How to tame large animals and what to do with tamed small animals?

[Olavsson]

How do I tame large animals from the wild?

And what do I do with tamed small animals. I figured out how to tame small animals with traps and cages. But then I can't butcher them or put them in the pasture. I am confused.

I love the game so far! It's more fun for every hour i play ^^

[Soul4hdwn]

"small animal" is vermin, those are handled as either pets, decoration in cages, or disected via the same name skill.

large animals are caught in cage traps, then trained via animal training skill when the cage is built into a spot (preferably that has the animal)... then further trained by same or any trainer while it is inside a training zone that also is either a pasture or rope/chain fixture that either way contains the creature in question.

cage trap to get.
train via animal training + built cage.
more train via zones and/or roped.

[Other]

The game classifies the small ones as "vermin", so they can only ever exist in a cage or animal trap, and only one very rare one is large enough to butcher (creepy crawler, and they can only be butchered if you have them alive in a trap). If you have a dwarf who likes a particular species, you can allow them to adopt the critter as a pet, or if you put it in a built cage that they walk by, they can get a good thought from "admiring a blue jay". However, vermin are also hateble, so the spider that one dwarf loves might freak out other dwarves.

For the larger, proper "animals" (goats, lions, alligators, and so on) you need to catch them in a cage trap first (a building you build using a mechanism, then loaded with a full-sized cage; these are not related to the smaller "animal trap" item for vermin). Once it is in a cage, you can find it in the "other" tab of the units screen, and assign a trainer. One of your dwarves will bring a piece of food to the cage, and train the animal. This will turn them into a stray animal, with a training level that depends on how skilled the animal trainer is, ranging from "semi-wild" at the bottom end up to "masterfully trained" at the top.

Once they are trained, you can assign them to a pasture, butcher them, and so on; if the species allows it, you can also give them further training for war (makes them fight better) or hunting (makes them sneak and spot better). If they were born wild, their training will gradually decay, and a trainer will need to periodically re-train them to keep them under control (you will need an "animal training" zone for this process. If you get a breeding pair of some particular animal captured and trained, any young they have will inherit part of the mother's training, and while they are still juvenile they will never decay all the way to "wild".

If a juvenile animal receives training once, they will be permanently and fully tame, and so will any children of a fully tame female (and at that point, you don't need to worry any more about them reverting and causing problems). Note that some species are "born adult", so you can never train them as juveniles and get them to fully tame status.

Any animal you buy from a merchant will also be fully tame when you buy it, even if the species doesn't have a "child" state that would let you fully tame it in normal play. For humans this isn't really that interesting (although they can tame and trade some nice animals like grizzly bears). The real jackpot here is the elves - they have a civilization-level power that lets them tame anything, including the giant versions of standard animals that are found in Savage areas. However, with so many choices, you may have to wait a long time to get a breeding pair of anything really good, but a fort that gets a breeding pair of Giant Tigers, builds up there numbers, and trains them for war will be a force to be reckoned with. (Think of a tiger the size of a city bus. Then think of 50 of them, trained to fight, and on your side.)

[Olavsson]

Thanks a lot for in-depth help!