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[AngleWyrm]

I can look at an individual puppy with looK/Enter, and it lists things like "Untold rolls of fat, very muscular" and so on. But when i go to slaughter animals, there's no way to distinguish one from another. They all read "Stray puppy."

It would be very useful to be able to hit either (V)iew or (Enter) to examine each creature in the slaughter menu.

Then it would be possible to pick out the meaty/fatty creatures to slaughter, and also the skinny runts to improve breeding stock.

[NW_Kohaku]

Technically, how would the runts "improve breeding stock"?  If you wanted meatier and fattier animals, you would theoretically breed those, although this game has no such mechanic as unnatural (or natural) selection, so there would be no method of improvement in either case.

Also, I question the utility of this as a means of being able to sort animals for slaughter...  I honestly don't particularly care if I'm getting the maximum theoretical amount of meat from an animal, as the amounts of meat in this newest version are tremendous already, and I tend to still prefer farms for their ability to be run without having to manually mark things for slaughter in the first place. 

If we do go with this, I wonder if perhaps having an ability to nickname animals or to mark for slaughter from the look menus would be more effective.

[Dakkan]

I think he means take the smaller ones and butcher them, to prevent from breeding more runty creatures. There also was a thread a bit ago about breeding super-animals, getting the maximum meat and fat from them. It was pretty successful.

But yeah, currently if you have a animal breeding system at all your swamped with food.

[Misterstone]

Sounds like a great idea to me.  I see no downside to it, and it makes it easier to have fun with with an otherwise obscure game mechanic.

[AngleWyrm]

Technically, how would the runts "improve breeding stock"?

Picking out the runts while in the z->Animals menu, and assigning them to be slaughtered before they breed. At the other end of the spectrum, picking out the juiciest, fattest animal to butcher for it's wealth of fat and meat. It becomes a bit of a give and take type game, where I don't want to kill all the best animals, but at the same time I want the best animals for their inventory. So it becomes keeping some excellent specimens for breeding stock, and butchering their progeny.

[aepurniet]

its a no brainer to allow this type of interaction.  my current workaround has been building individual pens for the animals.  getting them set up is a little bit of a pain, but once you get them set up its pretty easy to make sure your slaughtering the right animals.

[NW_Kohaku]

Technically, how would the runts "improve breeding stock"?

Picking out the runts while in the z->Animals menu, and assigning them to be slaughtered before they breed. At the other end of the spectrum, picking out the juiciest, fattest animal to butcher for it's wealth of fat and meat. It becomes a bit of a give and take type game, where I don't want to kill all the best animals, but at the same time I want the best animals for their inventory. So it becomes keeping some excellent specimens for breeding stock, and butchering their progeny.

OK, from your first post, I thought you were saying you were butchering everything but the runts...

Does the muscularity or fatness of a creature actually pass on to their offspring, though?  I thought such things were utterly random, which would make such selection pointless.

[Dakkan]

Yup, it seems to, with a degree of variability. I looked a bit before for the thread, but I can't quite remember the title of it. The author did manage to breed a stock of creatures that were extremely fat, muscled, and gigantic, and then did some research into how these terms applied to actual butcherable results.

[NW_Kohaku]

hmm... It would be interesting if this could actually be used to breed naturally stronger and fitter dwarves... but given the way that a 12-year childhood limits the usefulness of dwarf childbearing, that seems unlikely.

Would statups based on experience also be inheritable?  Lamarck was right?

[Dakkan]

That's the exact course the animal breeding thread went, but I don't think they took it any farther than animals, due to the difficulty of selectively breeding dwarves, even with the childhood time reduced to 1. I think there was a genetics thread around though.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=58199.msg1286392#msg1286392

There it is. Also it reminded me that color detail traits are passed along too. The original animal genetics thread author make his super livestock a particular color he wanted as well.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=53429.msg1145675#msg1145675

And there's the original thread! It's a pretty interesting read.

Edit: Yes, color trains are genetic! I meant traits, haha.

[culwin]

To me, this is just an extension of the issue where you can't pick specific stone for your mason, etc.
I agree it would be great to be pick a specific animal.

[G-Flex]

Technically, how would the runts "improve breeding stock"?  If you wanted meatier and fattier animals, you would theoretically breed those, although this game has no such mechanic as unnatural (or natural) selection, so there would be no method of improvement in either case.

Huh? Yes it does. By killing the weak animals, you prevent them from breeding; this is artificial selection in a nutshell. So yeah, there would be improvement, but probably only over a fairly long period.

Also, I question the utility of this as a means of being able to sort animals for slaughter...  I honestly don't particularly care if I'm getting the maximum theoretical amount of meat from an animal, as the amounts of meat in this newest version are tremendous already, and I tend to still prefer farms for their ability to be run without having to manually mark things for slaughter in the first place.

So you "question the utility of it" based solely on personal preference and current game balance issues, which honestly aren't the best reasons.

If we do go with this, I wonder if perhaps having an ability to nickname animals or to mark for slaughter from the look menus would be more effective.

Honestly, it's quite silly for the game to not allow you access to a unit's description page and other controls from any listing of said units. It's just bad interface design; you should be able to do what the OP asks from any such menu, ideally.