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[khearn]

With the new grazing formula, I calculated that an alpaca should be fine on a 3x3 pasture, and sheep on 2x3. I set up a bunch of these sized pastures and populated them, and things seemed fine - for a while. But then I started noticing flashing brown down arrows after a couple of years.

It appears that saplings and shrubs that die remain in the tiles on forever, reducing the space available for moss for the livestock to eat. Some of my 2x3 pastures were down to only 2 usable tiles, and some 3x3s were down to just 3 or 4.

This was in a single z-level area dug out in soil in a fort that was about 4 years old. I'm guessing the saplings get to the 3 year old point where they would grow upward, but have nowhere to grow so they just die. As more and more saplings grow and die, there is less and less space available for grazing.

Anyone else noticing this sort of problem?

   Keith

[Pink Photon]

I haven't kept a fort that long, so I haven't encountered this problem. Have you tried building dirt roads to clear out the dead saplings/shrubs? I don't know how long it takes for the road to fade away and moss growth resume, but it would be an improvement over permanent blockage.

[Naglfar]

I found this, which may be useful:

[to remove the sapling] build a bridge over it, then remove the bridge.

[Larix]

It's not useful, i'm afraid.

Building and removing a bridge takes a fair amount of material, takes three jobs to perform which makes it take really long and most importantly in the current version(s) bridges do not clear the floor underneath. The saplings and other unwanted vegetation stay completely intact.

Building a dirt road is fast, takes no material and a single job and removes all dead bushes and saplings.

Building/removing a floor works, but is so much slower than constructing a dirt road that it's completely pointless.

[khearn]

Building roads or floors would pretty much require that I have two pasture areas and move all of my livestock to a fresh one while building a road and waiting for stuff to grow back on the old one. Doable, but a bit of a pain. I think I might just switch to pigs and pigtails for food and clothing.

Or I can just do what I usually do: get bored after a few years and start a new fort.

   Keith

[Tacomagic]

I've noticed this too.  What I've started doing is keeping large pastures and creating roads on half of them every second or third year.  This keeps the pastures relatively clear while at the same time meaning I don't have to worry about shifting all the animals around.  Need more overall room, but I find it's worth the reduction of fuss.  Several adjoining long and thin pastures make it easy to get both animal separation and easy multi-pasture dirt-road conversion all at the same time.

You can also micro it by just building single squares of dirt road over any sapling, but that's a pretty big pain.

However, if I'm going to do pasture, I like to go with either treeless or scarce tree embarks.  Right now tundras are really great for doing inside/above ground pasturing because there are absolutely no trees yet still scarce plant/grass growth (Granted, growth is slow, but you just have to make your pastures a little bigger).  Makes getting wood more of an adventure, but your pastures are 0 upkeep.

Otherwise prairies, fields, grassland, and savanna, as well as some deserts, dunes, badlands, hills, and steppes are also rather good for pasture.  Anything with scarce/sparse trees and moderate or better plant growth, really.

[SixOfSpades]

Alternatively, there could be an "Extirpate" labor, which uproots or otherwise removes dead shrubs & saplings. Designated just like the existing Cut Down Trees / Harvest Plants, and both Woodcutters and Herbalists can do it--maybe Growers, too.

[khearn]

While we're at it, how about having "Extirpate" also remove those annoying boulders and pebbles that get in the way of building fields aboveground?

[Tacomagic]

Another way to approach it would be to make pastures act kinda like a building.  Similar to a cage, you can assign animals via the 'q' menu.  Any dwarf with animal caretaker will periodically do maintenance on the pasture (seeding grass and feed crops, weeding out saplings, etc).

As an added step, these new pastures could be linked to farming workshops for automated milking and shearing with the cooldown on the animals based on the caretaking skill of the dwarves taking care of the pasture.

[ullrich]

The way I circumvent the sapling/brush problem with pastures is I always put my pastures into dirt ramps, as only grass grows on ramps you never have to worry about unwanted growths.

So the setup is rows like this:
Wall
Ramp
Ramp
Wall
Ramp
Ramp
Wall
repeat as needed.

I haven't played 2014 yet, but as before you needed individual pastures to ensure the each animal would not out eat the other one I would swap from rows to a bit of a checker board pattern (ramps need to be next to a wall to not "collapse" sometimes and you can't build dirt ramps).
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, but it might cause the highlighted Rs to collapse would have to test in that case it would be (for 10 sheep, because grass growth is random safety margin for sheep is 7 tiles, the below room has 73 ramp tiles).

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The room for max pop  (50, assume butchering to keep at 40, needs 280 tiles, below is a room for 285 ramps, 19x19)

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[pisskop]

That kind of cool to look at, actually.

However, couldnt mass pasture work?  You would have to periodically clean out the pasture, but It should cover all the animals and be perfectly feasible assuming 6-8 tiles per-creature.

In essence, I prefer a treefarm and a pasture rolled into one.  I havent played a serious fort this version, but I foresee no issues with a massive pasture for howevermany animals.

[Tacomagic]

I haven't played 2014 yet, but as before you needed individual pastures to ensure the each animal would not out eat the other one I would swap from rows to a bit of a checker board pattern (ramps need to be next to a wall to not "collapse" sometimes and you can't build dirt ramps).

Things are extremely improved in 40.13.  Pastured animals actually spread out now and will happily share a pasture without fights or starvation.  Most of the time these days, prior to creating breeding programs, I just dump everything on the same maximum size pasture and forget about them until I'm ready to actually get pasturing done.  I've had upwards of 20 animals share a pasture for 2-3 years before I was ready to deal with them.

[Arcvasti]

While we're at it, how about having "Extirpate" also remove those annoying boulders and pebbles that get in the way of building fields aboveground?

There's an Extirpate DFhack command somewhere. Although it works by setting them on fire, which is widely considered unsafe.

[ullrich]

Things are extremely improved in 40.13.  Pastured animals actually spread out now and will happily share a pasture without fights or starvation.

Ya that's the reason for the second design to no longer require individual pastures, I haven't played on 2014 because I am waiting for the optimization pass, I tend to run my forts at very high frame rates (start at 300 FPS, 7 miners, and a ton of food to just dig till I get migrants) and tend to give up on forts when they stay below 50 fps (I design my forts so well they only really need my intervention if I choose to not make it 100% proof (magma landmines are op and very easy to make, and so tempting & efficient layouts/job assignment mean 4 farmers can feed 200 dwarves and all population past ~50 pretty much just ends up in the military/haulers) and then deal with invaders with more traditional means), so low fps means not doing anything for a long time.

[Casei]

While we're at it, how about having "Extirpate" also remove those annoying boulders and pebbles that get in the way of building fields aboveground?

You can have your dorfs smooth the boulders, then haul in buckets of water to leave behind some mud.