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[dfJuice]

Hi, more newbie questions! Also I am trying my best to answer my own questions before coming here, although perhaps I should be performing more !!science!! instead of asking everytime, forgive my laziness. The wiki is great but doesn't seem to answer every question I have.

I've been reading what I can find about starting a meat industry but there are a few things I'm confused about. Currently the only way I know how to handle animals is assign them to a pasture, but from what I've read, having a meat industry consisting of pastured animals will kill my FPS so I should keep the animals in cages. But the only way I know how to cage an animal is to put it in a cage trap so here are my questions:

1. how do most people set up their meat industry, as in where do you actually keep the animals, should they all be grazing outside where they can eat?

4. Is there a way to cage an animal without using a cage trap?

2. I want to create a zoo for my dwarves to enjoy, will they still visit it even if I put it in a remote corner of the fortress where they won't naturally path?

3. Do all animals need to be put to pasture in a grassy area in order to live? Does the grass run out? Is it possible to create a meat industry based on animals that use energy faster than they can eat it?

[Number4]

1. Once you breach your first cavern (breach, not colonize or something - you can wall it off just after breaching) moss starts to grow in underground areas which can be eaten by grazers. You can dig out an underground soil layer, training your miner and making room for pastures. Overground pastures are often limited by the amount of protection you can provide.
You can also channel into the topmost layer of soil and then floor it over, as this area is considered "overground" from then on do it with clear glass and you'll do a dwarfy "greenhouse", do it without and you're, IMO, bugusing. Bonus: Can grow overground crops from then on.
And yes, I'll keep all my grazers on pastures, rotating them once they get eaten down. Not all animals are grazers, those that aren't don't need any food now.
4. You can assign tame animals to a cage, or buy some from caravans. Elves often bring exotic ones.
2. Consider putting a food and booze stockpile there, dwarves tend to visit THOSE.
3. As I told in 1. already, no, most actually don't http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Pasture. Also very big animals won't eat enough anyway and you'd want them to mature several years for full meat benefits, so cows or such are the very biggest you should use - however have fun assigning new pastures then. Sheep, goats and pigs are good choices.

[Pukako]

Hi there

My experiences show;

1 - Get animals.  Cage traps have a habit of catching more of the local wildlife than goblins.  Unless hunters cause mass extinctions.  Train trainable animals.  See that you have 80 untrained and 2 trained.  Use [z] - [animals] - to selectively cull those that are unneeded.

Only grazing animals need pasture.  You need grass or cave fungus for grazing, or they will get hungry then die.  Things like puppies and kittens you can cram into a cage.  Large cats and dogs can be useful chained or pastured at strategic places.

4 - build a cage - [j], then [q] on it and assign animals.  Note that assigning untrained animals can be fun.

2 - if you want your dwarves pathing to a remote corner of the fortress then go for it, but for efficiency and FPS issues, most people put them near the eatin' and drinkin' places.

3 - No, only grazing ones (think herbivores).  Yes, grass runs out, or only regrows slowly.  So don't undersize or overstock the pasture.  Some animals can't eat enough to survive, so slaughter them immediately - elephants, for example.  They will all have babies if you have a male and female (look up 'spores' somewhere on the wiki), and so you will find a meat, bone, horn, etc industry about three times as large as your farming before you know it.

The pasture thing did change DF a lot, and although I'm used to it now, I'm not keen on any more farming related activities in the future...

[dfJuice]

Thanks for your responses so far, some additional questions!

5. As mentioned, some animals will starve even if they are grazing as they use more energy than they can eat, so is it not possible to breed these?

6. Is there any disadvantage to having grazers eat the underground fungus? Does it provide less food than grass?

7. Just to clarify, in order for an animal to breed you need a male (only one) and females both trained and uncaged, but they do not need to come in contact with each other correct?

[Roctiv]

5. Nope. The best example is the good old elephant, providing about 100 meat units + a boatload of organs and bones, that starves even when pastured. So no breeding until that's fixed. (On the other hand, wild large animals do not starve, but I do not know if it is possible to make them breed)

6. I have no idea. I am tempted to say they have the same nutritive value, but !!science!! needs to be done on that point.

7. Yep. Every creature in DF reproduces via spores. No exceptions.

[NecroRebel]

Thanks for your responses so far, some additional questions!

5. As mentioned, some animals will starve even if they are grazing as they use more energy than they can eat, so is it not possible to breed these?

Wild animals don't eat, so if you keep a wild breeding pair and just kill the young as you can for food you can breed them. Tame elephants and similar are generally impossible to breed, however.

6. Is there any disadvantage to having grazers eat the underground fungus? Does it provide less food than grass?

No.

7. Just to clarify, in order for an animal to breed you need a male (only one) and females both trained and uncaged, but they do not need to come in contact with each other correct?

Yes.

At least, in theory; males seem to be able to impregnate females even if the males are caged. Also, sometimes, for no readily-apparent reason, females will give birth even if there has never been an adult male of their species on the map. The no-contact thing is absolutely true, however.

[dfJuice]

Thanks again for the responses!

Any tips for keeping FPS manageable? My plan right now is have a few animals designated as breeders constantly grazing and assign their offspring to cages when born. The offspring will still grow in cages right? I can assign different types of animals all to the same cage?

[nanomage]

Thanks again for the responses!

Any tips for keeping FPS manageable? My plan right now is have a few animals designated as breeders constantly grazing and assign their offspring to cages when born. The offspring will still grow in cages right? I can assign different types of animals all to the same cage?

You know, grazers die in cages, and offspring of grazing animals will still be grazing animals. They still grow in cages htough.
And yes, you can put multiple species in one cage.

[Number4]

I think caged grazers still need to eat, your plan would be valid for non-grazers. Remember to have "big and muscular" breeders, not "small yet incredibly weak" or something. Just choose the best and butcher the weak, this is the spartan dwarven way.

[AutomataKittay]

1. how do most people set up their meat industry, as in where do you actually keep the animals, should they all be grazing outside where they can eat?

I don't uses grazers ( also playing .18, predating pastures and grazers ). So my layout's like

Code: [Select]

v v
  j
F F F
FvFvF
FFFFF
 vFv
FFFFF
 vFv
FFFFF
{and so on}

v = restraints
F = fortification (stylistic choice, anything that blocks movements works)
j = cage

The grown up male goes in the upward-facing restraints, females goes in the side-way facing restraints. The unsurrounded ones are used to cull the newlyborn and to check the caged adults. The cages are used to hold the culled newborn until they matures and get checked again. As each selectively culled critter grows up, they get placed on restraints, opposite the older creature and butchers the older one so they don't dies of old age.

I expects grazers to need MUCH more space to eat, and thusly different layout from non-grazers. As well as not being able to cage up the newlyborn either without starvation.

4. Is there a way to cage an animal without using a cage trap?

Assign the animal to a built cage.

2. I want to create a zoo for my dwarves to enjoy, will they still visit it even if I put it in a remote corner of the fortress where they won't naturally path?

They won't if you don't designate it. Preferable to me to just place them in dining room so they can pass it often and admire it. Or just designate it in there.

7. Just to clarify, in order for an animal to breed you need a male (only one) and females both trained and uncaged, but they do not need to come in contact with each other correct?

Yep, you only need one male. You don't need trained females, but you do need tamed females ( I'm not sure if wild animal breeds in wild even with PET_EXOTIC replaced with PET currently ). All the meat industry breeding layout I've seen relies on the sporing 

Any tips for keeping FPS manageable? My plan right now is have a few animals designated as breeders constantly grazing and assign their offspring to cages when born. The offspring will still grow in cages right? I can assign different types of animals all to the same cage?

By having as few breedstock as possible. You can have at maximum of 50 animals before they stops breeding ( though those already pregnant will give birth above that limit ). I tend to only keep one male and four or five females in my layout above. Restraints and cages helps with FPS issues, but culling them down to small groups works better in practice. And you can manage it easier that way also. Yes offsprings grows up in cages, that's why I uses it in my design.

Yes you can assign all tame animals into one cages, in fact, I don't think there're any storage 'limit' for a cage 

[Darkmere]

Depending on the animal you pick, you don't need that many. If the animal is milkable, you can turn the milk into cheese or cook with it (this can yield impressive stacks, I have a llama meat roast made with a barrel of llama milk and padded with quarry bush leaves, 150+ stack roast worth over 120k dorfbucks). Shearable animals can also be used for cloth for the hospital, leaving pig tails to be brewed.

I usually pasture grazers in a soil level underground that doubles as a tree farm. Don't get anything that requires more grazing land than cows, and the trees won't get trampled very often.

[Sutremaine]

Wild animals will breed if changed from exotics to regular pets.

As for pasturing, there was a grazer value thread done on just how many tiles a pasture needed to be in order to be useable forever. Goats and sheep need 12 tiles of good grazing each, reindeer a little over 60, and then it goes up and up from there. I have pastures set up in 2 x whatever rows with a space between them to encourage grass regrowth, and the door to the pasture is frequently locked to stop dwarves walking in. Animals are left to breed until they start wearing their pastures down, at which point I butcher adults and reassign some of the young to their own pasture. This happens every couple of years.

[GreatWyrmGold]

As for pasturing, there was a grazer value thread done on just how many tiles a pasture needed to be in order to be useable forever. Goats and sheep need 12 tiles of good grazing each, reindeer a little over 60, and then it goes up and up from there. I have pastures set up in 2 x whatever rows with a space between them to encourage grass regrowth, and the door to the pasture is frequently locked to stop dwarves walking in. Animals are left to breed until they start wearing their pastures down, at which point I butcher adults and reassign some of the young to their own pasture. This happens every couple of years.

By that data and my calculations, you need 19,200/G squares of pasture to sustain an animal, where G is the grazing number. 20,000/G is preferable, to stay on the safe side and prevent irreparable damage from births, plus is easier to calculate.

[eataTREE]

Avoid, avoid, avoid large animals such as cows and yaks. They eat far too much and even if you wall off the entire surface map for their pasture they will quickly devour all the vegetation leaving you with a barren wasteland. Sheep are a good sweet spot between grazing needs and returns. Plus they can be sheared. Don't forget the milk and cheese!

[richieelias]

Yep, you only need one male. You don't need trained females, but you do need tamed females ( I'm not sure if wild animal breeds in wild even with PET_EXOTIC replaced with PET currently ). All the meat industry breeding layout I've seen relies on the sporing 

They do breed in cages if they are wild (confirmed in my current fortress with PET_EXOTIC replaced with PET).

I caged a large group of badgers and got lazy with assigning them to be tamed and I wound up with 4 cages full of wild baby badgers + 4 wild females and 3 cages with 3 wild males.

In retrospect I shouldve just placed the cages at the entrance as a self-replicating badgerbomb instead of taming them in the end... ah well.