Okay, so I've got turkeys. Probably in the range of 50 to 60 turkeys, mostly hens, but with perhaps 5 or 6 gobblers. I've also got a nice nestbox room next to my food stockpiles for when I feel like eating eggs (or I turn eggs off in the stockpiles and the kitchen menu when I feel like I need a new generation of turkeys). But right now, the problem I face is this: all these damn turkeys are just...wandering around.
During the fledgling years of my egg operation, I just let them wander, until one day I realized that while dwarves don't have a problem with a tiny sun-room meeting area, turkeys do. My doctor got mauled by turkeys before I realized the problem, and without hands, he was unable to operate on himself, even to save his own life.
The next stage was to designate my empty pasture areas (I used to have an alpaca milk and wool industry. Don't ask how that went) to hold the turkeys. This was nice, as with a huge, far-flung pasture area, the turkeys were able to roam free without feeling the need to attack dwarves or each other (or, stupidly, my war Grizzlies). Unfortunately, this had the unintended consequence of having my turkeys unable to use the nest boxes, as they were in a separate section of the fort. By periodically turning the pasture off long enough to let the turkeys for lay the eggs, and then turning it back on (about once a season, or whenever I felt like I needed eggs), this solved the problem...except that it was now a manual process.
Now I was planning on simply continuing this way forever - manual egg laying times, no wandering turkeys. But recently, I have 1) re-designated a MUCH larger meeting area for dwarves (and thus, turkeys). I don't know if it's big enough to prevent turkey tantrums, but perhaps we'll see, but also 2) I'm getting back into the alpaca business, and I don't want turkey in my alpaca or alpaca in my turkey - it's just bad form.
So a few selected questions:
- If I put turkeys in a pasture, and nest boxes in the same pasture, will the next boxes get used?
- How many birds do most people have for their egg industries? is 50-60 overkill (fps is, miraculously, not a problem)?
- If I don't want my turkeys caged up, but don't want them "free range," and assuming the pasture nest boxes work, how much pasture area is actually needed for these birds? I suppose I could set the pasture just about anywhere, as they don't actually need grass to eat - I just want to keep them all penned up in the same-ish area so they aren't jamming up the meeting area. I mean...can you imagine getting off from a hard day of mining, you head over to the local tavern with your buddies, and it's so filled with turkeys that you can't hear your own thoughts?
- For others with egg industries, what's your setup?