Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[EmperorJon]

Soil that's 'subt.' or whatever will grow cave moss, not sure about mud.

[Ullallulloo]

Soil that's 'subt.' or whatever will grow cave moss, not sure about mud.

Yes, mud will grow cave moss and floor fungus and animals will eat it. It doesn't have to be any place special, although you probably have to breach a cavern.

[astianax]

yup, breaching a cavern is about all you need to do, if you've got a few levels of clay, sand, and/or soil at the top of your fort. heck, the cavern you breach doesn't even need to have any moss or fungus growing in it! (my latest first cave level was just mud with the underground trees and shrubs growing on it, and yet cave moss sprouted everywhere indoors near the surface. even when i breached cavern 2, which was full of moss and such, cavern 1 never grew any)

and yes, animals will eat the cave moss as grass. i was eventually able to move all of my pastures indoors

[Kaos]

I've started my Caprin Fortress.  I am embarking with six [GRAZER:1200] creatures (6 sheep, 6 goats) and will likely have [GRAZER:RAVENOUS] creatures pulling my wagon, so I should be able to correlate grazer numbers to grass tiles for my (very rainy) location.  I will report back with !!SCIENCE!!, but I would urge the rest of you to also attempt to quantify GRAZER data in a slightly more arid biome.

Definitely carving my Great Hall in the shape of a sheep skull.

Update: I have determined that a [GRAZER:1200] can deplete just about one tile of dense grass per month, even in a rainy biome.  The smaller the pasture, the more aggressively they go after grass and denude the soil.  The tug-of-war bug means that whenever I queue up a bunch of milking and shearing jobs, I have to let the animals all out of their pastures briefly, and I can't be certain I've assigned them back to their different-sized pastures correctly, but as of 22 Hematite, the pastures stand as follows:

• 2x2 pasture - three of four tiles depleted, last tile "sparse"
• 2x3 pasture - 1 dense, 2 normal, 3 sparse tiles, and none depleted
• 3x3 pasture - 6 dense, 0 normal, 3 sparse, and 0 depleted

If we assume that a tile's grass depth is two bits (00 = soil, 01 = sparse, 10 = normal, 11 = dense) or 0-3 units of grass, it looks like the first goat started with 12 units of grass and depleted 11 of them in almost 4 months.  The second goat started with 18 units of grass, and has probably also depleted 11... but because normal and dense tiles are nearby, some of them grew back.  The total depletion in that pasture has only been 8 units of grass.  Having the extra two tiles of grass (or perhaps having an extra two tiles of perimeter) seems to have resulted in an extra 3 units of grass growth.  Having another three tiles of pasture gave us 27 starting units and only a net loss of 6 grass consumed, or an extra 2 units of grass growth.

If we assume that all three pastures were grazed at the same rate -- let's guess that they actually lost 12 units of grass each, and growback was 1 unit, 4 units, and 6 units respectively -- then there is probably a size at which we could grow back 12 units of grass.  That's the sustainable pasture size we're shooting for.  Remember that these numbers are only valid for GRAZER:1200...

Over three months, we saw:
2x2, area 4 tiles, perimeter of 12 => 1 unit of growback
2x3, area 6 tiles, perimeter of 14 => 4 units of growback
3x3, area 9 tiles, perimeter of 16 => 6 units of growback

I feel like each grass tile's growth rate is based on the density of adjacent grass (did I read that somewhere?) so there may be an advantage to long, skinny pastures where each grazed tile will always have two dense neighbors.

Awesome job! based on this I ran my own experiments, my conclusion was that a grazer 1200 needs a pasture of 16 tiles of dense grass to not starve, from that i extrapolated the other grazer values and got this table:

Tiles      Animal   Grazer      
1.600,00 Elephant       12
  960,00 Rhinoceros       20
  800,00 Draltha               24
  320,00 Water buffalo       60
  320,00 Giraffe               60
  225,88 Yak               85
  192,00 Cow             100
  192,00 Unicorn            100
  160,00 Horse             120
  160,00 Camel (both)     120
  128,00 Mule             150
   96,00 Donkey             200
   96,00 Elk                     200
   91,43 Muskox             210
   57,66 Llama             333
   44,86 Deer             428
   41,65 Reindeer             461
   32,00 Warthog             600
   32,00 Elk bird             600
   22,40 Alpaca             857
   19,20 Pig                  1.000
   16,00 Sheep          1.200
   16,00 Goat          1.200
   16,00 Mountain goat 1.200
   14,40 Capybara          1.333
    6,40 Gazelle          3.000
    3,20 Hoary marmot  6.000
    0,96 Groundhog     20.000
    0,26 Cavy         75.000
    0,16 Rabbit      120.000
I'll add it to wiki but want to verify first if it's correct... so far haven't had issues with the numbers....

By the way have the conditions for grass to grow been tested?? I mean it grows on soil "Above Ground", does "light/dark", "inside/ outside" have any effect???

[SirAaronIII]

I think it has to be outside, but I'm not sure. Great discovery, by the way!

[wuphonsreach]

In my embark, after the first spring (it's now early summer, but the goats have been pastured for about a year, give or take).  This is a temperate biome and the water does freeze for a month or so during the winter.

Goat #1 - 2x8 zone.  1 dead shrub, 1 bamboo, 10 dense, 1 sparse, 1 regular grass tiles, 1 mudstone pebbles

Goat #2 - 2x8 zone. 2 live shrubs, 1 bamboo, 4 mudstone or pebbles, 7 dense, 1 sparse, 1 regular

So, 16 tiles seems okay for a goat, given that I only have 13 tiles of grass for the first one with grass and 9 tiles of grass for the second one.  I don't know if the mudstone or pebble tiles had grass before or were rock.  It might even be a bit overkill doing a 2x8 for a goat and a 2x6 / 3x4 might be plenty as long as it all starts as grass.

Edit: Year 2

Goat #1 - 1 dead shrub, 1 live shrub, 1 bamboo, 1 pebbles, 7 dense, 4 regular, 2 sparse
Goat #2 - 10 dense, 0 regular, 2 sparse, 2 mudstone, 2 pebbles

So the grass is definitely growing back for goat #2 faster then it can eat it.  Goat #1 is breaking about even.

[Lytha]

For your information: you can milk an animal about once per month, not twice per year. The twice per year number matches the times you can shear an alpaca though.

[Kaos]

does animals graze when not in a pen/pasture?? I'm wondering if the smallest grazers:

0,96 Groundhog  20.000
0,26 Cavy         75.000
0,16 Rabbit      120.000

they require less than one tile to feed, would they be ok roaming.. at least outside not inside with a rhyolite floor...

[Mechlin]

I think it has to be outside, but I'm not sure. Great discovery, by the way!

No, the only thing that matters is above ground (AG). And a tile becomes marked as AG when it had been exposed to sunlight at least for a second or if the z-level above it is AG and it had been channeled. You can even organize AG grassy gardens deep in the bowels of your fortress (that's actually part of my new megaproject).

Let's say you have z-levels like this:

forest
soil 1
soil 2

You channel out an area in the forest layer and the soil 1 level becomes exposed to sunlight and covered with nice green patches of grass. After that you can put flooring over the forest layer (I usually do).

for  _______ est (above ground, ourside, light)
so  \______/ il 1 (above ground, inside, dark)
soil 2

Now channel out the next layer and surprisingly it will become AG too (despite the fact that no sunlight has ever touched it). You can even grow wild strawberries on it!

for  _______ est (above ground, outside, light)
so  |          | il 1 (above ground, inside, dark)
so  \______/ il 2  (above ground, inside, dark)

I think that channeling into the rock and then muddying it should make AG grass grow on it too but I haven't tried it yet. And I don't know what happens if you do it with a section of a cavern with underground moss already present.

[Kaos]

I think it has to be outside, but I'm not sure. Great discovery, by the way!

No, the only thing that matters is above ground (AG). And a tile becomes marked as AG when it had been exposed to sunlight at least for a second or if the z-level above it is AG and it had been channeled. You can even organize AG grassy gardens deep in the bowels of your fortress (that's actually part of my new megaproject).

Let's say you have z-levels like this:

forest
soil 1
soil 2

You channel out an area in the forest layer and the soil 1 level becomes exposed to sunlight and covered with nice green patches of grass. After that you can put flooring over the forest layer (I usually do).

for  _______ est (above ground, ourside, light)
so  \______/ il 1 (above ground, inside, dark)
soil 2

Now channel out the next layer and surprisingly it will become AG too (despite the fact that no sunlight has ever touched it). You can even grow wild strawberries on it!

for  _______ est (above ground, outside, light)
so  |          | il 1 (above ground, inside, dark)
so  \______/ il 2  (above ground, inside, dark)

I think that channeling into the rock and then muddying it should make AG grass grow on it too but I haven't tried it yet. And I don't know what happens if you do it with a section of a cavern with underground moss already present.

cool!, for added style and dwarfiness build the floors with glass.

I also read that after hitting the caverns, stone floors get moss and fungi, are those only natural floors or built floors too? that way we could have above ground multi-z-level farms/pastures

[Niyazov]

I feel like a helpful addition for large grazers would be feed troughs, so that you can keep them fed in smaller spaces if you have intensive agriculture going to provide them with longland grass / cave wheat. There could also be inedible byproducts from processing other crops and animals that you could slip into the trough, just like how farmers put fish meal, eggshells, etc. into cattle feed.

Another option would be a "make haybale" task for farmers' workshops, which would have a dwarf go out and guickly gather a bunch of grass from a designated outdoor area.

Requiring that grazers be provided with water could also make animal husbandry more interested; you would have to think about creating ponds near your pastures or risk letting your animals drink from alligator-infested rivers and murky pools.

It would also be cool to be able to turn pigs loose in the refuse stockpile and have them gorge on stray cat cartilage, rotten food and vermin remains.

[MarcAFK]

It would also be cool to be able to turn pigs loose in the refuse stockpile and have them gorge on stray cat cartilage, rotten food and vermin remains.

.... So i totally want a fortress where the only food industry is pigs that feed on goblin pieces, and fermented milk from them..

[Double A]

Considering how much more food you get for just slaughtering the cow than you get for milking it, milking a cow is just plain useless unless you mod cows to give milk more frequently, and having goats that eat much less grass, yet produce the same amount of milk as cows or even water buffalo just underlines the whole problem.

Not useless. Milking cows instead of killing them means you have more cows making calves. Also cheese is pretty damn valuable.

[Jachim]

I feel like a helpful addition for large grazers would be feed troughs, so that you can keep them fed in smaller spaces if you have intensive agriculture going to provide them with longland grass / cave wheat. There could also be inedible byproducts from processing other crops and animals that you could slip into the trough, just like how farmers put fish meal, eggshells, etc. into cattle feed.

Another option would be a "make haybale" task for farmers' workshops, which would have a dwarf go out and guickly gather a bunch of grass from a designated outdoor area.

Requiring that grazers be provided with water could also make animal husbandry more interested; you would have to think about creating ponds near your pastures or risk letting your animals drink from alligator-infested rivers and murky pools.

It would also be cool to be able to turn pigs loose in the refuse stockpile and have them gorge on stray cat cartilage, rotten food and vermin remains.

You sir are genius. Just sayin.

[Reelyanoob]

I think that channeling into the rock and then muddying it should make AG grass grow on it too but I haven't tried it yet. And I don't know what happens if you do it with a section of a cavern with underground moss already present.

Can you grow grass on muddied obsidian?