.  I expect the puppysplosion to start soon.

[thegoatgod_pan]

Cave crocodiles: breed like birds, fight like bosses, classy leather

[MonkeyHead]

Cave crocodiles: breed like birds, fight like bosses, classy leather

Crocs and Gators lay massive clutches of eggs that will push you over the cap of 50, which is very handy.

[terko]

Most efficient way to get leather: order ONLY leather from your mountainhome for the 2nd year. Let them move away from the first trade with around 250% of profit.

Depending on your mountainhome's effectiveness you may end up with 1.5k - 3k leather next time the caravan arrives. More than enough.