Bay 12 Games Forum

During my Great Moghopper Experiment, 2 dwarfs on trap detail kept the food vermin free.  Plus you can tame and sell the vermin for cash.  Or give them to dwarfs that like rats or whatever.

Downside is you have to micro dumping the traps every so often.  And you have two dwarfs that do nothing but run around tackling roaches and lizards.

I would recommend against building the animal traps and baiting them.  It's basically 4 times the work for 1/2 the result.  Only useful for trapping in a specific spot. 

For local vermin control, kennels running 'catch live land animal' on repeat is the way to go.  One dwarf might be enough, I was more interested in how many I could catch vs keeping food stocks clear.

The Great Eggperiment continues.

Eggs laid with 50 peafowl on the map will not hatch.
Eggs laid with 49 peafowl on the map will hatch
Starting with 50 birds, and killing 1 after the eggs are laid will not make eggs hatch.
Starting with 25 geese and killing the gander after the eggs are laid, eggs still hatch (opposite of my original assertion)
After ~200 chicks hatch out, fertile eggs will stop hatching, but they remain fertile.  I know because..
Putting enough chicks into cages makes fertile eggs start hatching again.  Exact number unknown.
One job at a time is created for each cage chicks are assigned to.  i.e. you need one cage for every dwarf you want to be caging free range birds.

Currently I'm trying to figure out how to get the chicks into cages efficiently.  Next fort I'm going to spread the cages out.  Previously, I put them all in a block, and I think that was causing pathing problems.  I may also spread out the nestboxes more.

Lastly, nestboxes with eggs attract flies.  Nestboxes seem to preserve eggs like a stockpile.

I almost always cut every tree down and then at some point say, "Take that, Lorax!"

Woops, ignore this, bad science.  I forgot about the animal pop cap.  Already had too many to hatch.  Sorry! I'd been awake for like 30 hours straight.  And the sun was in my eyes.  And my dog ate my homework.

Edit:  On the plus side, I discovered that eggs in nest boxes have a lower priority for cooking jobs than booze in barrels.  So setting 'make lavish meal' on repeat will make a TON of wealth very fast and cook up all the booze in your fort.  As long as you have eggs disabled in all your stockpiles.

Legendary dining room.
Metal armor and weapons
100Z high gold phallus

I love that this was weaponized within minutes of being posted.  Well done!

Are you sure that this wasn't just a case of eggs not hatching?  I know it's possible for eggs to sometimes just not hatch, even with males on the map.  Repeating the test would help clarify this (savescumming may help); if you do it like five times and the eggs never hatch it would look quite confirmed.

I'm sure

And there's just no point.  If you want to make eggs not hatch, just pick them up and put them in a stockpile.

Although it would be cool if sometimes a bunch of chicks came boiling out of your kitchen stockpile.

Robes and dresses have [LBSTEP:MAX].  So they should let you get away without pants.

I've not heard of anyone doing this though, so maybe it's bugged.  Pants science is needed.

If you kill all the males after the eggs are laid, the eggs don't hatch.

Not sure exactly when the 'magic' happens, but it's longer than 6 weeks.  I'm guessing 3 months, but this knowledge is completely useless, so I'm not going to check.  Me go sleep now.