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[Urist McDwarfFortress]

It is certainly possible to run a fort where the dwarves EAT nothing but meat. You will still need farms, though. Remember, the short guys need their booze!

[i2amroy]

Turkeys require 2 years before they are fully grown (for food purposes), and most newborn anythings won't give you more then a skull. The best method I've found for having turkeys is to wait two generations (for a total of 3) and then butcher the oldest successive generation as each new one is born. Since you only need 1 male I tend to butcher all but the last male of each generation at birth, thus allowing me to use the males as markers for generation ends as well.

[SharkForce]

another fairly popular farm animal from what i've seen is dogs. you can also use just about any animal you find in your embark zone, though plant eaters tend to be quite annoying (meat eaters don't need a pasture area with grass).

i know i tried llama once, or maybe it was alpaca, and dang was that ever annoying. it doesn't *sound* like a huge pasture area until you actually have to start setting it up, and dang if it isn't annoying having to make new pastures every time something is born; much much better to just get something that doesn't need a pasture, and stuff them in cages as soon as they're born.

[sirquote]

I used to always embark with dogs(for eating delicious puppies) all you need is 4 females and 1 male minimum for a steady food income, of course you will want to keep some females later for more income.  Puppies net 6 meat + bones + skin, so you shall have no shortage of bone bolts, leather.

Doesn't hurt to have animals that can be trained too, I stopped doing this a while ago because it makes it too easy to survive.

[Bigheaded]

Easiest way in my opinion, is tonnes of cage traps on the above area in a non hostile world on a flat embark.

Birds will go to maximum of +1 height of your highest building. So if your fort is flat, they can go 1 tile above, no more.
So if your fort is more of a hole in the ground, you can abuse cage traps to catch all local wildlife with ease, tame them and then butcher them.
On the plus side, this catches 99% of thieves, presuming there's barely room for wagons to get into your fort and sometimes you'll catch some animals you actually want, emu's can be fun for eggs. Or just breed for amusing purposes such as my badger pit. 1 fully armored goblin versus 200 badgers, who wins?!

If your fort extends has mountains/hills, this still works to some extent, but requires man management of chasing stuff around the map and just give up with storks.

The laziest option is probably just to assign a few hunters and there you are, you also have a military squad of marksmen also!

[Tally]

It is certainly possible to run a fort where the dwarves EAT nothing but meat. You will still need farms, though. Remember, the short guys need their booze!

Not necessarily. You can set up a beekeeping industry alongside the meat farms. If you're playing Masterwork Dwarf Fortress, you can also buy boozebelly goats, whose cheese can be fermented into booze, or turn some portion of the meat you get into blood to make bloodwine.

Beekeeping does take a while to get started before you can reap the rewards though.

[AutomataKittay]

It is certainly possible to run a fort where the dwarves EAT nothing but meat. You will still need farms, though. Remember, the short guys need their booze!

Not necessarily. You can set up a beekeeping industry alongside the meat farms. If you're playing Masterwork Dwarf Fortress, you can also buy boozebelly goats, whose cheese can be fermented into booze, or turn some portion of the meat you get into blood to make bloodwine.

Beekeeping does take a while to get started before you can reap the rewards though.

I've heard that bee-keeping was a big pain in the butt just to run, it's easily avoided by only planting sugar pod, cave wheat and pigtails for booze, dwarves won't eat them raw. At least those for underground plants, I think only rope reed's easily found inedible raw plant that can be brewed aboveground. There're longland grass and whip vine, but I rarely gets either, and latter's only savage I think.

[Tally]

It is certainly possible to run a fort where the dwarves EAT nothing but meat. You will still need farms, though. Remember, the short guys need their booze!

Not necessarily. You can set up a beekeeping industry alongside the meat farms. If you're playing Masterwork Dwarf Fortress, you can also buy boozebelly goats, whose cheese can be fermented into booze, or turn some portion of the meat you get into blood to make bloodwine.

Beekeeping does take a while to get started before you can reap the rewards though.

I've heard that bee-keeping was a big pain in the butt just to run, it's easily avoided by only planting sugar pod, cave wheat and pigtails for booze, dwarves won't eat them raw. At least those for underground plants, I think only rope reed's easily found inedible raw plant that can be brewed aboveground. There're longland grass and whip vine, but I rarely gets either, and latter's only savage I think.

I think it's only a pain so far as it takes a really long time to get it to start to any satisfactory degree and, for whatever reason, pressing honeycomb isn't an automatically assigned job, despite that you can't do anything else with them. If you wanted to run a no-farm fort, however, there's your source of booze. Of course, you can also just stock up on enough booze to last you until the dwarven caravan, and just buy out all the booze you can, and repeat for each caravan. That's more than enough to keep your fort drunk.

[Callista]

I prefer dogs to birds, if I want just meat. Dogs don't require nest boxes, can be trained for war or hunting, and grow up quickly. Extra puppies are caged to keep FPS manageable.

[Iceflame]

I prefer turkeys. I usually keep 2 breeding pairs, and 4 or five hens for eggs,  so I don't need another source of food.
As birds don't live that long, you may not slaughter all of them as soon as they hatch, so you can replace them if necessary.

Meat industry is especially useful on evil biomes, as you may combine it with training for your soldiers. And your doctors.

[Dwarfotaur]

I embarked with 9 geese and a gander.

I was... Pleasantly surprised to see each one give birth to 8 goslings... Seriously, they take up all the space in the meeting area now (which is also the dining room). Goose shit stinks, how my dwarves are stomaching to sit and eat at tables that the geese are shitting sitting on, is beyond me.

[martinuzz]

My dwarven dine almost exclusively on meat. I breed very fat sheep and grizzly bears. Cooking the meat and tallow into meals provides more than enough food for 175 dwarves, as well as having some to spare for export.

[Tally]

I embarked with 9 geese and a gander.

I was... Pleasantly surprised to see each one give birth to 8 goslings... Seriously, they take up all the space in the meeting area now (which is also the dining room). Goose shit stinks, how my dwarves are stomaching to sit and eat at tables that the geese are shitting sitting on, is beyond me.

Plus side, you're probably training your dwarves without realizing it. Go look at your combat reports, you might find a few entries on geese flipping out and pecking people.

[Dwarfotaur]

Funnily enough, this Biome is full of Giant monsters. I killed one slug and it gave over a hundred meat. I haven't actually needed the geese for anything.

I can't find any bones though... I killed a few Giant Parakeets and some Unicorns but the Refuse stockpile is still empty after butchering them all.

[AutomataKittay]

Funnily enough, this Biome is full of Giant monsters. I killed one slug and it gave over a hundred meat. I haven't actually needed the geese for anything.

I can't find any bones though... I killed a few Giant Parakeets and some Unicorns but the Refuse stockpile is still empty after butchering them all.

Check inside the butcher shop? Might be that the bone part of refuse stockpile option was disabled by you.