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[PatrikLundell]

This is actually a twofold question:
1. I've gotten an infestation of creepy crawlies. Cats kill them, but they (the crawlies) don't seem to care about getting trapped by animal traps baited with meat (a trap in a 4*5 room with at least two crawlies let the meat go bad). The wiki description indicates they can be slaughtered, but as now they clog up my refuse pile as their corpses are hauled there. The buggers teleported into my fortress as soon as I breached the third cavern. I'm in no risk of starvation, so the crawlies aren't any immediate threat, though.
2. I HAVE been able to capture some vermin with animal traps, but now I don't know how to get rid of them. The cave spider I've tamed and let loose to do its thing in a room, but the untamable cave swallow and olms, plus the likewise untamable stupid plump helmet men I don't know how to get rid of. Of course, they can all sit in the cage, but I suspect they soak FPS even there, and I AM starving in the FPS department.

[smjjames]

You may need a few more cats, be careful to control the breeding.

That and given time, they'll pretty much clean out the vermin in the fort, in 34.11 anyway, not sure on 40.xx

[Urist McVoyager]

I'm pretty sure it's possible to trade vermin in cages. Just don't trade them to elves if the cages are wood, of course. They don't bring in much value, which is why people don't find it worthwhile ton trap them in the first place, but if all you're doing is saving FPS, trading them away is a good thing.

[Larix]

Cats are the best option.

To control vermin via traps, you don't build the trap, you queue up "catch small [a]nimal" jobs at a kennel or butcher's shop. That causes a dwarf with the trapper labour to grab an empty trap and hunt and eventually catch vermin creatures.

Creepy crawlers can only be butchered when alive and untamed. Dead ones are just  useless "remains", tamed ones can't be targetted by the "butcher" labour, which only looks at butcherable _items_. That's because vermin doesn't count as creature, but rather as a sort of self-propelled item that bounces around the place. Consequently, stored vermin should have very little FPS impact. Actual animals already consume so little processor time when caged that it's a total non-issue; a thousand pieces of vermin in a cage shouldn't consume more FPS than a wall built of a thousand stone blocks. That said, you can always sell vermin to caravans. It sells for next to nothing (or actually nothing?), but at least the caravans take it off the map.

Several vermin types are much more prolific in 0.40, you'll need many more cats than in 0.34 to keep an entire fort vermin-free. The usual two to six cats are still enough to keep the food area clean.

[Loci]

There have been reports of excessive vermin populations in the v0.40.x branch. You can workaround the issue by using the "region-pops" command in DFHack to set the vermin populations to something reasonable (or remove them entirely).

[PatrikLundell]

Well, I've got three cats (all male, and one of them a dud at that). One is allocated to the refuse dump, one to the food stores, and one to the booze stores (which also includes the main booze ingredients store). Despite there being a cat at the refuse dump, I can often see 6 crawlies at once.
I intend to get more male cats, however.
The problem with trading the vermin away is that I cannot seem to get them to the trade depot. There is no animal subselection, and the cage one only covers empty cages, and probably only the undeployed ones at that.
I CAN trade wood cages to the tree huggers - provided it's one of the cages I've bought from them (they don't have much of value to trade, unless they carry some interesting animal, and I need to dump a ton of discarded clothes [12000 worth this time] on them), so I've bought all their empty cages. I can use them in cage traps.
I'll try to order animal trainer vermin capture, though.

[Harken]

Well, I've got three cats (all male, and one of them a dud at that). One is allocated to the refuse dump, one to the food stores, and one to the booze stores (which also includes the main booze ingredients store). Despite there being a cat at the refuse dump, I can often see 6 crawlies at once.
I intend to get more male cats, however.
The problem with trading the vermin away is that I cannot seem to get them to the trade depot. There is no animal subselection, and the cage one only covers empty cages, and probably only the undeployed ones at that.
I CAN trade wood cages to the tree huggers - provided it's one of the cages I've bought from them (they don't have much of value to trade, unless they carry some interesting animal, and I need to dump a ton of discarded clothes [12000 worth this time] on them), so I've bought all their empty cages. I can use them in cage traps.
I'll try to order animal trainer vermin capture, though.

I can't speak for any vermin glitch in the newest release but like the previous commenters suggested, cats are your best option. Keep all your female cats locked away and only assign the males to vermin control pastures. Two cats in an average size room should should keep the infestation under control. Peregrine falcons are pretty effective too.

[0x517A5D]

I have a suspicion that vermin show up more often when a foodpile is placed on dirt.  Try moving them to smoothed or built stone floors.

For refuse piles, I've had good results using minecart quantum stockpiling.  You just need a small 2x2 or 2x3 feeder pile, a trackstop and minecart, and a catcher pile.  Cheap and easy.

(Be aware that thieving animals like kea birds steal minecarts if they are outside.)

[m-logik]

I made a bug report about this some time ago, and my problem was specifically with creepy crawlers (well, also babies, but that part probably was not a bug) The report is here: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=8075

Perhaps you could add a note, and possibly a save demonstrating the problem. Creepy crawlers and cave spiders seem to be the primary culprits here.

As I noted in the comments on the bug report, the creepy crawlers' spawn rate seemed to normalize after a couple of seasons, so hopefully this will only be a temporary problem in your fort as well.

[§k]

I read somewhere that dwarves can devour living vermins captured in animal-traps(and get satiated), but I haven't seen this in my forts.

[PatrikLundell]

Well, it seems the crawler explosion has petered out, so I only have one or two where I previously had 5 or 6, so m-logik's suspicion seems to be correct. I've tried to assign vermin capture tasks in the kennel, but that only resulted in reports of rats eating their way out of traps. I think I'll try an ordinary cage trap to see if they get caught by that. Otherwise, the problem seems manageable now. A freshly acquired cat (male) probably won't hurt (although cats are evil, so it might start hunting sleeping dwarves...).
I've used a number of quantum stockpiles with good results, but haven't thought of trying that with refuse. I won't have any problems with thieving animals, though, as I've completely enclosed a goodly section of the overground map (60*60 or so), so refuse, grazers, and outdoor crops are protected.