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v0.34:Pasture

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Revision as of 00:58, 5 June 2012 by HiEv (talk | contribs) (New feature from v0.34.11)
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This article is about an older version of DF.

Pastures are activity zones that the player creates to hold tame animals, especially grazing animals. Herbivorous animals require grass, cave moss, or floor fungus to graze upon, and larger herbivores need a greater amount of grass to feed themselves. Pandas and their relatives require bamboo rather than other types of grass. Using pastures allows herbivorous animals to be restricted to areas where they will have plenty to eat.

A pasture is defined using i-n to draw a rectangle, and then animals are selected to graze. Having pressed i to define a zone, highlight the pasture and press N (Shift+n), select the animal(s) you wish to pasture using +/-, and press Enter. Once all animals are selected, finish by pressing Esc and idle dwarves with animal hauling will lead the animals to pasture.

Any tame animal may be assigned to a pasture. You can also assign pastures inside and use them to put animals that do not need to eat in certain areas. If there is fungus or moss on your indoor floors, the animals will consume that in place of grass. Baby animals born to pastured mothers will automatically be assigned to its mother's pasture.

Grazing animals and pasture size

Grazing animals use the [GRAZER:<value>] token to signify how much grass they need to eat. This is an inverse number - the value in grazer signifies how much hunger is reduced when eating a unit of grass. A creature with ten times the grazer value needs one tenth the amount of grass (and hence, pasture land) as a creature with a small grazer value. If you started your fortress in an undead biome, you may need to assign more space for a pasture as much of the grass is dead. Animals will not eat dead grass and will only eat the still living patches.

Animals which graze are typically good livestock candidates, as many of them produce wool or milk, and the only creatures which can produce both wool and milk are grazers. Creatures with larger sizes consume more grass, but also produce more meat when butchered.

Each time unit adds one point to hunger. An animal takes an average of one turn per ten time units, and takes one time unit to eat grass. If there were an unlimited amount of grass on a tile, even animals with [GRAZER:1] would be able to feed themselves, however, there are at most 4 bunches of grass. Therefore, a creature of standard speed and agility with [GRAZER:3] would not be able to survive, and creatures with [GRAZER:4] require a constant source of grass (in other words infinite sized pastures) to survive. In practice, anything with [GRAZER:20] or less is completely incapable of feeding itself. Because of this, the larger creatures like dralthas are virtually impossible to keep fed, and elephants are incapable of feeding themselves fast enough to stave off starvation.

If grazing animals consume all the grass on a tile, the tile will be reverted to the base layer material. This may be sand, clay or soil. In this way you receive a visual clue as to the size of the pasture required.

Overcrowding

It is possible to overcrowd a pasture. Animals may become enraged and start fights. This is similar to a dwarf throwing a tantrum and can be solved by enlarging your pasture or keeping fewer animals in it.

Another possibility is to split a large pasture which holds many animals into several smaller pastures, with the pasture size reflecting the amount of grazing the animal needs to survive. Animals will only fight each other if their pasture is sharing the same tiles as the creature they are fighting with.[Verify]

Other Applications

A pasture can serve as a more advanced replacement for a rope, which allows you to "tie" multiple animals to the same spot and even allows you to place pets and animals assigned to dwarves.

This can be used to safely get rid of immigrant pets or cat infestations by pasturing them outside the fortress to serve as an early warning system and meatshield or by pasturing them inside a room that then gets accidentally filled with magma.

Note that while a pasture is a quick way of placing animals exactly in one defined area, it does not restrict the movement of an animal if they are threatened by an enemy - the animal will flee as normal, and will trigger an animal hauling task to re-pasture the animal once it leaves the border of the pasture. This is important as the announcement of an ambush may trigger a flood of animal haulers rushing to the pasture and into the face of the enemy.

List of grazing animals

Animal Grazer
value
Creature
Size
Milkable Shearable Minimal Pasture Size
per individual
Elephant 12 5,000,000 Cannot Self Feed (Graze Value <= 20)
Rhinoceros 20 3,000,000 Cannot Self Feed (Graze Value <= 20)
Giant bull moose 23 4,257,750 29 x 29
Draltha 24 2,500,000 29 x 29
Giant moose cow 38 2,554,650 28 x 28
Water buffalo 60 1,000,000 Yes 18 x 18
Giraffe 60 1,000,000 18 x 18
Yak 85 700,000 Yes 16 x 16
Gigantic panda 92 1,160,900 N/A (only eat bamboo, will starve without it)
Cow 100 600,000 Yes 14 x 14
Unicorn 100 600,000 14 x 14
Bull moose 114 525,000 14 x 14
Horse 120 500,000 Yes 13 x 13
Camel (both) 120 500,000 Yes 13 x 13
Giant capybara 133 523,350 13 x 13
Mule 150 400,000 12 x 12
Cow moose 190 315,000 11 x 11
Donkey 200 300,000 Yes 10 x 10
Elk 200 300,000 10 x 10
Muskox 210 285,000 10 x 10
Giant red panda 255 235,100 N/A (only eat bamboo, will starve without it)
Tapir 300 200,000 Yes 9 x 9 ?
Llama 333 180,000 Yes Yes 8 x 8
Deer 428 140,000 7 x 7
Reindeer 461 130,000 Yes 7 x 7
Panda 462 130,000 N/A (only eat bamboo, will starve without it)
Warthog 600 100,000 6 x 6
Elk bird 600 100,000 6 x 6
Kangaroo 667 90,000 Yes 6 x 6
Alpaca 857 70,000 Yes Yes 5 x 5
Goat 1,200 50,000 Yes 4 x 4
Mountain goat 1,200 50,000 4 x 4
Ibex 1,200 50,000 4 x 4
Impala 1,200 50,000 4 x 4
Sheep 1,200 50,000 Yes Yes 4 x 4
Capybara 1,333 45,000 4 x 4
Wombat 2,308 25,000 3 x 3 ?
Gazelle 3,000 20,000 3 x 3
Hoary marmot 6,000 10,000 2 x 2
Red panda 12,000 5,000 N/A (only eat bamboo, will starve without it)
Hare 17,143 3,500 1 x 1 ?
Groundhog 20,000 3,000 1 x 1
Cavy 75,000 800 1 x 1 (can feed up to 3 cavies)
Rabbit 120,000 500 1 x 1 (can feed up to 5 rabbits)

The following giant animals do not modify the grazer token inherited from their parents and are bugged to eat less than their size would indicate.

Animal Grazer
value
Creature
Size
Milkable Shearable Minimal Pasture Size
per individual
Giant tapir 300 1,700,000 Yes 9 x 9 ?
Giant kangaroo 667 857,700 Yes 6 x 6
Giant ibex 1,200 560,000 4 x 4
Giant impala 1,200 560,000 4 x 4
Giant wombat 2,308 377,750 3 x 3 ?
Giant hare 17,143 224,560 1 x 1 ?