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[Hans Lemurson]

Do any other animals besides cats provide vermin-hunting services?  Can I run a cat-free fortress by using raccoons or foxes instead?  Or giant leopards?

[3]

No.

Random extra content: Vermin-hunting creatures that have to eat can only eat vermin. Verminhunter civs are not a good idea.

[Bognor]

If your goal is to avoid cats, an alternative way of getting rid of vermin is with animal trappers. http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Trapper

[Hans Lemurson]

Can you then transform them into food, or will you end up with just a bunch of TAME vermin running around everywhere?

[3]

As the page states, a captured vermin will be eaten immediately by a passing hungry dwarf. The issue isn't having too many tame vermin; it's getting the chance to tame them in the first place.

[Hans Lemurson]

So if you never bother to empty your traps, then hungry dwarfs will do it for you?

[FleshForge]

I actually just was trying to do something with trapping and I never saw anyone eat a captured vermin, despite letting them intentionally get low on food.  Is there a trick to that?  Maybe I'll give it another try with a much larger stock of animal traps, I had built about 15 and then was periodically putting them into a cage once they were caught.

[Particleman]

I've had dwarves go to the vermin stockpile, which was quite out of the way of both the dining room and food stockpiles, grab a rat or a cockroach, and take it to the dining room to eat it. Just has to do with the dwarf's personality, would be my guess.

[FleshForge]

Sounds like I should have been leaving them in the traps rather than putting them in built cages.

[Sphalerite]

As the page states, a captured vermin will be eaten immediately by a passing hungry dwarf. The issue isn't having too many tame vermin; it's getting the chance to tame them in the first place.

This bug has been fixed in DF2010.  Captured vermin will now only be eaten as a last resort by a starving dwarf.

[JAFANZ]

Can captured vermin be butchered?

[Sphalerite]

Can captured vermin be butchered?

No.  Dwarves will eat them raw if they're starving, and not be happy about it.

A few vermin, such as fire snakes and moghoppers, can be processed for extract by a dwarf with the Animal Dissector or Fish Dissector skill.  The vermin does not survive the process.  I have this mental image of a dwarf taking a fire snake and wringing it out over a barrel like wringing the water out of a wet towel.

[FleshForge]

So it isn't quite the backbone utility skill like hunting is then, that's a shame, it sounded nifty.

[Internet Kraken]

Do any other animals besides cats provide vermin-hunting services?  Can I run a cat-free fortress by using raccoons or foxes instead?  Or giant leopards?

You could add the [VERMINHUNTER] tag to a creature's raws to make them hunt vermin. However, you should know this makes the animal adopt owners like cats do. So if you're reason for wanting to not use cats was because of this, you're out of luck.

[G-Flex]

As the page states, a captured vermin will be eaten immediately by a passing hungry dwarf. The issue isn't having too many tame vermin; it's getting the chance to tame them in the first place.

I was under the impression that this was fixed. I'll try to find a reference.