So far, I've kept a veritable Noah's Arc of every single animal that I've acquired. Each one sits in its own species' pasture in a neat, organized manner.
YAme&ICM5☼!
Whenever I go into the Animals menu listing to slaughter them, though, I get a massive unhappy thought when I look at the total and nearly complete disorganization of the list.
Don't use that, then. Use 'v' to view the animal stats by wandering your cursor over the map onto the animals concerned, go to (p)references and then you can toggle the "Ready for (s)laughter" between N and Y, if it's a tame non-pet. I do this to choose to slaughter the least desirable animals, by directly comparing with the z-description from within the same (v)iew screens.
and just as frustrating when you want to move the pasture to make room for a wind power plant or something.
I've already mentioned my method. Assuming a majority of creatures
are pastured, go to that pasture you want to abandon and de-pasture the ones at the top, who are the residents of it. Then go to the new pasture (or create one to go into) and scan down the list for animals not assigned to any other pastures/cages/tethers. All the ones you just now released will be in that list (spread around your entire animal list; which, if it is anything like mine, is huge, but still easy to discover), although so will all animals you haven't yet pastured. But then if you're working on a single species in a single pasture you can work the rest out easily enough.
I want to be able to wholesale slaughter large portions of my herd without having to grind through the entire list, looking for six or or seven animals at a time out of a list of hundreds.
Once you embrace the above, the problems will not be as you have just stated, but the near insta-Cluttering of your butchers' shops (you may want a score of them, with just as many butchers, if you have the population to do this) and then ensure that all the food-grade outpourings (both regular meat and the various offals/eyeballs/etc) are quickly [TSK]ed and moved into a suitable stockpile, the fat (especially) rendered as quickly as possible, the skins taken up by a set of dwarfs dedicated to fulfulling the tannery job-queue and the rest set to be dumped. (Actually, bones and skulls can be used, but I tend to force-dump them just to get them out of the butchery shops, then unforbid them in order to make use of them for bone bolts/totems/whatever. Nervous tissue is just plain useless, horns and similar can be used in craftworks (or decoration), hair/wool I
think can be spun into yarns, after butchering (as well as after shearing, both of these tasks in a farmer's workshop) and there may be occasional other produce but I can't think what they are, but all the stuff that doesn't rot can wait.
All the stuff that
does rot needs to be dealt with quickly (if only put into stockpiles, although setting up a number of kitchens (and set various dwarfs to Cooking duties) to deal with the meat/offal overflow and render the fat would be a good first step. As is having the butchery in the open air (or at least exposed to the open air, after removing the roof above it), just in case things start rotting before they are all moved accordingly. At least that's my approach.
Dwarf Therapist only allows you to have nicknames that are only so long. It's not enough characters for me, so I end up having to go through the Unit list every single time I want do something like change my Doctor 6, which has just completed a Strange Mood, into a Stonecrafter 11.
Hence my three-character abbreviations, briefly mentioned. Urist "XB4Mil6SCr12p" McUrist might be a crossbowdwarf (at least part of the time) with a decent Milling skill, a very good Stone Crafting skill and a pet. But I'm not necessarily consistent in that. And it looks awful when you get engravings of them and their actions on moodcrafts.
Unrelated Sidenote: I just realized that mined ice will sublimate upon melting.
Yep, but if you embark upon a permanent glacier it should stick around (above and below ground, magma excepted) because the temperature is cold enough year-round, and once you build structures with it (walls, etc), it is impervious. In fact, you could use it to hold magma back. One of the little quirks (not guaranteed to last beyond too many verisons, but has been so for an awful long time already) is that constructed stuff does not burn even if it's flammable or melt even if its melting point is below the ambient (or, via applied !!MAGMA!!) temperature.
As I am ninjaed, on the indicated point, here's something about
manual room assignment. If I'm making deliberate bedroom-assignments (or, indeed, other types of room, but usually it's a bedroom, or the bedroom is the base one from which the others offshoot), the colour of the dwarfs in the list indicates whether they have or have not got a room. If I'm only
marginally fussy but want to give everyone a room, as well as the nobles, I search for the nobles for the larger bedrooms I created, etc, but then I go to the array of identikit bedrooms that I've built (assigning them to be dug out, the bed built, the bed location designated and the designation getting fulfilled being the longest wait, game-time, in my experience) and just "q, make bed(r)room, {+/- to size}, <enter>, (a)ssign" then "+" on down to the first green name (or "*" to the first page with a green name, and "+" into it) then <enter>. Names that are yellow (or dull yellow, when the cursor is not on them) already have a room, names that are green (brightest green when the cursor
is on them) need one.
Go to the next bed, "q, r, etc" it and find the next dwarf. Ok, so I've done it a lot, but it's an easy sequence to repeat. Also, once you find that you've had to page-down (with "*") a certain number of times, you can automatically do that without concentrating the next time, because the list stays in the same order. As long as you have beds to assign, keep on doing this.
Note: if you have married dwarfs, assigning one spouse to the bed will auto-assign their spouse as well. They will become yellow in the list, but once you know this you don't
need to know about specific spouses. Children do not get assigned to the beds of their parents (if you've giving them one, it's their own) and babies do not get assigned to the beds either but don't technically need one while at this stage of their life. But appear on the list as assignable (as per everyone else) and I tend to get them a bed as soon as I think about it, so that I don't have to worry about them as they start to mature.
It's perfectly possible to assign a dwarf to two (or more) bedrooms. (Or throne rooms, or tombs.) This does not (AFAIK) help their mood, any, so I wouldn't do it. If you're wanting to assign a newly ennobled Baron, or somesuch, to a fancy room and find they already have one (being yellow on said list) use the (R)ooms menu (shift-R, as opposed to lower-case 'r' for the Reports) and you'll see a list of Bedrooms, Offices, Dining Rooms, etc[1]. If it's merely a built bed it'll be a "Bed", but if it was made to define a bedroom you get something like "Meager Quarters" (sorts from best of the kind to worst of the kind, within each kind) and either "No Owner" next to it or the name of the dwarf. I forget now what happens with married couples. I
think both names are listed, but you might want to make note from of the spouse (if any) of your favoured dwarf and keep a look out for their name as well as the favoured one. Scroll down the list (cursor up/down, or page up/down for page at a time) and then when you've found the room concerned "q" it to find the room-assigning screen, with Current Owner: (or owners) confirmed.
You can either (f)ree the room or (a)ssign to Nobody,
then go to your absolutely fabulous new accommodation (assuming here that you've not just actually downgraded them from a blinking good room, by accident!) and assign the dwarf. Or go back into the (R)ooms list, find the top-listed room (or the top-most one that you're willing to shove a less worthy dwarf out of, in the process) and then (q) into it to (a)ssign what you know is the most top-notch room you have in your power to provide.
Sorry, way too much description, but it might help.
[1] Inclusive of 'Zone's, workshops, farm-plots, etc, which you might find useful to know about, but some are a little too similar and unspecified.