Dwarf Fortress is an amazing game that will make you multitask a lot of things. When it comes to having a certain amount of food for your survival you will need to worry about how animals work. In this guide, you shall learn everything about it. Let’s get started and make you a better animal farmer!
Animal Husbandry, Butchering, Training, Zones & Gelding Guide – Dwarf Fortress
Animal Husbandry
First of all, you will need to make a Pen and Pasture Zone. you will need to select the zone button and then physically just hold your left click and assign where the zone for your pasture will be.
Then once you have assigned the territory and zone, you will need to select the animals that you want to be living inside your new pen zone. You can find it in the Pasture and zone window on the left:
One thing to know is that you will need a Nest Box if you want to be placing some birds inside of your pen box. It can be found inside the workshop and you can just place it anywhere of it. Once you have that next box inside, you will immediately see Gooses laying eggs on it.
If you do pick up these eggs, they can be used for food. If you do not pick them, they will grow up into smaller bird–like creatures. This is how you can start your first food farm as it is very easy to do so.
If you do have a cage, you will have to go to Cages and Restraints and select a Cage. Then do Select Material after placement and just place it on the ground somewhere. A worker will come and place it where you’ve put it. Now just click on the cage and select the animal that is in the game, in this example an elephant.
You will then click on the cage and just un–check the highlighted mark on the top right corner. This way the animal will come out. You can press the rabbit button to select any of the animals that you want to have caged. Make sure that the animal is tamed first though. This is how you can bring animals inside your animal zone.
Animal Training
You will also need to make an Animal Training zone. Just like previously, you will want to place it and mark it somewhere on the map to place it. If you have an elephant like a dog or elephant that you wish to war train or hunt, just press U and go over to Pets and Livestock.
Here you will find the animals that are able to be trained. If you want to give a dwarf an animal that can be a pet and not butchered, just click the one on the far right. If you want to make it a War or a Hunting animal, choose the options in the middle like war – left and hunting – right.
Butchering
If you want to be butchering animals you can do 2 shops in total:
- Tanner
- Butcher Shop
The first one is for the leather of the animals that you will butcher, and the second is for the actual meat and bones that can be used for food of your dwarfs.
You will go into the livestock window yet again and just select the butcher icon that is on the far right. This is viable only once the two buildings have been done. It is automatically added to the shop so you don’t need to do anything manually.
Dead animals that are rotten or mangled cannot be butchered. The fur or tan that you will get from the animals, will be automatically moved and turned into leather by the dwarfed too.
Gelding
Make a farmer shop and place it anywhere in your base. Once you have this option you have the option of gelding your animals. This way you can get some animals not to reproduce so that you won’t have any more cats running wild everywhere around your base!
That’s all that you need to know about all of these tasks in Dwarf Fortress. We hope that this guide has helped you out and explained what you needed to know. A big thank you to Blind from YouTube for his helpful information.
