Wolf Overpopulation wyd?

[ThatOnePinata]

I've managed to accumulate a lot of wolves by self taming, and they'd breed with each other. Now they're eating all my food resources.  Should I kill them, or train them and raid? [All Vanilla]


http://prntscr.com/ffm9eb

[Limdood]

they need to be worth the food they're consuming.  if they arent pulling their weight in raids or hauling or nuzzling mood boosts or food production, then there isn't a point to them...slaughter or sell...or train them to be useful, but be aware it'll take ages because wolves have 75% wildness and they take ages to be trained.

[Nainara]

With some types of excess animals, such as chickens, I prefer to banish the extras to a zone outside of the colony base. As long as food exists somewhere on the map, they can continue to breed without taxing colony resources. Free roamers are a good asset to slow down raids, buying extra mortar time. Even if they starve or freeze in the wilderness, you're no worse off than slaughtering them.

[Covered in Weasels]

I think you should keep the wolves, you should be able to find a use for them in either hauling or combat. I believe wolves have advanced trainable intelligence, which means you can train them to haul things for you. Their high speed makes them quite effective at grabbing faraway items and bringing them to your stockpiles.

I find that having a couple "tank" animals is very helpful during raids, and a constantly replenishing pool of wolves will serve that finding quite nicely. They are especially helpful as caravan guards, where a few loyal meatshields can make all the difference during a manhunter animal ambush. Sending trade caravans loaded with drugs, clothes and art to other settlements is an excellent way to make money, and the wolves will make those journeys much safer.

As a side note, boars are my favorite guard animals because they are omnivorous. During warm months they will happily graze on any wild plants, saving you a great deal of kibble.

[The Nickman]

Wolves shouldn't cost you any food at all.  Just make sure the animal zone is the whole map minus your own freezer (use invert zone) and then set up a separate freezer full of dead bodies from raids.  They'll never go hungry or eat your food again!

[Jstank]

I love having a pack of wild wolves in my colony. I usually set them on unrestricted, and keep them in an area that is out of my food stockpile. They can fend for themselves and will naturally be limited in number because the pups are pretty vunerable to predators. Its good to have them around because they keep the predators away from your colonists.

[Ignoral]

Aw man, I never thought about taming animals just to keep them wild. I know what I'm doing next...

[8roads]

corpse disposal! definitely worth it

[Seriously Unserious]

Training them is definitely a very good idea. I like to eventually get all my trainable animals trained in hauling, rescue and, if the animal is tanky enough, release. Hauling is often one of the biggest Achilles Heel's of my colonies. Either valuable specialists waste their time hauling stuff, or I get not enough people who actually know how to pick things up to haul stuff to stockpiles leaving valuable resources to just sit outside and rot. Dogs, wolves, etc are a godsend in getting that stuff hauled in and leaving your skilled workers to do their skilled tasks and only haul if they've run out of better things to do and there's something to be hauled that the animals aren't getting to -- or you have something you need hauled urgently.

[Nainara]

Dogs, wolves, etc are a godsend in getting that stuff hauled in and leaving your skilled workers to do their skilled tasks and only haul if they've run out of better things to do and there's something to be hauled that the animals aren't getting to -- or you have something you need hauled urgently.

Usually my colonies train boars to haul early on due to their availability on most biomes, and then switch over to huskies at the first opportunity. Huskies are the ideal hauling animal because they won't eat crops, breed fast, they're easy to train, and they have better temperature tolerance than labs.

[Seriously Unserious]

@Nainara - I never thought of taming boars to do the hauling -- just didn't think of them as being trainable in that way. In my current game, I'm using the mod that brings in German Shepherds and used prepare carefully to make sure my colony spawned with one, and I have to admit, I'm a fan of them, they're fast and tanky enough for a dog to even use as attack dogs at some point.

One advantage to using boars is that you can train them for hauling, and just butcher the excess for pork and pigskins for days. In other words, livestock that works for you both in life and in death. I'll give that a shot in my current game if I can get any boars tamed without over taxing my ability to feed my herds.