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[Popokolara]

Hello fellow dwarves. i am running masterwork with more leather and i am trying to figure out some details on butchering returns, and decide on what animals to bring along. I am using more leather which scales the retrn with size but i do not know:

1. The ratio of body size to leather return, i did get 0 leather from slaying moleweasel kits, 1 from a rabbit and 3 from a pig.
2. Multiple stages of growth like cragtooth boars - according to the raw it takes 1 year for adolescent and 2 for adult. Does this mean 1+2 for 3 total?
3. Leatherwing bat's sheared of skin would rot, and i recently read something about needing a tanner to tan it with the use of tallow was it?or oil?i cant find this on the wiki, nor could i find that thread again so can someone explain what i need exactly.
4.Is this the case for all skins?usually when i butchered animals i got the skin tanned with no problem, i imagine the tanning reagent required was included in the butchering return?

I run with a pack (1 male, 4 females) of shaggy badgerdogs, cragtooth boars, moleweasels, and want to decide 2 of the 3 options of  Horned caveturtles, dewbeetles and bearded cavernkeet.
I imagined both beetles and cavernkeets are when i already have the other 3 already mentioned animals are a bit overkill, but caveturtles need a wooping 20  years according to raw for adulthood, hence the previous question about size and butchering return. Also shearing leatherwing bats vs moleweasel explosive procreation?

I hope this hasnt been already answered somewhere, if sorry for the needless post, i just couldnt find it.

[Amostubal]

Hello fellow dwarves. i am running masterwork with more leather and i am trying to figure out some details on butchering returns, and decide on what animals to bring along. I am using more leather which scales the retrn with size but i do not know:

1. The ratio of body size to leather return, i did get 0 leather from slaying moleweasel kits, 1 from a rabbit and 3 from a pig.

moleweasel kits, are kittens... most small animals babies will produce 0 leather.  they don't have enough skin.  the larger the animal the larger the skin the larger the glob it produces which increases the amount of leather. 

2. Multiple stages of growth like cragtooth boars - according to the raw it takes 1 year for adolescent and 2 for adult. Does this mean 1+2 for 3 total?

no at 1 year its no longer a baby, at 2 years its an adult.

3. Leatherwing bat's sheared of skin would rot, and i recently read something about needing a tanner to tan it with the use of tallow was it?or oil?i cant find this on the wiki, nor could i find that thread again so can someone explain what i need exactly.

DO NOT READ THE ONLINE DWARF FORTRESS WIKI... masterwork info is 2 to 6 years out of date.

if you have a tanner workshop available the skill is performed automatic, after you shear it at the farmer's workshop... no tallow is needed.  tallow is needed to make hardened versions of leather, scale, chitin, etc.

4.Is this the case for all skins?usually when i butchered animals i got the skin tanned with no problem, i imagine the tanning reagent required was included in the butchering return?

nope basic tanning requires no additional reagents just the skin.  Only if you want to turn them into their harder versions.

I run with a pack (1 male, 4 females) of shaggy badgerdogs, cragtooth boars, moleweasels, and want to decide 2 of the 3 options of  Horned caveturtles, dewbeetles and bearded cavernkeet.
I imagined both beetles and cavernkeets are when i already have the other 3 already mentioned animals are a bit overkill, but caveturtles need a wooping 20  years according to raw for adulthood, hence the previous question about size and butchering return. Also shearing leatherwing bats vs moleweasel explosive procreation?

I hope this hasnt been already answered somewhere, if sorry for the needless post, i just couldnt find it.

moleweasels are basically cheap vermin catchers, 2 total a male and a female is fine, if your not doing leatherwings.

cragtooth boars can be sheared for their cragtooths which are treated as bones.  hunt/war beasts if I remember also.

shaggy badgerdogs take a while to grow their fur, but can be sheared for wool and used for hunt/war beasts.

cavernkeets can be sheared for wool also, plus eggs are a good source of food/additional cavernkeets, and easily controlled, horrible for leather though they are small. 

leatherwing bats reproduce at incredible rates, adults can be sheared once every 2 months- season.  they will drop pups in multiples and grow to adults fairly fast.  a small batch of of 5, 4 females and 1 male, will turn into a huge fleet of vermin killers racing all over your fort rather fast, 3 years and you will have 20 to 30 adults easily.

dewbeetles can be harvested for dew which can be turned into alcohol.  dewbeatles also reproduce quickly but they are small, and really wont produce a lot of chitin.

caveturtles suck.

if your wanting leather I'd go cragtooth boars and leatherwing bats.  drakes (not the duck but the lizard) are also shearable, chase vermin, and grow quickly... but they cost a lot.

forget the rest of them.  or atleast take the beared cavernkeets for cloth.

[Popokolara]

Thank you so much for answering so many of my questions! I can only try to take more advantage of your wisdom therefore 

How about badgerdogs, for the cloth AND combat abilities? Not that good? I am embarking with a simple drinks+foods+pick+axe+anvil+seeds so i got lots of points to spare for animals. Any advice on better ways to spend them?

Also would you happen to know why sometimes the damn eggs just dont get fertilised even though noone is touching them?i have the male and female pastured together and the next boxes placed in the pasture too. Eggs are set to not be cooked and not stockpiles anywhere so they remain in the nest. It seldom happens to not fertilise but when it does  .

Bit offtopic, i have been looking at stal's armour pack and the other mods in the launcher tab. Is stal's rebalancing of the combat system on by default? I have the mods disabled but still see for example both breastplate and plate armour and cant figure a difference between them and wonder if i have some other options in the launcher activated. Should i try out stal's? Bit afraid i will overwhelmed by the options and not know what to do, but also that i might be missing out.

[Amostubal]

Thank you so much for answering so many of my questions! I can only try to take more advantage of your wisdom therefore 

How about badgerdogs, for the cloth AND combat abilities? Not that good? I am embarking with a simple drinks+foods+pick+axe+anvil+seeds so i got lots of points to spare for animals. Any advice on better ways to spend them?

Also would you happen to know why sometimes the damn eggs just dont get fertilised even though noone is touching them?i have the male and female pastured together and the next boxes placed in the pasture too. Eggs are set to not be cooked and not stockpiles anywhere so they remain in the nest. It seldom happens to not fertilise but when it does  .

bad pasture design.
a male has to be within 1 square of the females when they lay their eggs or no fertilize.  generally they try to clump together, but if say you have this:
4 nest boxes in a line.  and the female who owns box 1 is laying eggs in the same time span that female who owns box 4 is laying eggs... the male cannot fertilize both.  instead set up 1x1 pastures and set females and male into their own 1x1 pastures make patterns like this:

Code: [Select]

FFF
FMF
FFF
and then the male is within 1 tile of all 8 boxes and can fertilize all 8 females even if they all drop eggs in the same tick... another issue animals could be "not interested" in the opposite sex which means they will never fertilize... not an issue normally, (very rare).

badgerdogs are no better than dogs for hunting and war.  if you use them you could loose your source of cloth to combat...(you can't shear them when they are fighting)  additionally they cost more then cavernkeets, and cannot be sheared as fast. but produce similar amounts of cloth.  dogs are cheaper too if I remember correctly.

[Popokolara]

hm i see. I just saw that cragtooth are also war trainable so i  COULD take more boars instead of doggys.

As for pastue, WOW i never realised. Say whats up with grazing? A pasture of a single tile will keep an animal alive if its underground soil?like they eat off  lichen and the likes?

[LMeire]

hm i see. I just saw that cragtooth are also war trainable so i  COULD take more boars instead of doggys.

As for pastue, WOW i never realised. Say whats up with grazing? A pasture of a single tile will keep an animal alive if its underground soil?like they eat off  lichen and the likes?

Birds and carnivores don't eat. So the size of their pastures are only worth expanding if they're starting a lot of fights.

[Amostubal]

yeah as Lmeire says... if they are not a grazer (you can check when you are setting pasture its one of the options to select only grazers) they will dig up their own bugs to eat.  mentioning the area they are... generally with the setup I mentioned that would be only 1 small portion of the room I put my birds in I generally do 5x5 to 11x11 rooms determined by how many I want and let the chicks run free in the room.  To keep them in the room I use a stair well up from the room with a hatch on the floor above... chicks can't open hatches on the floor they are not on, vanilla DF bug this stops a lot of things in 43.05 from moving.  so unless some dwarf runs through it, they wont escape out... great for when you are not paying attention and some 50 of them hatch at one time, then when I get to it I'll set them to a pasture in another room to mature away from the parents.

Another thing.... you have to time your shearings... if you try to shear the mothers while their eggs are in the nest... the eggs will die while she is not on the nestbox...  best way to avoid this when you are trying to increase your fold... just lock the door.  I can usually run 2 rooms, room 1 is like above with my breeding set and a rooster, door locked always except when moving chicks.  A second room is just the chicks and new mature birds that I shear.

Every couple of years I take the time to pull out the old breeding set, clear the nestboxes, and put a new breeding set in.  4 game years I have so many Keets and so much cloth its causing FPS issues.

[Alkmayix]

One thing you can also do for decentish leather/meat/egg as I've found were peacock/peahen's they're fairly cheap. They're one of the bigger birds beaten by turkeys and tied with Geese. But unlike Geese they cannot fly somewhere hard to get to and unlike turkeys don't take 2 years for the babies to mature. Turkeys also lay slower so they're great but very slow compared to geese or peacock/peahen. Since they're non grazers you don't have to worry about giving them grass either and eggs! As others have suggested the Leatherwing bats are also great since you van shear them and can be vermin chasers. Drakes are also really good (lizard variety) trying a fort atm with a bunch of peacock/peahens, some pigs, drakes and a few cats since I like cats. xD I get a good bit of meat from the birds since they'll lay a decent number of eggs so getting babies isn't too hard and they'll give you more consistently vs. a chicken...I've had chickens give me 4 babies once and I had 4 hens....but then other times 4 hens gives me some crazy amount of babies that causes fights very quickly. The peacock/peahen' have given me a a better even spread and not caused as big of fight issues like chickens.

I've yet to really fiddle with a mass of grazing animals since I prefer to have very few of them since I don't want them in the open and it can take a while for cave plants to grow for them to have enough food. I also don't tend to use them just because they're slower with breeding and I get annoyed after a while with pasture rotation since too many and you'll run out of grass for them to eat somewhat quickly depends on how many you have really. I tend to just get 2 horses or 2 cows so I also get milk, though goats and such also work for that.

[Felius]

Horned Cave Turtles are also quite good. Lay a lot of eggs, grow to an acceptable size for butchering within an year or two, and if you absolutely must, and their horns can be used for minor crafting.