How do I create a chicken breeding area that dwarves can still access without micro-managing?

[AmusableBman]

Replace chicken with peacocks, turkeys, ect. at your pleasure

I wanna create an area for poultry that fulfils the following criteria:
1. Is a single pen/pasture zone
2. Has a segregated breeding area that dwarves are unable to access
3. Has an area that dwarves are able to access to collect birds for slaughtering (will also have a small amount of nestboxes to allow egg collection without interfering with breeding)
4. The birds can freely access both areas, but the dwarves can only access one
5. Does not require micromanaging (forbidding doors, forbidding stacks of eggs, etc.)

How do I do this? Is it even possible?

[Other]

Not possible. In particular, #4 is totally impossible - if the birds can access both areas, and the dwarves can access one, then the dwarves can access both.

A somewhat better way to do it, if you are willing to give up #1 & #4, is to have two separate but adjacent areas, with a breeding area at the back, unlocked only when you need to pull the chicks out, and then an accessible area in front of that for egg production & birds to slaughter.

I normally set up my breeding area as a 3x3 room, with a ring of nest boxes around a cage, and each square is its own 1x1 pasture. Females get pastured on the next boxes, while 1-3 males get stuffed in the cage (they are still adjacent to the females, so they will breed sucessfully); if you have a male that is also some dwarf's pet, it can be pastured on top of the cage instead. The door to that room is locked unless there are a bunch of chicks to pull out, and all the extra birds go in a cage a couple squares from the butcher shop - that keeps them contained while they grow up. If you want some eggs for food, it is easy enough to put a few 1x1 pastures with nest boxes outside the door to the breeding area, and unless you want to maximise breeding rate, it isn't much of a problem if a few batches of eggs get collected from the breeders while you are stuffing chicks into the butcher cage.

If you want to automate parts of this, I know DFhack has a script that will mark animals for butchering based on various criteria you set, and another script to automatically assign egg layers to 1x1 pastures over nest boxes. I would not be surprised it you could also write a script to assign the chicks to the butcher cage & forbid eggs in the breeding nest boxes, but I don't know if anyone has already made one. Automating the door would likely be the trickiest part - you might be able to set up a dwarven computer (complicated sequence of mine cart loops, pressure plates, gears and so on) to open the door for a month twice a year (or triggered by a plate in the breeding area set for under a very low weight, so that a chick will set it off, but an adult bird won't), but it is likely easier to just do that part by hand.

[AmusableBman]

Unfortunate that it's not possible, but your comment gives me a couple ideas. Thanks

[Micromanicment]

Just want to add that there is indeed a dfhack command that automatically protects eggs from being picked up by dwarves. I think it only forbids fertilized eggs, but on that part I'm not sure. I think it was 'nestboxes'.

[AmusableBman]

Originally posted by Micromanicment:

Just want to add that there is indeed a dfhack command that automatically protects eggs from being picked up by dwarves. I think it only forbids fertilized eggs, but on that part I'm not sure. I think it was 'nestboxes'.

That'll help too, thanks