Second, where do you people get the idea that creatures in DF get pregnant? There is no maternity period defined in the creature raws leading me to believe that creatures in DF give birth spontaneously without a "waiting period". Might be a interesting question for Toady, though.
Giving birth at fairly regular intervals is a bit of a clue. Here, I've run a fort for a little over a year and recorded what's happened with the pets I brought with me (2 dogs, 2 horses, 2 cows). I also got a donkey and a second male horse from the wagon.
I had intended to go potentially up to three or four years, but I was getting a little bored and had proven everything I needed to by the time the elves arrived, so I gave up then
I brought a cage with me on embark, set it up immediately and caged the female cow. This was all managed on the first day (Granite 1st, 104). This was done in the interest of looking into whether a female animal brought along will start the game pregnant (I'd probably need to do a much larger-scale test of this to prove anything, I just did this out of curiosity). I know caged animals will not become pregnant while caged (large livestock farms and caging of almost every cat in most games has taught me that quite thoroughly), but this was something a bit new to me.
After getting all my food and booze prepared, in late Spring one dwarf killed the other six to preserve the food (only one dwarf eating it rather than seven).
Summer came and went. The dwarf looking after himself, nothing interesting with the pets yet. I killed the extra horse and donkey to take them out of the equation in mid/late summer.
Limestone 1st, 104 (first day of Autumn), the horse had three male foals. Limestone 7th, the dog had a male puppy. All four newborns were butchered.
Winter came and went. Nothing of interest at all.
Granite 1st, 105 (first day of Spring), I killed the male horse and released the female cow from the cage it had been held in for the previous year. No calves throughout the year would suggest that the cow was not pregnant before entering the cage and therefore did not start the game pregnant.
Granite 17th, 105, the horse gave birth to three foals (two male, one female). The elves arrived later that day, and I got two puppies (one male, one female) the following day.
On Granite 17th, there was just one horse on the map. The only wild animal on the map was a mountain goat. The elves (who arrived later in the day) used a muskox and donkey as pack animals, and the only caged animal they brought for trade was a cat. A female must have a male partner in order to give birth (I'd have a hell of a lot of kittens in some other forts if this weren't the case
) and I had killed the last male horse 16 days earlier, therefore the female must have been pregnant.
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Topic: wild animals giving birth while captured???? (Read 4448 times)