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[AncientEnemy]

I've got a room built to keep some cows I bought in (I want my dwarves to have beef eventually, they've got to be sick of plump helmets by now), and i've dumped them in via a pit over the roof, but the cows seem very confused, and do nothing but stand adjacent to the door trying to escape. if any dwarf goes in there, they immediately pile out and head for the meeting zone. is there any better way to set a 'farm' area? does livestock need to be fed/given water? basically I just want to stick em in a room and let em breed

[Vattic]

The reason they sit at the door is that they ignore locked doors when finding a path but still cant get through them.

I keep all but a breeding pair in a cage (or cages for realism) next to the butchers shop, the breeding pair I let walk free, you can chain them up though I suppose. If you need more meat have more than one breeding pair, or just more females at least.

You can make a complex system with double doors and retractable bridges and whatnot but it doesn't save on path finding costs and its fairly annoying to just keep them in a single room, they all just sit at the door anyway.

They don't need food or water I don't think.

[AncientEnemy]

meh, i've just got em chained up in a corner now.

[Raphite1]

I keep an adult male and a few adult females of each species I farm chained up in a room, and keep all their offspring in a cage until they mature. When several of the cages animals have matured, I take them out and butcher them. Every so often I slaughter and replace the breeders instead, so that they don't die of old age.

My current fort eats horse, cow, elk, muskox, and rhesus macaque. The macaques seem to mature very slowly, but variety is the spice of life. I recently acquired a male and female groundhog, so we're looking forward to some groundhog tallow roasts.

[AncientEnemy]

how long does it usually take before the critters start breeding? i've got 2 cows and 2 bulls chained together in a corner and no calfs so far, after several seasons.

[forsaken1111]

7x7 room. Chain female cows in every perimeter square, and a single bull in the center. Keep a spare bull in a cage in the same room.

After that, butcher every single bull born, but any additional females chain them up in the room.


After a while you'll have so many cows you won't know what to do with them all. Remember, a single bull can impregnate EVERY COW IN THE FORT and will do so even from inside a locked room, so there's no need for more than 2 except for extra redundancy.

[G-Flex]

The thing is that if a door is marked as passable but forbidden to pets, dwarves will be able to get through it and animals won't be able to open it, just like intended.

However, animals will still THINK they can get through it, so they'll constantly be trying to, and it'll eat up your CPU a bit since they'll constantly be trying to pathfind out of there.

Using cages/chains works just fine.. preferably chains if you want them breeding.

[Solarn]

7x7 room. Chain female cows in every perimeter square, and a single bull in the center. Keep a spare bull in a cage in the same room.

After that, butcher every single bull born, but any additional females chain them up in the room.


After a while you'll have so many cows you won't know what to do with them all. Remember, a single bull can impregnate EVERY COW IN THE FORT and will do so even from inside a locked room, so there's no need for more than 2 except for extra redundancy.

Damn. That's some potent sperm there.

In fact, I don't know if I want to have an animal in my fort that can release mutant sperm that impregnates females by crawling to them on the ground and through keyholes even if they're on the other side of the fortress.

[AncientEnemy]

wait so the cows can mate even without actually coming into contact?

also, only 1 bull? will it get the females pregnant just as fast as having multiple bulls would?

[Bromor Neckbeard]

wait so the cows can mate even without actually coming into contact?

Yes, if a male animal is on the same fortress map as a female animal of the same species, the female animal will get pregnant, even if there's no possible path between them.  A bull chained in a barn on the surface can impregnate a cow entombed under ten z-levels of stone with no passages or even airflow between them.

also, only 1 bull? will it get the females pregnant just as fast as having multiple bulls would?

Yes, one bull can get hundreds of cows pregnant at once.

[Jay]

also, only 1 bull? will it get the females pregnant just as fast as having multiple bulls would?

Yes, one bull can get hundreds of cows pregnant at once.

Or cat.
Or dog.
Or dwarf.
Well, not dwarf, as they only seem to do so when married, but it's still the same system, just limited by the marriage flag.

[sev]

The thing is that if a door is marked as passable but forbidden to pets, dwarves will be able to get through it and animals won't be able to open it, just like intended.

However, animals will still THINK they can get through it, so they'll constantly be trying to, and it'll eat up your CPU a bit since they'll constantly be trying to pathfind out of there.

Using cages/chains works just fine.. preferably chains if you want them breeding.

Or if you've got your heart set on a pit with a door, set a wall-grate instead of the door, connected to a lever.  The animals will not try to path through the doorway when the grate is blocking it.

[G-Flex]

Or just a door connected to a lever, or floodgate, or anything else that's manually-controlled.

Although grates/bars give you that nice gated feeling.

[AncientEnemy]

meh, they were taking too long to breed and slowing stuff down so i slaughtered the lot of em.

i didn't realize DF had such massive processing requirements

[xadism]

The thing is that if a door is marked as passable but forbidden to pets, dwarves will be able to get through it and animals won't be able to open it, just like intended.

You know, I could swear this is not the case.   My first fortress, I tried creating animal pens with doors forbidden to pets, but every time i checked back all the animals were out of the pen, wandering around the fortress.   I did it three or four times before deciding I wasn't seeing things, and that all the doors really were labeled "pet-impassable".

That was before I knew about chains, I just chain everything now.