In my incredibly ressource-poor split fort, a kid got a possession (woodcrafting) and required three logs of wood, one roll of cloth and _six_ stacks of bone. I had to slaughter most of the available animals to get it started, but just confiscated everything apart from one log, the cloth and a stack of cat bones once the work started. I wasn't going to piss away the entire slaughterable animal population for a 110% useless trinket.
One of my tinkering forts is in a good-aligned area. We've caught a bunch of unicorns and many of our artefacts contain unicorn products. We also caught some satyrs, which as sentients (i guess) cannot be tamed nor butchered, so i chained one up in the duchess' throne room to add a pinch of exoticness. Interestingly, visiting diplomats don't seem to get along with him very well, i regularly get combat reports during meetings. At least there's not much damage done either way, since diplomats are unarmed civilians, and satyrs are probably fairly small, so their horns don't do much. Last time, however, the liaison _bit_ the satyr in the arm and shook him around, resulting in nasty scars and nerve damage.
PS: artefacts - you'll really have to go generational and let them accumulate for a couple of decades. Artefacts are not very exciting when all adults have mooded and you only get kiddy garbage, but i've had forts that temporarily had more artefacts than living dwarfs. My generational glacier fort was there, but then got half a dozen marriages arranged so population's gone up fairly rapidly; now they're at 86 dwarfs and 75 artefacts, plus six named weapons/shields.
PPS: my duchess is extra happy because she "saw a beloved creature". The only kind of creatures she likes are - honeybees! Yes, she's happy we have some hives installed.