Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[UristMcDonald]

I am starting a Badger farm in my current fort, and wanted to see if anyone had any tips about the farming of wild animals. Normally I play with no exotic, but in this case I decided to farm exotic critters specifically for the challenge.

Is there a better way to transfer the badgers than build cage, release animal, remove cage? If I knock the badgers out cold, will dwarves be able to drag them?

[franti]

Use a Mechanism and a hallway with a kitten at the end and an empty cage in between.
Also, I've noticed that since Tame animals that die of old age can't be butchered, this is more efficient than taming them, epecially with animals that aren't aggressive, but breed a lot: Naked Mole Dogs work great.

[Girlinhat]

KO'd creatures are technically safe, your dwarves do not run from them, but at the same time cannot be pitted.  Only tame animals are available for pitting/caging when they're loose.  Trying to move a wild animal from a cage to another cage or from a cage to a pit will result in a job interruption and dead dwarves.  Creative use of cage traps and bait are needed to ensure transfer of cages.  As for containment and breeding/butchering, creative use of pressure plates and hatches can give great results.

[Sphalerite]

Exotic creatures won't breed.  You have to use the no exotic hack or the badgers won't reproduce.  You don't have to tame them for them to breed, but you have to be able to tame them.

When I breed wild animals, I usually use the method of building their cages in a room, linking a lever to the room, closing and locking the door, then pulling the lever.  When I want to recapture them, I build a lot of cage traps in the corridor leading to the room, then open the door and wait.

Sometimes it is useful to use a chained war dog behind a window and remote-controlled door to encourage them to move onto the cage traps.  Open the door to let them see the dog and scare them into moving onto the traps.

[UristMcDonald]

Well, I have a way to butcher them, but no place to raise them until ready to butcher. Hm... Maybe I can build a large room, where the animals will breed. At the each end of the room will be a row of floodgates. Behind one side will be pressurized water, behind the other side will be rows of cage traps. Past the traps will be a way to drain the water. When the time comes to butcher, I will flood the entire room, pushing all the badgers towards the traps. Once caught, they can safely be harvested by dwarves. Those badgers that are ready for slaughter can be taken to a floodroom, those who are not can be taken back to the breeding pit.

There's a couple of weaknesses to this plan, namely the fact that some of the badgers will be injured in the flooding (not too big of a deal, as long as they survive) and the other, bigger flaw is the pure dwarfpower involved: each time I want to slaughter a few badgers, I have to put all of them in cages, then select the ones I want back in the pit and then send dwarves to throw them in. Still, I can't think of a better way...

EDIT: Exotic creatures don't breed? Crud. I guess I'll change badgers to [PET] and just not tame them...

EDIT II: Dogs probably won't work for badgers. I imagine they'll run TOWARDS the dog, instead of away from him

[Sphalerite]

Badgers will run away from war dogs except when enraged.  When enraged, they'll run towards the dogs.  They spend most of the time not enraged, so a war dog behind a window should still work to scare them out of the breeding room onto the cage traps.

[Girlinhat]

Build a large box in the air.  Poke holes in the floor.  Place hatches over the holes.  Place pressure plates around the remaining floor.  Link plates to hatches randomly.

When the creatures breed, their numbers increase, and as they wander, some will step on the plates and open the hatches, and eventually, another will be standing on the plate when it open and drop down to the processing area.  This could be a deep pit, or lead to the barracks (bonus points if it drops them in the dining hall to splatter and cause "doesn't really care" on civilians).  The great thing about this, is that there will never be zero occupants - someone will always have to be alive to hit the plate.  A female chained to the wall and a male somewhere in the fort can ensure that it's never entirely empty.  By adjusting the number of hatches and plates and their connections, you can directly control the population in the box.  Want more slaughter?  Add more hatches.  Want higher box groupings?  Add less plates!

[UristMcDonald]

When changing the weight triggers for pressure plates, is it possible to make it trigger only when a baby animal steps on the plate? If so, I could raise the chances of adults dropping rather than young...

[Girlinhat]

Check the pressure plate page of the wiki, it lists animal sizes and animal child sizes.  But, there's no upper bounding, so it's slightly moot.  They can be made to trigger when an adult steps on, allowing children and adult to fall.  They can be triggered when an adult or child steps on, allowing adults and children to fall.  They can NOT be triggered only when a child steps.

[Sphalerite]

Actually, I'm fairly certain that pressure plates can have both the upper and lower limits of the triggering weight set.  So it should be possible to set a pressure plate to trigger for only child animals.  The challenge will be that there seems to be a minimum setting for the upper and lower boundaries, so some baby animals will simply be too small for any pressure plate to detect.  Also, not all child animals are the same size, and they probably change smoothly from child to adult size as they grow.

[Girlinhat]

Wait, really?  Hmm, I haven't used plates recently enough.  I need to brush off my science hat.

Also, if you make the weight limit halfway between adult and child, that should do just fine.

[franti]

Water + Large room full of living things = death
Just use a number of hallways with the animal on one end, a cage trap in the middle, and a kitten on the other end. Great kitten-disposal system, too.

[UristMcDonald]

Well the bastards killed one of my dwarves, so they deserve to get a little roughed-up .

[FallingWhale]

I use a lock.

Code: [Select]

▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒
  ╪  ╪ ^╞╡▒
▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒
Put that over a spike drop next to the butcher.