v0.31 Talk:Pasture

If you multiply a grazing creature's maximum SIZE by its GRAZER value, the result is almost always 60 million (yaks, muskoxen, deer, reindeer, and alpacas are slightly lower due to rounding); thus, all creatures graze at a rate proportional to their size. As such, the best livestock are the ones that grow up to the greatest size in the smallest amount of time, and the winner is the water buffalo, growing to 10,000kg within only 2 years. --Quietust 19:45, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Given that the feed required is (currently) strictly proportional to size, any species growing up in the same time (i.e. most pasturable creatures) will yield the same mass per feed tile. Plus, due to quirks in the butchering yields, smaller animals may do better. E.g. you should be able to feed ~22 capybara (based on size/grazer value) in the space of one water buffalo's feed lot; that's potentially >240 meat or >700 total edible in 2 years, versus the buffalo's ~47 meat or ~70 total edible. There are other factors to consider too, such as buffalo parts (currently) causing maximal clutter in any workshop they go into, whether adolescent critters produce reasonable yields or nothing but a skull (*cough*cats*), bone/skin/fur supplies for other industries, and so on. 218.186.8.11 03:18, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Added Pasture Size Suggestions

Based off !science! in the forums and tested these approximate suggestions will feed the animal and allow for regrowth and handle the trample. They are per-animal valued as best as they were tested. Further improvements could be made with better research into the distance a specific animal will cover.

Meaning of GRAZER value

The actual number specified with the GRAZER token could have any number of meanings - the amount of nutrition gained from eating grass (i.e. the amount of grass removed from the tile when the animal eats), or how often the animal needs to eat (i.e. the rate at which it becomes hungry). Given that higher values equate to lower food consumption, the latter seems more likely. --Quietust 19:54, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

It actually reflects the nutrition gain. Hunger rate is fixed at 1 per frame. A tile of [dense] grass is good for 1000 frames of grazing. Elephants gain 12 nutrition from every 10-frame grazing session. Here --Expedition leader 20:48, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Animals fighting in pasture

Animals that I have placed into a pasture have been wrestling and kicking, to the point where I have a maimed sheep blinking at me and a constant stream of combat reports. Mostly these combats don't result in anything, aside from the footless sheep, but I'd like to prevent it if I could. Anyone else seeing this behavior?

I am seeing it as well in .21. I have one very mean goat.

this is intended behaviour (it was in the dev blog), you need a bigger pasture size, or one with more grass (or both) hungry animals in crowded places get unhappy, just like dwarves do and start throwing "tantrums"

Ahhh, that explains why I suddenly got a "The Stray Horse (tame) has become enraged" message when I moved my large mammals and my poultry flock into the same pasture so they'd all be closer to the butcher shop. Gentgeen 05:29, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

This is probably the most annoying new feature. I keep getting these random animals getting bones broken. Even got 1 of them who bled to death after suffering major wounds in practically every body part. And an angry mule KO-ed a pig with a kick to the head. They even rip ears off. My dog's ear has been lying in the meeting hall for 4 years now. And when I trained the dog about 2 years back, the Stray Dog ear became a Stray war Dog ear. --Stinhad Limarezum 04:38, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Removal of Grazer Tag

Does anyone know of a way to edit the raws that will remove the grazer tag so an animal doesn't have to graze? – unsigned comment by Lennethare

Er, just open the appropriate creature raw file in a text editor (such as Notepad), find the creature definition, locate the [GRAZER:xxx] tag, then remove it and save. If you want the changes to affect a specific world, edit the files in /data/save/regionX/raw/objects, otherwise edit the files in /raw/objects to make them apply to all subsequently generated worlds. --Quietust 23:41, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Underground Grazing

Is it possible to feed animals underground with this update? 97.90.179.98 22:42, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

all caverns are full of grasslike fungi and moos, which cattle will graze without problem too--Rhenaya 09:17, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

well yes, if you have cattle in an underground pasture, your caverns will be full of moos. I suspect you meant 'moss' in this context, though. 194.200.65.239 10:26, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

you should make sound annoucnment D_D and add moos to cows though :x

Feeding of pets

It seems pets are fed by their owners as soon as they are starving. Can anyone confirm this? My setup is a Giant beetle (Civilization Forge mod), which sits on a nestbox for months in a row. It went to starving state multiple times, before it vanished again, so I guess it must have been fed by someone. I am pretty sure it was no animal caretaker, as I should have none in my fortress. Qwertyu 21:04, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Update: The pet owner really feeds pets. I just saw him walk to his pet with a "give food" job active. Where would be the best place to put this info? Here (pets need not be pastured) or under pet? Qwertyu 18:47, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Starving water buffalo

I had a water buffalo starve to death for some reason, despite it being in a pasture with plenty of grass (that it appeared to be eating). With a grazer value of sixty, it should easily be able to feed itself, no? Any idea what might have gone wrong? 99.251.236.39 01:18, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I had a massive pasture (max size, but theres a couple of farm plots in it) assigned to about 50 animals, out of these maybe 3-4 were Water Buffaloes. After a while , I saw that many animals were hungry and transferred the water buffaloes to another pasture. Then the remaining 45+ animals all became satisfied (and this includes horses, donkeys, llamas, alpacas, cows, reindeer, mules, sheep and pigs). On the other hand a couple of water buffaloes, despite having a dedicated, untouched pasture to themselves, starved. The ones that survive are permanently hungry. I think this is the way they are built. --Stinhad Limarezum 04:38, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Grazing values are counter-intuitive. The number represents how many "ticks" of time passes before an animal grazes. The smaller the number, the more it eats in any given span of time. Water buffalo are extremely hard to keep well-fed, even in huge pastures. You're much better off with many smaller grazers, both in milk production and meat production compared to grass intake(you'll also be able to shear many other types.) And if you're lucky enough to acquire pigs, they don't graze at all. --Struck Down 13:05, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Self serve

anyone know if animals will feed themselves outside of a pasture? or will they just starve to death?Cpad 04:01, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I haven't explicitly confirmed it, but I believe they will if they happen to be standing on grass for other reasons. If they're just congregating with dwarves in a meeting area with no grass then they will starve to death even with grass a few tiles away, but if they happen to be milling around in some place with grass they will eat even if there's no pasture zone there. --Ral 05:33, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Overcrowding

I've just added a section to the article titled Overcrowding. It seems like it's worth mentioning beyond just here on the talk page. But, it's a very slim section right now. My hope is that someone has done some experimenting or has more details and will expand it. From my own experience, all I can add is that I've seen tame animals even attack my dwarves. I assume this was due to overcrowding angst. If others can verify, that could be added. Vitriolum 01:02, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I slightly expanded the overcrowding section based on my own experience. After some testing, I discovered animals will only fight with animals which they compete for territory. I had one pasture zone overlapping a single tile of a 4x1 pasture zone, and the creatures in each pasture got in a fight a few times. I moved the second pasture over a single tile, and although the size of the pasture was the same, the animals stopped fighting. In conclusion, if your pastures are not 'contested', then your animals will not 'compete'. -- RadGH 04:35, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

The most frequent fights seem to be over food. Animals tend to eat out their pasture in a specific pattern (working from top-left) until some of the grazed-over area regrows; two animals in the same pasture frequently pick the same square to feed from, and this often results in fights between two heavy grazers in one pasture, no matter how large the pasture. That being said, even non-grazers (e.g. poultry) can have the occasional spat in very crowded pastures. 218.186.8.11 03:18, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Artificial pasture?

Can fungi, lichens, etc grow on irrigated cavern floors (i.e. mud), clay, and soil levels? Can I basically make a massive underground pasture for my pets for them to feed on forever? Mgrinshpon 06:02, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

moss (fungi, etc) grow on dry (or wet?) soil, or on muddy rock, like other plants. There's one quirk, though; from what I've seen, on dug, muddied stone moss grows under the mud, so visually, it just looks like mud (compared to dry soil layers or caverns, where the growing moss is obvious). If you look at specific muddy tiles, you can see the moss is there. 218.186.8.11 03:18, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Non-grazing Animals in Pastures

The article should have a small discussion on non-grazing animals using pastures. Guard dogs are mentioned quite a bit, and I'm not sure if they'll go find food when they're hungry.

dogs don't eat ._. --Introprospector 10:43, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

animal hauling - Incorrect

any idle dwarf will haul animals to pasture, not just dwarfs with animal hauling enabled. see: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4072