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[Schmaven]

In a reanimating biome, running an animal breeding program has the added challenge of zombie outbreaks in the livestock.  If not stopped in time, a rare breeding stock can be completely lost.  The most common causes of death in my breeding programs are:

• Old Age
• Starvation
• Berserk Dwarves
• Military Sparring Accidents

Most of these can be easily managed.  Death by old age has been the most challenging because there is no indication of an animal's age in the [a: Assign Animal to Chain] menu.  However, there is a color indication of which chain they are currently assigned to in that menu.  Most war animals live to about 30, with Gorillas and Rhinos living up to 50 and Elephants up to 70.  With 10 available colors, you could get an age resolution of +- 2 years for most war animals, +- 3 years for War Bears, +- 5 years for Rhinos and Gorillas, and +- 7 years for War Elephants as the age brackets expand to account for longer life spans.  This way the oldest animals can be isolated from the rest of the herd before they turn to zombies.  Just assign all animals born from year x to x+n to a chain of a certain color, and reassign chains every n years, and when x approaches the upper lifespan, pasture them anywhere you like your zombies to be. 

I've tested all the metals I currently have access to and found 14 color variations.

Edit: the colors depend on what graphic pack you are using.  These were found using the Meph+Vordak (lite) 32x graphics that are bundled with the Lazy Newb Pack:

Maroon

• Silver

Orange

• Birmuth Bronze, Steel
• Steel

Yellow

• Copper
• Brass

Lime

• Fine Pewter

Green

• Gold
• Electrum
• Platinum

Teal

• Sterling Silver

Lighter Blue

• Lead

Darker Navy Blue

• Pigtail Rope
• Cave Spiker Silk Rope
• Giant Cave Spiker Silk Rope

Purple

• Zinc

Magenta

• Tin
• Nickel Silver

Gray

• Aluminum
• Black Bronze

Silver

• Iron

White

• Nickel
• Rose Gold
• Bronze

Black

• Lay Pewter

The following remain untested:

• Billon
• Ramie, Rope Reed Ropes
• Sheep, Alpaca, Llama Wool Ropes
• Trifle Pewter
• Adamantine
• Flashing / Twinkling / Blazong / Singing etc. Metals
• Other Exotic Rope Materials

There's probably a way to tell an animal's age, or to give them a nickname that appears in the menu to assign them to cages / pastures, but I haven't found it yet.

[Bumber]

Can't you use dyes on ropes?

[Schmaven]

Can't you use dyes on ropes?

I forgot about that.  The few ropes I tested were not dyed, I would assume dying them changes the color, but that still has yet to be tested. 

[Fleeting Frames]

I believe the colour you get may depend on your graphic configuration. I get different colour (brown vs grey) when using default raws+adjusted colours & simple tileset versus a more complicated twbtset with green highwood.

So might be worth listing that.

However, in general this is pretty great idea for using bit of extra information. Albeit using cages can be superior because

- you get a secondary colour as well, allowing you more nuance in colours.
- if a creature happens to die in cage and reanimates, they won't harm still living livestock. If the cage is in your barracks, the creature can be quickly killed and butchered for increased meat yield.
- less pathfinding cost.

However, they won't breed in cages, so there's that problem. Having a cycle where cage is the final destination may be useful for shorter-lived animals. Short lives can be engineered with grazers and no animal caretakers, reducing fat yield.

[PatrikLundell]

Nicknaming animals with their year of birth is probably easier than chain coloring. If chain coloring is used, I'd rather base it on year of birth (modulo something easy to use number, of course) than a shuffling of all animals every so often. I suspect you can even nickname your chains now that Toady has provided that mechanism in vanilla.

I use DT to determine which animals to slaughter, which means it's easy to cull the ones that approach their expiration date (embark, purchased, captured, and migrant brought animals need extra care, of course).

It's been claimed caged males can impregnate females immediately outside of the cage (whether free ranging or chained). I've never tested that, though.

Cages are unlikely to solve reanimation problems. Vjek provided a challenge embark where all animals in cages brought by caravans died while they were brought to the trade depot, only to reanimate OUTSIDE of the cage once trade was in full swing. It took a fair bit of time to figure out why chaos suddenly broke out when all seemed to be under control...
While I believe this was with 0.40.24, I don't think the reanimation logic has changed since then (and I wouldn't trust chains either, for the same reason).

[Fleeting Frames]

Yeah, I can confirm the impregnation (though it's not instant, which led me to think it doesn't for a bit with egg-layers).

As for reanimating outside of cage, that's the idea. It's not so much a problem as convenient way to automatically butcher them.