Bay 12 Games Forum

I've been playing with animal-raising lately and I'm pretty sure that sheep are the best option. They give you milk and wool like llamas and aplacas do; but the males will also give you horns for moody dwarves and decorating things. I had one dwarf who would have died if it weren't for a horn from a ram.

Yes, sheep give hides that can be tanned into leather.

Sheep will eat less than either the llama or alpaca; and I think they reproduce either at the same speed, or faster. Yeah, you get less meat and bone from them, but for each llama or alpaca you can keep, you can keep multiple sheep; and butchering all those extra sheep will train your butcher too.

So yeah, sheep definitely.

Oh yeah, and: Backup picks and axes. Absolutely worth it, because your dwarves are bound to do something stupid like jump into the river holding your only axe before you have enough wood to make beds for everyone.

Dear Urist McPeasant,
Please stop eating your meals in the Duke's personal dining room. I will not be held responsible for any repercussions.

Dear Cat Mc... uh, Cat,
I saw you adopting that newborn baby. I don't know what you're up to, but I am watching you.

-The Overseer

Quote from: Callista on December 25, 2011, 03:32:35 am

that are in a nearby corpse stockpile

You mean refuse stockpile - corpse stockpiles (formerly known as graveyard stockpiles) are for the bodies of creatures that are to be buried in coffins.

Yeah, my bad. I keep mixing them up, even though I use the right ones when I actually play. I guess it comes of the need to mark the refuse stockpile as specifically for corpses only; otherwise it gets clogged with bones and random junk and the hunters just leave things to rot because they have nowhere to drag them.

I doubt it, short of dropping barrels of plump helmets onto the heads of invaders. But you can do that with rocks, too, and rocks are heavier.

The "butcher" option in the butcher's shop is for already-dead animals brought in by hunters, etc., that are in a nearby corpse stockpile (and not pets, rotten or dead of starvation or old age, or too small to yield useful meat). For live animals, you want to go to the status screen ("z") and under the animals menu select the animals for slaughter. Your butcher should go and get the selected animals and take them to the butcher's shop himself. Make sure you have auto-slaughter turned on. It should be on by default, but it's under the orders menu, then workshop orders.

I always end up forgetting and putting my last rock nut through the screw press by accident...

OP, a bit of Internet etiquette:

When you post on a forum, it's considered rude for the same person to post more than once in a row; this is called "double posting". If you need to add something to your post, you can look for the "edit" button on your post (most forums have one; this one does) and add to your first post. Once someone else has posted, you can post again.

Edit: Like this. The edit button on this forum is called "modify".