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[Innocent Dave]

What heresy is this?  Even Elves eat their fallen enemies from time to time.  Eating something that not only grows in sunshine, but is freely given by the plant?  Screw that.  It's the hormones released by their dying agonies that give plump helmets that lovely flavour.

My current fort is in aa beach side forest, which I'm sure has some fruit. However, I haven't had the chance to look too closely, because it's an evil biome with husking smoke.

Trust me, you don't want to eat that fruit...

[cochramd]

Did you only have one plant gatherer in your entire fort? I always start with 2.

I only enabled it on some idler because I needed that particular bush, but I don't gather plants routinely.

Neither do I after a fort is a few years old, but I always leave plenty of dwarfs with the plant gathering enabled for the odd occasion I feel like gathering plants.

Anyhow, I never live solely off fruit. I always embark with turkeys, I always pick a map with a river or brook, hunters and fisherdwarfs always show up and I always make a point of capturing, training and breeding wild animals so I am never lacking in animal-based foods. However, I also rely on collecting above ground plants early in my fortress's life, so there are definitely periods of time where the majority of plants and booze in my fortress come from the surface.

[Foxite]

I guess I also might want to look into a serious meat industry that doesn't live off the occasional mass cage drop or migrating animals passing just through my fort. Everyone here is talking about stuff like embarking with a bunch of turkeys or shit, and then breeding them, until they have reached a certain amount of parents and then slaughter all of the offspring. Or even doing this with animals that are completely unknown to your civ as far as training knowledge goes, from the ground up domesticating new animals just for the meat industry.

And I only ever eat plump helmets and fish.

Currently on todo list: Explore meat industry, minecarts, advanced stockpiling and real megaprojects such as clearing the caverns of life. *ahem* yes you cochramd *ahem*

[cochramd]

Actually, I like to start with 1 male turkey and 9 females. If there's nothing wrong with the male, I'll let them have one big turkeysplosion, but really I buy them for the eggs. I slaughter them whenever I feel that I have no further need of them, and they are usually among the first domestic animals to be slaughtered, if not THE first. I also utilize a fishing industry, but this is ultimately temporary as all the vermin fish go extinct.

[PatrikLundell]

I gather plants by designating the whole map once per season for the first year, but that's really because I want to get seeds of each brewable plant available. I then grow these plants on over ground plots in my enclosed courtyard, where I also have my sheep (for mood wool). I'll consider using DFHack to be more selective to avoid the huge mountains of food that can only be eater (not brewed).
I embark with 3 of each gender of cats, dogs, sheep, turkeys, and peafowl, and slaughter off adults to keep 2 reproductive adults of each gender (got stuck in my current fortress when 3 of the 4 turkeys died at the same turn of year. Managed to capture wild ones to get the production going again).
My main problem is over production of food rather than under production, so I very rarely fish and never hunt (for food, occasional run ins with wildlife happens). Fishing is basically an emergency measure when I get a strange mood requiring shells (has happened twice in total). I do trade for fruit and other brewables since I like to provide as wide a booze variety as possible (more role play than anything else, since it doesn't have any effect unless some dorf happens to be partial to a particular drink). I also grow pig tails and over ground threshables for clothing.
Apart from that, I keep animals that happen to wander into my cage traps protecting the fortress until I reach mastery in training, and then I slaughter them. Exceptions to this are Jabberers and Rutherers which I try to breed because they're cool, as well as GCS' to ensure the ability to run a silk farm.
If I happen to get pairs of giant predators (bears, cats,...) I try to breed domesticated offspring.

[BodyGripper]

What heresy is this?  Even Elves eat their fallen enemies from time to time.  Eating something that not only grows in sunshine, but is freely given by the plant?  Screw that.  It's the hormones released by their dying agonies that give plump helmets that lovely flavour.

Can't you enjoy the dying agonies of your fruit-picking dwarves?

[FortunaDraken]

I guess I also might want to look into a serious meat industry that doesn't live off the occasional mass cage drop or migrating animals passing just through my fort. Everyone here is talking about stuff like embarking with a bunch of turkeys or shit, and then breeding them, until they have reached a certain amount of parents and then slaughter all of the offspring. Or even doing this with animals that are completely unknown to your civ as far as training knowledge goes, from the ground up domesticating new animals just for the meat industry.

And I only ever eat plump helmets and fish.

Currently on todo list: Explore meat industry, minecarts, advanced stockpiling and real megaprojects such as clearing the caverns of life. *ahem* yes you cochramd *ahem*

I like embarking with two male turkeys, 3 females, and a pig sow and boar since they don't need to graze so I can stick 'em somewhere safe indoors. The turkeys are mostly for their eggs, I don't start checking for fertile eggs until everything is set up. Also like grabbing female birds from traders, then asking for a male from the outpost liaison for breeding pairs. My dwarves eat much egg goodness.

[Shakkara]

I usually make a walled orchard that's only reachable by an underground tunnel, or is on top of a hill and I remove all ramps to that Z level.

Still vulnerable to fliers, but it doesn't get half your people killed if there's some ambush.

[4kn]

I usually make a walled orchard that's only reachable by an underground tunnel, or is on top of a hill and I remove all ramps to that Z level.

Still vulnerable to fliers, but it doesn't get half your people killed if there's some ambush.

as i recall raw soil/rock walls are still possible to climb, but yes, i also wall off a part of fruit tree forest and dig a moat down trough the soil until few levels of rock show up, so i can smooth them=make impossible to climb

[Artichaut]

Your post make me try fruit gathering. I designed a zone where woodcutter have eliminated all trees. So i gathered some berries and lettuces.

But now the trees grow again and i have 8 dwarfs around each new coconut palm trunk. And they wait ... something ... i guess. But no coconut gathered

[Immortal-D]

Am I the only one who uses Geese instead of Turkeys?

[Bouchart]

I bring with me a couple of each type of bird.

Elk birds are really the way to go, though.

[PatrikLundell]

My impression of elk birds was that they're quite micro management intensive because of being both egg layers and grazers, so they tend to starve to death on top of their eggs? If I'm wrong on that account, yes, I'll happily switch.
Turkeys are bigger and produce more eggs than geese, I believe.
I started using 3 kinds of birds on embark, but have cut back to two to curb food over production. My fortresses are limited to a pop of 60/80, though.

[Splint]

Elk Birds tend to be just short of starving after hatching a clutch, really.

[Snaake]

My impression of elk birds was that they're quite micro management intensive because of being both egg layers and grazers, so they tend to starve to death on top of their eggs? If I'm wrong on that account, yes, I'll happily switch.
Turkeys are bigger and produce more eggs than geese, I believe.
I started using 3 kinds of birds on embark, but have cut back to two to curb food over production. My fortresses are limited to a pop of 60/80, though.

If you're going for elk birds, you might as well start farming cave crocs.

Regarding turkeys vs. geese, yes turkeys are a bit larger, average full size 5000 vs 4500, but they take 2 years to reach that size, unlike geese, or blue peafowl which also reach a full size of 4000 in 1 year. Geese do only lay 3-8 eggs vs. turkeys laying 10-14, with peafowl at 6-8. http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Domestic_animal#Comparison_of_domestic_poultry

Personally, I prefer the domestic poultry that reach full size at 1 year, since *all* the domestic poultry reach adulthood i.e. mating age at 1 year anyway, even if they (chickens, ducks and turkeys) take 2 years to reach full size: both numbers being 1 year is massively convenient due to the fact that the animal is an adult is then enough for me to tell that they're ready to be processed into delicious *goose fat roasts* at my convenience (and geese live for 10-24 years to turkeys' 7-10, which allows for a longer "shelf time" if I want it, without worrying about deaths from old age). No need to fiddle around with stressing about getting the oldest birds to the butcher first by sorting them by age or size or marking them in Dwarf Therapist (which can show size iirc) or anything like that.

And meh, excessive food tends to be a larger problem than lack of it, once you've got the basics set up.