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[hanni79]

I caught myself a breeding pair of Giant Cave Spiders and locked them up in a 3*5 room, but right now, after around 18 month, no offspring so far.

I checked for correct Gender & orientation, but they don't want to breed. Do I just have to wait longer ?

I had a "breeding pair" locked up before, but the male was homosexual, in which case it was no wonder nothing was happening  , but with a straight male + female, do they even breed when wild ?

[TomIrony]

According to this article:

Be aware that since they lack a [CHILD] tag, giant cave spiders will not breed.

[LMeire]

According to this article:

Be aware that since they lack a [CHILD] tag, giant cave spiders will not breed.

That's for .34, everything breeds now, but creatures lacking a CHILD tag can't be domesticated because they're adults at birth.

[PatrikLundell]

I cannot say for certain, but they ought to: it's certainly the case that they breed when trained (I've bred lots of them), and other cavern critters capable of breeding (such as rutherers and magma crabs) do while wild.
I don't know what the gestation period of GCS are, but I'd guess a standard 9 months (in my cases I've just locked them up together in a small room and waited until new ones appear. Since they're adult at birth the females are immediately impregnated, and will give birth even if hauled off to a cage ASAP. Adult at birth also means you cannot get tame ones, only trained ones).

Others apparently beat me to most of it...

[Killgoth]

They lay eggs so try putting some nests in their area.

[hanni79]

They lay eggs so try putting some nests in their area.

According to the raws, they do not lay eggs. I tried to modify them so they do, but that didn't work out for some reason.

Thanks for all your answers so far I just hope, my female GCS gets pregnant at some point.

Edit : Dammit, just got another one, but it's an asexual male

[PatrikLundell]

BTW: It seems wild critters running around (i.e. not caged) block critter spawn in the cavern (or surface) they came from, just like campers do. Thus, when my silk farm GCS reverts to wild, I tend not to get any new critters in the cavern it came from until it's either recaged or trained again. That's something to keep in mind.

[Findulidas]

BTW: It seems wild critters running around (i.e. not caged) block critter spawn in the cavern (or surface) they came from, just like campers do. Thus, when my silk farm GCS reverts to wild, I tend not to get any new critters in the cavern it came from until it's either recaged or trained again. That's something to keep in mind.

This is true, you only seem to be able to have so many wild creatures in the caves and aboveground at the same time. Probably to reduce the risk of fps dropping due to them. I remember for a short time when toady had released a version of dwarf fortress that had many interesting bugs. One in particular was that a hundred or more giant mosquitos would spawn and not just a few or one. It was fun to say the least.

[hanni79]

Hm. This isn't working very well.

I now put one male and two female GCS in a 3*5 room by caging them and setting them free via Lever.
Nine month later : Nothing 

My breeding program doesn't seem to work ...

[PatrikLundell]

And I assume you modded them back to not lay eggs?
I'd try to train them (while caged) and then see if they get impregnated. Using DFHack it's possible to see if a critter is pregnant: gui/gm-editor, then relations, and there should be a pointer to the genetics for the offspring if any, or null if not pregnant. After all, they'll revert to wild eventually anyway if not retrained.

[Trollhammaren]

Unmodded tame GCS definitely have no issues breeding in my fort. I just chained them next to each other, soon we had little bundles of horror, and all my dwarves now eat is GCS meat.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I have no idea what might be going on in yours, if you've checked for orientation and willingness to marry/asexuality (if that's still a thing with animals). Could be from your past modding attempt.

[hanni79]

The modding took place in my last fortress and I copied the original file back to the raws before generating this world, so I guess that shouldn't be the problem, but I enhanced GCS numbers via region-pops. Maybe that's the problem. I have checked for orientation, both females and the male are straight.

The gui/gm-editor is new to me, I did not find this when searching for a possibility to check for pregnancies, I will try that, thanks a lot

Edit:
Okay, looking into the gui/gm-editor it tells me both females have a pregnancy timer of zero, so I would conclude they are not pregnant. I would prefer not to train them, otherwise I can't cage-trap them anymore and in my last fortress I killed my silk-production with taming them, because I do not have invaders and therefore no targets available for them to shoot at ( right now I'm using a pesky human, who killed my first two females in this fortress ).
This editor looks like I can force them to get pregnant, but I'm not sure what I have to do exactly, I don't want to mess around with this Fortress, as I quite like it.
And I would still like to learn why they do not get pregnant in the first place, I chained them up now for more than three month, but still to no avail.

[Trollhammaren]

The modding took place in my last fortress and I copied the original file back to the raws before generating this world, so I guess that shouldn't be the problem, but I enhanced GCS numbers via region-pops. Maybe that's the problem. I have checked for orientation, both females and the male are straight.

The gui/gm-editor is new to me, I did not find this when searching for a possibility to check for pregnancies, I will try that, thanks a lot

Edit:
Okay, looking into the gui/gm-editor it tells me both females have a pregnancy timer of zero, so I would conclude they are not pregnant. I would prefer not to train them, otherwise I can't cage-trap them anymore and in my last fortress I killed my silk-production with taming them, because I do not have invaders and therefore no targets available for them to shoot at ( right now I'm using a pesky human, who killed my first two females in this fortress ).
This editor looks like I can force them to get pregnant, but I'm not sure what I have to do exactly, I don't want to mess around with this Fortress, as I quite like it.
And I would still like to learn why they do not get pregnant in the first place, I chained them up now for more than three month, but still to no avail.

No idea about the pregnancy if they're willing and able. I did have the same issue with one pair of unicorns in my fort for some reason. Those two "liked" the other sex examined with dfhack, I wouldn't know if that means anything. Subsequent unicorns have bred fine chained next to each other.

Anyway, since you can't domesticate cave spiders, if you want a wild cave spider, you can just put it somewhere animal trainers can't reach it and eventually it will go wild. This will work for all cave spiders in your fortress even if you first tame some for easier breeding.

[hanni79]

Hm, could be worth a try. So basically, I would have to tame my breeding pair with the worst available trainer, let them turn wild and hope that the children will not be trapavoid but wild, so I can use them for my Silkfarm ?

Edit : Dammit, I just noticed I can't re-cage the GCS from the chain Oo ? Is this intended ?

[Trollhammaren]

Hm, could be worth a try. So basically, I would have to tame my breeding pair with the worst available trainer, let them turn wild and hope that the children will not be trapavoid but wild, so I can use them for my Silkfarm ?

I have no idea if the spiderlings will be trapavoid or not but that's definitely a thing you can do to produce wild cave spiders. You could also just pasture a poorly trained spider where you would want a spider and let it go wild.