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[Fleeting Frames]

For future generations, one can pick better livestock to live. For some biomes, one can increase the food output with necromancy. However, a third avenue I've seen largely gone unexplored is boosting body size of meat while it is alive.

Given that Strength seems to increase body size by about 0,1% of "standard" size per point, it follows that getting 1000 of it with average strength will double yields.

The remaining problem is actually get the animals to exert themselves.

Option A: Siccing large predators onto something that is not likely to die but won't hit back. I've seen mention of using unconsicious wild water buffalo.

Option B: For benign small creatures, one can danger-room them with minecarts. However, in my experience this increases strength really slowly - like, weeks per increase. 1000 weeks to max it out seems like it would kill most animals of old age.

Option C: For very large benign creatures such as water buffalos, danger-rooming them with spears is less likely to horribly kill them in first few strikes. However, no idea if this will raise their strength at any faster pace, if at all.

Things I've found do not work: Swimming chickens. No strength increase in 3 weeks of 6/6 water.

Thus, in the spirit of dwarven child care, I ask thee to submit more, faster, better, stronger, easier ideas and designs for hulking out pets (for eating, though defensive ones do get a benefit as well I guess).

[NCommander]

It would only work with critters that CAN_LEARN. Dwarf Fortress causes attributes to go up as part of skill gain so only a small bit of livestock could go up.

[Fleeting Frames]

I don't think so. With Option B, I gave my test hen nearly 1000 points in agility, and they don't have CAN_LEARN.

[Lozzymandias]

This actually seems like quite a good idea. I'll spit ball a few ideas here but i'm not terribly au fait with the activities that increase attributes:

Combat:
If you have access to necromancy then this might be a bit redundant but reanimated hair inspires domestic animals to fight it, harmless though (I think) it is. Locking large animals in a room with it might train strength.

Climbing:
If a creature has the ability to grasp then pitting it down a hole and then pasturing it out the hole might inspire it to climb. Can be automated with running water. Don't know if this trains attributes

Fear:
Does running increase attributes? A window, a goblin and an adjacent pasture may inspire non-stop running and associate training.

That's all I have for now. Any more and I will say

[Fleeting Frames]

Undead hair does seem like very good idea, though more dangerous than water pressure - and no, I believe the muscle boost from undeath and muscle boost in life stack, so it shouldn't be redundant. Definitely worth trying

Second one...I've never researched/seen climbing increasing attributes, but at the very least, tree climbing gives no skill gain at all, ditto for holding on while marked as "in flight" - not even dabbling climbers for my dodgers, nor does climbing out of 2-deep hole for miner give any exp or attribute gain (low test, granted).

The safe childcare thread got reliable climbing training, but muddied up with water - though at least livestock don't seem to be affected much by being in 5/7 water for a few weeks.

As for fear, I believe moving never increases attributes. Otherwise hauling would be viable way to prep for military :p

[NCommander]

Daycare figured out climbing? I need to re-read that thread to see what they figured out.

[Fleeting Frames]

Childcare, not daycare. Aka the one that is 4 pages, not 60+ long

[FantasticDorf]

Mmm, what if you set up a dfhack script to force animals to spar?

I for one would take great enjoyment in watching a cock-fight (chicken fight, its largely illegal in the real world, similar vein to bear baiting) unravel in DF in order to breed better poultry with a element of risk. Even if dwarven ethics can't recognise it as animal cruelty (which by df standards it probably should be)

Actually, besides from a direct upgrade from the training, might this account for why war-animals get progressively stronger post-training (because of all the exercise they do following their masters and combat)

[Fleeting Frames]

It does indeed make war animals get stronger.

As for sparring animals, they will start to fight each other natively when overcrowded into a spot.
For a cock fight, pit your cocks into 1x1 pit/pasture.

There are two problems with this:  While it usually results in injuries, I've certainly had once one war dog kill another when 20 of them were trying to path to sole trainer through a door, and you can't butcher dead tame corpses.

Do wild animals overcrowd too?

If they do, then they can path (default behaviour) to map edge through a door, fight each other, and then have water push the corpses through fortification into a pit for butcher. The animals will fight the flow, the corpses will not, allowing for potentially automated design with fps price tag.

That said, they usually do not kill each other in my experience and heal quite fast, so if there exists an ideal zone size for animal pack size ratio it could be really low micromanagement system for meat production - just pit into hole and come back a year or two later to butcher.

Hydras in particular would be useful for this given their higher healing factors allowing for higher overcrowding.

[Lozzymandias]

Further to the combat idea, it has been my observations tgat without weapons some creatures do damage below the threshold necessary to increase pulping to other creatures in the case of a large enough size difference. I have seen one goblin whale at a blind cave ogres head for months without pulping it. The ogre eventually overcame exhaustion and pain and killed the goblin. After that it was impressively muscular.

I also recollect chained prisoners don't retaliate

Solution:

1. Chain goblin in a small room. Leave clothes on for best effect.

2. Drop small fowl: turkeys chickens etc in room. Not too many or they'll start fighting each other

3. Fowl fight goblin for a Month or two, unable to kill it

4. Extract fowl when sufficiently henchmen

This process can be reversed with big animals. Use a small creature: Crundle, gnome, buzzard or whatever or something and chain up your cow next to it.

Because of the foolish ai, creatures prefer to attack the head of an unconscious creature, even if the size difference means it could get far faster results opening up arteries elsewhere. Therefore in both cases, aim for blunt force attack are to be sought as they lead to less blood letting.

[taptap]

I don't care about meat yields, but I would be interested in prisoner / animal training for other purposes to put them to use against different hostiles. And just for the sake of it.

* Troll in water recorded no noticable change. (Several months)
* Danger rooming looks too dangerous even with light wood and low quality mechanism / spear in my experience. (Tried with a troll.)
* Getting animals to fight each other can be a real danger to your dwarves training / handling them. (Well, I was breeding voracious cave crawlers in that fort. One animal trainer lost a leg in one clean bite.)
* Dropping a bunch of cherry pits or similar on a suitable animal with not that many parts might work. (In dwarves it causes odd injuries and some won't heal.)

What do you do for minecart? Large area with circling low speed wooden minecart? Many dead animals? Tried anything else but chicken?

Climbing seems to train attributes in dwarves (never had climbing isolated from swimming to be sure), but in domestic animals I often had legendary climbing listed while attributes were rusting. Not sure whether this is just an innate ability, but it does not seem to work the same way.

[Daris]

Does DF actually use Lamarckian inheritance?

[FantasticDorf]

I don't care about meat yields, but I would be interested in prisoner / animal training for other purposes to put them to use against different hostiles. And just for the sake of it.

* Troll in water recorded no noticable change. (Several months)

Trolls are innate swimmers. It's effortless for them to stay afloat, so its probably not a good exercise to use this on creatures with innate swimming skills to train without forcing them to love.

[Fleeting Frames]

Yeah, innate skills do not train their inherent things, so cats being legendary climbers in this way hurts them. Can you guess at what climbing trains, compared to the swimming's six?

Regarding minecarts (I like them so):
== < tracks/opposing lowest-speed rollers. Everything - cart, track, walls made from featherwood

For a single target (hen or dwarf), this maxes out agility, endurance, kinesthetic sense, spatial sense toughness and willpower at reasonable speed (in a month or so?). Multiple dwarves (massive slowdown, dodging going from from 1,1k per day to about 6-9 dodging/armor user per day) or a hen can go in flight due overlaps with some bruising caused by ground or cart, though a lone dwarf never gets hit by cart (no armor user experience).

Spears is just a guess with a lucky buffalo living after skipping over danger room, but they are about thrice the size of trolls.
I guess we have to go bigger.

Daris: Mostly, barring castes. But the stat caps are inherited, not current stats, so this doesn't affect offspring.

[taptap]

Regarding minecarts (I like them so):
== < tracks/opposing lowest-speed rollers. Everything - cart, track, walls made from featherwood

For a single target (hen or dwarf), this maxes out agility, endurance, kinesthetic sense, spatial sense toughness and willpower at reasonable speed (in a month or so?). Multiple dwarves (massive slowdown, dodging going from from 1,1k per day to about 6-9 dodging/armor user per day) or a hen can go in flight due overlaps with some bruising caused by ground or cart, though a lone dwarf never gets hit by cart (no armor user experience).

Do you mind a little more explanation? 2 adjacent opposing rollers with tracks completely walled in? How do you power this / avoid the tile where power comes from interfering with training?