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[Dwarfotaur]

As in, embark with several breeding pairs of animals, pasture them all and live off the meat alone?

Something tells me the animals won't give birth/grow up quickly enough to have a constant food supply as dwarves are hungry little bastards.

I've never touched animal trainers/pastures/milk/wool/cheese etc so I was looking to give it a shot.

[AutomataKittay]

It's easily possible with bird's eggs. Animal husbandery's not too bad if you have organized system of doing it, though you does have to do it a bit more carefully than with farming, since some animals won't give much meat. There're also genetics to invoke, though not really important unless you're lookign to make a super stock.

I've done such stuff before, it's not too bad if you don't mind extra management over regular farming

[Dwarfotaur]

Genetics? Like... Keep the fatest animals alive so that the babies are fatter?

Also, how do you get birds eggs?

[AutomataKittay]

Genetics? Like... Keep the fatest animals alive so that the babies are fatter?

Also, how do you get birds eggs?

Yes, like that! Someone did some tests in older version, and genetics does get passed down, at least for physical form. Including dwarves, but that takes too long to work with.

Build a nest box, have a few female birds and a stockpile that allow eggs. Dwarves will collect eggs automatically when it's laid. If you want to breed birds, you can put a door to the hatchery and lock it so dwarves won't try to steal the eggs.

Eggs goes infertile if it's taken out of the nestbox or the mother get bumped off it. I've not seen eggs rot, so it's probably easy to keep.

[Dwarfotaur]

Do the females need a male to lay hatchable eggs? How long do they take to hatch and can the female just keep giving birth to more and more offspring?

Sounds like they'd be faster than other animals.

Edit: I might embark with a load of turkeys... I hope no one gets too attached to them.

[AutomataKittay]

Do the females need a male to lay hatchable eggs? How long do they take to hatch and can the female just keep giving birth to more and more offspring?

Sounds like they'd be faster than other animals.

All animals need male and female to breed. IIRC it's around 9 months to 1 year for hatching, same as regular pregnancy.

It -used- to be that you could hatch more and more and more past the 50 animals limit, but they fixed it sometimes before 34. and I've never had it happen to me. They are faster to breed than other animals because average eggs have much larger cluster than average nonlayer birth.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Egg_production For all the egg producers.
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Domestic_animal Bottom for the egg-laying domestics.

If you can get it down to 48 females and 1 male, you can get as much as 5 to 10 times more creatures, which's more than average of 2 or 3 I gets from non-layers breedstock.

[Tally]

Birds are just about the easiest and cheapest way to set up a livestock industry. They require next to no oversight, don't require a pasture to live, and automatically make food for you every whenever. Eggs have to be cooked to be eaten, but you'll likely be cooking anyway. No problem here. Their breeding is also very easy to control.

What birds lack in the livestock industry, however, is versatility. They produce food and nothing but. Contrast to goats, cows, donkeys, horses, sheep, etc.: These all produce milk, which can be made into the much higher-quality cheese, and yield higher amounts of resources when butchered. Getting a cheese industry running, however, takes a lot of workshop micromanagement, require a pasture, and will waste a lot of time on the workshop that milks these animals and processes it. If you plan on making cheese, I highly recommend you make an extra farmer workshop or two. Consider streamlining the process with an assembly line approach. Sheep produce wool, so they are a great way to kickstart a cloth industry as well, but double the micromanagement involved as well. If you plan to run a fortress without a farm, then I'd recommend you bring a few sheep. Alpacas and llamas produce wool and milk as well.

Also, cows are just plain expensive. Don't buy them.


Your choice of embark location may also influence your choice of animal to farm. Don't bring grazing animals to dangerous biomes or those with little or no vegetation. It is worth noting that pigs don't graze, yet still produce milk.

[AutomataKittay]

Birds are just about the easiest and cheapest way to set up a livestock industry. They require next to no oversight, don't require a pasture to live, and automatically make food for you every whenever. Eggs have to be cooked to be eaten, but you'll likely be cooking anyway. No problem here. Their breeding is also very easy to control.

What birds lack in the livestock industry, however, is versatility. They produce food and nothing but. Contrast to goats, cows, donkeys, horses, sheep, etc.: These all produce milk, which can be made into the much higher-quality cheese, and yield higher amounts of resources when butchered. Getting a cheese industry running, however, takes a lot of workshop micromanagement, require a pasture, and will waste a lot of time on the workshop that milks these animals and processes it. If you plan on making cheese, I highly recommend you make an extra farmer workshop or two. Consider streamlining the process with an assembly line approach. Sheep produce wool, so they are a great way to kickstart a cloth industry as well, but double the micromanagement involved as well. If you plan to run a fortress without a farm, then I'd recommend you bring a few sheep. Alpacas and llamas produce wool and milk as well.

Also, cows are just plain expensive. Don't buy them.

Bigger birds are good way to get a big pile of leather and bone if they're allowed to mature enough, due to how big their clusters can get. But yes, it depends on what kind of products' wanted. All of wool animals grows at same rate, and milking happens at same rate, so there're no real advantage, AFAIK, to bigger grazers ( I'm probably wrong about the wool one, though, not using it much ).

Animals in generals are inferior in term of sheer food and cloth production output compared to farming plots, but they're a good supplement if you need leather rather than cloth and bone anyway, might as well take advantage of cheese and wool if you have the room to spare.

Of course, I probably should do some math behind all of those comments to double check, particularly the wool one

Still good advices about workshop managements, it's good to organize them specificlly for those purpose. They're also good for pet purpose, if you want extra happiness, also.

[shadenight123]

use mermaids.
Somebody (I'm too lazy to look for it) managed a nice rinse and repeat farm filled with mermaids.
Obviously dwarfs do not play with mermaids.

[AutomataKittay]

use mermaids.
Somebody (I'm too lazy to look for it) managed a nice rinse and repeat farm filled with mermaids.
Obviously dwarfs do not play with mermaids.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Mermaid
Doesn't works without enabling butchering of sapient species in the ethics, nowadays. It's not really valuable anymore compared to how it used to be in 40d, which's when it was done!

This' the thread you remembers, probably?
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=25967.0

[SnK-Arcbound]

If you're willing to wait 2-3 years saltwater and cave crocodiles can feed a fort for eternity.

[Tally]

words

Bigger birds are good way to get a big pile of leather and bone if they're allowed to mature enough, due to how big their clusters can get. But yes, it depends on what kind of products' wanted. All of wool animals grows at same rate, and milking happens at same rate, so there're no real advantage, AFAIK, to bigger grazers ( I'm probably wrong about the wool one, though, not using it much ).

Farms are generally far more advantageous in many ways, I agree. Looking over the item value list, it appears as if meat and animal byproducts add to the base value of the meal, where plants and their byproducts add a multiplier. However, the presentation on this particular point is fairly vague. This is, of course, assuming you care about the value of your prepared food. The value of food only matters for trading. Prepared food can fetch notoriously high prices when sold to caravans, as we all know, however. Dwarves only receive happy thoughts from food if the meal contains an ingredient the dwarf prefers, so the value of a meal is irrelevant if you don't trade it.

[Valrandir]

For a red meat farm using pigs is interesting since they do not need to eat in a pasture. Start your fort with a board and many sows. You will need an alternate food source for the first few years until you have enough pig mothers to manufacture meat quickly. Butcher adult board and keep the female to increate your output.

Also make cheese from pig milk, and cook lavish meals from pig cheese, pig meat, wine and cave wheat flour for example.

[Dwarfotaur]

Say I embarked with a load of turkeys. When they give birth, can I butcher the babies if I don't want them or do they have to be fully grown to butcher? If they're butcher able do they still give the same amount of products?

Can you get leather from every butcher-able animal?

[AutomataKittay]

Say I embarked with a load of turkeys. When they give birth, can I butcher the babies if I don't want them or do they have to be fully grown to butcher? If they're butcher able do they still give the same amount of products?

Can you get leather from every butcher-able animal?

If they gives meat and bones, then you can get leather off them. If you can only get a skull, they're too small! I believe I've seen threshold from somewhere as size 2,000.

I believe you have to wait for most birds to grow up fully, I recommend peafowl and geeses, they're fully grown when they matures. Chicken and turkey takes another year to be fully grown after maturing.