How many farms can a single farmer maintain assuming he is fertilizing, planting, tending and harvesting .. is this based on single farm plot squares or farm plot buildings (I.E would it take him twice as long to maintain a 3x4 than a 3x2 or only if it where 2 3x2s?
Each "Plant seed" job plants one seed in one tile. So the number of tiles a single planter can support is a function of his skill, his agility, the proximity of seeds to the farm plots, etc. -- but
not a function of the size of each farm plot.
Plants grow at the same pace regardless of farmer skill right?
Right.
So, how long does it take to plant->harvest a farm plot... if each plant has separate values then it would likely be measured in ticks right? So pressing '.' moves the game forward a single tick... how many ticks are there per day?
Um... that's a lot of questions all lumped together. Each tile of a farm plot has its own separate growing seed, which will reach maturity X days after planting, depending on the seed.
The wiki says that pigs aren't grazers and you can keep them on a single square pen underground... I tried this with some sows and boars, all three of my boars and three of my sows died of starvation and I am not certain how....
You are playing some modified game.
Can a single trainer train more than one animal at a time... do all my pigs need trainers individually?
Pigs can't be war-trained in vanilla either.
If we switch the animal to "dogs", you can mark all your dogs for war training. Then as many trainers as you have available can start the process, one animal per trainer at a time.
Do livestock need training?
No. Only war beasts need war training, and only captured wild animals need domestic training. If you brought some vanilla livestock (pigs, sheep, etc.) with you, they are fully domesticated to begin with and do not need any training.