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[duckInferno]

So I have all these freaking dogs and cats and donkeys and horses and cows mingling with my dwarves in the statue garden and dining room.  My wiki'ing and searches have drawn a blank as to how to deal with them, short of mass-butchering.  The animal stockpile is just for caged animals (I think)... is there an easy way to create some sort of animal room (without caging them) so they just wander off and socialise with cats rather than dwarves?

[Shrugging Khan]

Well, you could always try caging them...oh wait, you refused that! Sorry, no can do.


...put them in a cage inside an airlock. Make a zoo behind the airlock. Close the gate to the fort, then open the cage via a lever. Wait till the animals wandered off into the zoo room. Then close the airlock, again via a lever.

Rinse and repeat.

[duckInferno]

That is so f*cking dwarf fortress.  Ask how to herd animals and you get euthanisation chamber schematics xD

[nuker w]

Beter keep feeding them. Or they may rebel and take over your fort....

ANIMAL FORTRESS

"No animal shall ever be sober"

[Neyvn]

Make a Meeting zone in an area of the fortress while the rest of it is zoned for Barrows...
Lock the door to meeting zone behind the last Animal...
Done...

[Shrugging Khan]

It's not an euthanasation chamber until you include some manner of killing mechanism.

Do animals need food, by the way?

[Strangething]

You need an animal pit. It's hidden in the activity zones menu. Check the wiki.

[Beeskee]

If you build a cage (b - j) you can assign animals to it. Like the pic in my avatar you can put an infinite amount of animals in a single cage.

The animal stockpile is for unbuilt cages.   You can deconstruct a cage with animals in it and it will go to the stockpile with all the animals still inside. It will show up on the expanded list (x).

[lowbart]

Make a Meeting zone in an area of the fortress while the rest of it is zoned for Barrows...
Lock the door to meeting zone behind the last Animal...
Done...

That's what I did. I found a big open area, dezoned all the other meeting areas, waited for the animals to go hang out in it. Then build a wall around it and leave a single pet-blocking door.

What I haven't been able to figure out is how to purposely get animals back OUT of cages except for attaching them to a lever.

[Mason11987]

Using a lever is really the only way, unless you want to drop them from above with a pit zone. [p]

[Beeskee]

What I haven't been able to figure out is how to purposely get animals back OUT of cages except for attaching them to a lever.

Query the cage (q) and unassign the animals from it, similar to how you assign them to a cage. Select the animal from the list and press Enter to clear the green + from beside their name. Animals assigned to that cage will be at the top of the list of animals.

It takes a little while for a dwarf with the Animal Care labor enabled to come let them out. That labor is also used to cage animals. Since it's so important I usually enable it on all my dwarfs, or at least most of them.

[Particleman]

Dig a room, carve a hole in the ceiling, seal off the room, throw animals down the hole.

[Urist Imiknorris]

It takes a little while for a dwarf with the Animal Care labor enabled to come let them out. That labor is also used to cage animals. Since it's so important I usually enable it on all my dwarfs, or at least most of them.

Actually the skill is Animal Hauling. Animal Care is somewhat not-useful.

[Tcei]

Someone posted ages ago a plan that involved presure plates and cleavrly placed doors that eventualy dumped animals outside for raiders to pick off.

You could probably do something similar with burrows. Have a hallway leading to a meeting area that no dwarf can reach (due to burrows) then use a preasure plate to triger a bridge to drop the little blighters into a pit. Or atom smash or...

[Nikov]

With the caste system and incredibly elaborate modding...

Furry Fortress.

Back on the rails, a really good way to have a controlled population of livestock is mules. Horse + Donkey = sterile mule. They don't breed, are large meat animals, can be selectively bred with one gigantic, enormous male horse to be very productive and I think you can milk the female donkeys.