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[IceShade]

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.

I swear my caged animals do not breed. The only time I had babies in a cage was because they were already pregnant when they were caged. I have about 60 cats caged up, and many more other animals, yet the only babies are coming from the restrained animals in my stables (though it IS funny how wild animals can get pregnant and give birth through YOUR tame restrained animals). IF they procreated while caged up, I would have had a massive catsplosion a long time ago. Thus I can conclude that animals in cages do not breed. Animals in restraints do, however, but that's nothing new.

I'm getting new kittens about once a year, or once every two years, because there are only two cat pets left alive. The rest is caged.

[Aspgren]

So. A little update on my "pit" strategy.

The cat population was low so that pit is almost empty, the others are moderate except for horses. Horses were MASSIVE so I thought I'd butcher some ... but I couldn't keep count very long.

Guess why? That's right. For me to butcher the animals I can't lock the doors, dwarves have to get in and out after all. It doesn't matter if a horse or two escape I don't care, I'll just mark the escaped ones for butcher. The problem is that the damned children run in and out of the stables and look at the animals, letting them all out and chasing them around the fortress.

I spent over 200 wood on that stable!

Update: SO after half the horses escaped (and i couldnt keep track of who was who) i ordered them all back into the pit. Little did I know this meant that after the dwarves had dumped the escapees into the pit and i would later unlock the door to allow them to get some to butcher.. dwarves would swarm into the pit, grab horses and drag them up the stairs, pushing and shoving only to throw them back into the pit on other dwarves who came to get animals to throw into the .. you get the picture.

So the escapees were free to run out the wide open door once again. I ordered every last one of the horses that left the stable to be butchered ... so.. I think I halved their population.

Clearly this is not such an effective way of breeding that I thought.

[schm0]

I swear my caged animals do not breed. The only time I had babies in a cage was because they were already pregnant when they were caged. I have about 60 cats caged up, and many more other animals, yet the only babies are coming from the restrained animals in my stables (though it IS funny how wild animals can get pregnant and give birth through YOUR tame restrained animals). IF they procreated while caged up, I would have had a massive catsplosion a long time ago. Thus I can conclude that animals in cages do not breed. Animals in restraints do, however, but that's nothing new.

I'm getting new kittens about once a year, or once every two years, because there are only two cat pets left alive. The rest is caged.

I would say that the jury is out, since I've experience precisely the opposite on every fort I've ever built. Not saying what you are seeing isn't true, but I've had forts from 2D on up behave the same way across multiple versions.

Strange.

[Aspgren]

I swear my caged animals do not breed. The only time I had babies in a cage was because they were already pregnant when they were caged. I have about 60 cats caged up, and many more other animals, yet the only babies are coming from the restrained animals in my stables (though it IS funny how wild animals can get pregnant and give birth through YOUR tame restrained animals). IF they procreated while caged up, I would have had a massive catsplosion a long time ago. Thus I can conclude that animals in cages do not breed. Animals in restraints do, however, but that's nothing new.

I'm getting new kittens about once a year, or once every two years, because there are only two cat pets left alive. The rest is caged.

I would say that the jury is out, since I've experience precisely the opposite on every fort I've ever built. Not saying what you are seeing isn't true, but I've had forts from 2D on up behave the same way across multiple versions.

Strange.

Maybe they can only breed with other animals in the same cage..? Hey IceShade! Open the cage and look your cats between the legs!

[IceShade]

I swear my caged animals do not breed. The only time I had babies in a cage was because they were already pregnant when they were caged. I have about 60 cats caged up, and many more other animals, yet the only babies are coming from the restrained animals in my stables (though it IS funny how wild animals can get pregnant and give birth through YOUR tame restrained animals). IF they procreated while caged up, I would have had a massive catsplosion a long time ago. Thus I can conclude that animals in cages do not breed. Animals in restraints do, however, but that's nothing new.

I'm getting new kittens about once a year, or once every two years, because there are only two cat pets left alive. The rest is caged.

I would say that the jury is out, since I've experience precisely the opposite on every fort I've ever built. Not saying what you are seeing isn't true, but I've had forts from 2D on up behave the same way across multiple versions.

Strange.

Maybe they can only breed with other animals in the same cage..? Hey IceShade! Open the cage and look your cats between the legs!

Every animal is in the exact same cage.

[Aspgren]

Let me clarify.

Check what SEX they are.

[IceShade]

Let me clarify.

Check what SEX they are.

I have a dazzling number of females and a fabulous number of male cats.
They're all in the same cage.
They do not breed.

May I remind you that EVERY newborn animal is put in that cage. They'll grow up just fine, and eventually die from old age (I have in fact kept dogs in there that long). The chance that EVERY SINGLE animal is born the same gender is... rather small.

[Aspgren]

I have a dazzling number of females and a fabulous number of male cats.
They're all in the same cage.
They do not breed.

... well... I'm out of ideas. Maybe they can't breed if there are too many of them in the same cage or something I have no idea.

[IceShade]

I have a dazzling number of females and a fabulous number of male cats.
They're all in the same cage.
They do not breed.

... well... I'm out of ideas. Maybe they can't breed if there are too many of them in the same cage or something I have no idea.

Or maybe they just don't breed

[Elvang]

I've never experienced creatures that mature in cages giving birth either, as soon as puppies are born into the cage they go. I wait till I have at least 20 adults in the cage before marking all the puppies for butcher and pitting the adults against whatever happens to be in my arena (usually orcs atm). Some of the adults are definitely in the cage for a few years so its not that they aren't being given enough time to breed.

Wouldn't the advice to cage cats to prevent catsplosions have died out long ago if the cats continued to breed in cages?

[Aspgren]

I have a dazzling number of females and a fabulous number of male cats.
They're all in the same cage.
They do not breed.

... well... I'm out of ideas. Maybe they can't breed if there are too many of them in the same cage or something I have no idea.

Or maybe they just don't breed

.. but they're CATS! 

[IceShade]

Wouldn't the advice to cage cats to prevent catsplosions have died out long ago if the cats continued to breed in cages?

My point exactly. If creatures did breed in cages, my cage would have been filled with a lot of offspring. Considering 5 stables with 2 females, 1 male each produce quite a bit of BABBYS, a whole cage (in my case, over 300 animals) would produce so many animals my game log  would be full of "Stray BabyMakerAnimal (tame) has given birth to animal pups/foal/etc"

[schm0]

I'll have to do some testing on my own.

Maybe I'm just crazy?

On a side note, is there a way to mod DF so I can zoom through several seasons quickly? Maybe the frame speed for the dwarves? Or maybe I can mod puppies so that they grow into adults in .1 years? Even then, I think the breeding cycle is seasonal.

[Elvang]

Maybe the [MAXAGE:10:20] tag is what needs to be edited? I looked at a couple creatures and couldn't really find anything related to growth... Not to mention that several of the domestic creatures don't even have the MAXAGE tag (donkey, ox, horse).

[RogerN]

I'm performing some testing to verify if creatures can reproduce in cages.  My previous experience indicated that this was possible, but now I'm no so sure...

I started a new fort with 4 cow calves (2 male, 2 female).  I immediately put them all into a single cage.  Since they began as calves, none of them could have been pregnant at the time when they were caged.

They all grew up within 1 or 2 seasons.  It's now been 2.5 years since I emarked, and none of them has had babies.  In the meantime, several pets from migrants have reproduced.  Four of my original dwarves have gotten married, and one of them has already had a baby.

So it looks like animals cannot get pregnant in a cage.