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[Tizer]

After 3 years of having migrants arrive with pets of all shapes and sizes (Camels, bulls, Ect ect.) I have been plaged with a messy and pain in the beard unit/animal list. So is there a program along the same lines of dwarf manager/foreman but for animals? and how do you keep tabs on your live stocks.

[Aspgren]

Well ...

I had 350 animals, they were everywhere and I was frustrated. I deisgnated a pit and I threw them all in it.

Within a month they had become 410. Apparently pits are great for breeding ... so I flooded the pit and now I'm at 150.

Apart from that I don't really do any animal control ... I suppose you COULD take all animals that aren't pets and throw them into pits, one pit for the donkeys, one for the horses, one for the goats ... and then you can look at them and notice "man I sure got alot of goats" and go into z - animals - BUTCHER THEM GOATS.

[Enzo]

Butcher -> Bone Carver -> Cat Bone Earrings.
Build restraints around the edge of the map and tie up unwanted animals. Disposable early warning system.
Or put them all in a cage so they wont breed, then release them all in during the critical moment of a siege for shits and giggles.

[Skorpion]

Build cages for each type of animal.

Cram them all into the relevant cages, with the exception of a male and a few females chained up for breeding.
CAGE ALL CATS.
When any give birth, cram those in the cage too. When you run low on food, designate some for slaughter.

[Albedo]

It's easy.

You can't slaughter or cage pets without causing bad thoughts.  Chain them up if you want to keep them out from under foot.


Many females and one male will result in many pregnant females.  So, if you want more animals and don't care, let them keep doing what they do, and slaughter only the males as you go (more than one is, literally, useless in the process.)  They can be chained or not while this happens.

Many males and one female can only result in one pregnant female.  So, once you are approaching a good number, cage (and/or slaughter) all the stray non-pet females but one.  Or two if they could have an accident, or more if they are a rapidly-used ongoing meat supply.*

(*By the time you reach the "more than enough" stage, you should have a feel for how fast they are popping out and how fast you're using them.  If you're not sure, start conservatively and adjust as needed. )

This does require that some of your peons have the "Haul Animal" labor selected, but they usually are fairly aggressive about that.  Any that go into a cage are out of the breeding cycle (tho' pregnant females will still give birth - and just assume they're pregnant.)

[Guy Montag]

Stuff them all in a single cage, or butcher them all.

With pets, one nice way to remove unwanted pets and children is to make a long 1-width hallway with a lever at the end. Make a 1x1 room with a lever, door and assign a pet or child-owning dwarf to that lever. Lock a door behind them. have them work the lever to spear-traps all along the hallway behind them.

That will kill any pets or children that follow them.

[Albedo]

Well, bad thoughts do only happen once when a pet dies. 

[Neruz]

You can also build a room and put a door on it, forbid the door but leave it pet-passable, then designate a meeting area inside that room. All your pets will flock to the room; lock the door and fill it with liquid of your choice, all pets dead.

[pokute]

Build legendary dinning hall, legendary bedroom
Build pet smasher hallway
Lock pet owner in tiny room at end of hallway with lever

Pull (R)

[Tcei]

Alternativly if you dont want to kill the pets, you can set up a meeting area thats pet only acsessable, filled with cage traps. then colapse a single roof tile to knock all the pets out and into the cage traps they go! After that... well arenas are fun!

[IceShade]

Pets will die off any eventually. There's a very easy method for animal control in any fort. One single cage.

Build it, assign every available animal. The rest that isn't assigned is a pet, and will eventually die. Cage any offspring upon birth (especially kittens, as they will choose owners and they'll be pets).

In a few years, most of the dogs/cats will have died and the horses, donkeys and mules will soon follow.

As I decided to keep all plants for brewing (except quarry bushes), every meal is made from meat, leaves and tallow.
I slaughtered a ton of animals, and eventually thought.. Wait a minute, Ive got only 120 animals left! Yikes.

So, I set up a bunch of stables. 2 females and 1 male per stable. It's a very stable breeding ground, with lots of BABBYS (how is babby formed). I'm up to 300 animals now, and captured a bunch of wild animals for leather and meat variety (and my mayor wants groundhog leather). I've got donkeys, horses, cows, elks and groundhogs in stables. Dogs and cats are usually pets and breed enough anyway.

If I want fat, meat, bones or leather.. I slaughter some animals. It's great, and animals in cages don't eat up FPS.

[Albedo]

(babies)

...I set up a bunch of stables. 2 females and 1 male per stable. It's a very stable breeding ground...  I'm up to 300 animals now...

299 females and 1 male would breed just as well, and a LOT less fps drain than a 2:1 ratio. 

Unless you're worried about appearances (and some are), just chain the breeding females and put all male offspring under the knife - all but one (or two, as back-up - they do die.)

[IceShade]

(babies)

...I set up a bunch of stables. 2 females and 1 male per stable. It's a very stable breeding ground...  I'm up to 300 animals now...

299 females and 1 male would breed just as well, and a LOT less fps drain than a 2:1 ratio. 

Unless you're worried about appearances (and some are), just chain the breeding females and put all male offspring under the knife - all but one (or two, as back-up - they do die.)

No. It's babbys. Look: http://www.somethingawful.com/flash/shmorky/babby.swf

I think you misunderstood me. I've got one stable per animal type. Two female, one male. You're telling me that 2 females and one male would be MORE of an FPS drain than a stable with 297 more females?!

If I followed your advice, I'd have a stable with 300 elk, 300 cows, 300 horses, 300 groundhogs, etc., while I have a stable with 3 elk, 3 cows, 3 horses and 3 groundhogs.

[schm0]

Build cages for each type of animal.

Cram them all into the relevant cages, with the exception of a male and a few females chained up for breeding.
CAGE ALL CATS.
When any give birth, cram those in the cage too. When you run low on food, designate some for slaughter.

Any that go into a cage are out of the breeding cycle (tho' pregnant females will still give birth - and just assume they're pregnant.)

Stuff them all in a single cage, or butcher them all.

Animals will breed regardless of whether they are caged or not.

http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Talk:Meat_industry#Contact_for_breeding

The dogs I had on embark and were immediately caged within several game minutes (days?) of starting my fort. They and their offspring continued to breed regardless of being locked in the cage for years on end, with multiple litters each "birth cycle" from different adult dogs over time.

Not so sure about the user who reported the information here:

http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Talk:Cage#Confirming_having_children_in_cages

Every bit of play time I've had devoted to this has proven otherwise. I'll be updating my data on the discussion for the second page. It could be that destroying the parents has some sort of strange effect on breeding, or the fact that the user was testing in an older version of DF. (Although I've never, ever seen this happen in any version of DF.)

As for the OP, I'd recommend a seasonal culling of your animal population each season. Limit the amount of breedable pairs to a certain number and butcher the rest using the methods described above.

[Jurph]

My method is to keep all males caged and all females tethered until I reach a stable female population of 5 or 6.  Then, each time winter comes around, I kill half of the males and any caged mature females.  That leaves me with a steady-state population of 4 or 5 males, a half-dozen females for production, and a few immature females waiting in the cage just in case.  I typically alternate going down the list "You live / you die / you live / you die" so that I retain the same age profile across the population.