Best animal to farm?

[Bengonto]

Tried raising turkeys and they suck.

[di eshor ribly]

It depends what resources you're after, or what you plan to do with said animals.

For pure food purposes the chickens or pigs are good. They have low overhead, breed fairly rapidly (chickens overly so), and grow into worthwhile eating age pretty quick.

For fur or wool you've got the muffalos, thrumbos, and yaks. Not quite as useful since you can plant devilstrand, but the muffalo and yak are also pack animals so there's that.

Horses speed up caravan travel speeds. Keeping a couple around can be helpful.

For defensive purposes, bears, wargs, thrumbos, and turtles work pretty well. Three are self explanatory, but a bale of turtles (had to look up the group name lol) is amazing for slowing down and tying up raiders into pointless melee fights while you shoot them. Plus you can eat the turtle eggs.

[Andy Mil]

dont
u need more than ur pop to substain ur demend of meat
why feed them ur food to eat them less than u grow urself?

[Bengonto]

Originally posted by Mil:

dont
u need more than ur pop to substain ur demend of meat
why feed them ur food to eat them less than u grow urself?

I mean they eat grass typically

[Bambusbjörn]

Get chickens and cows. i have arround 30 cows and same nr of chickens, freezer is full with meat, eggs and milk. the chickens really don't need much, but the cows need a fairly large pen, with some haygrass in it it should be no problem tho

[lumina]

I go some chickens and cows in small pens by my freezer. I then do a larger pen inside the walls with Muffalo. Then I create a huge pen outside the walls and let horses/donkeys/camels (whichever is available) breed like crazy for travel and selling.

Cows and chickens provide quick and easy protein. Muffalo also help with that when they overpopulate. Muffalo give you furr. Horses get you a ton of money and travel speed.

I don't use any other farm animals in this game (take all kinds as pets). Sometime... I'll substitute something like ducks for chickens if I'm not able to find the animals I want, but usually I just don't raise animals until I find these 4.

Edit: I forgot I also usually put a couple boomalopes in with the muffalos to milk them as well. Two of the same sex (prevent breeding) will power a couple of generators and provide you with a lot of extra chemfuel for mortars and such.

[Griggers]

there is a list on the Rimworld wiki with animal nutrition efficiency.

If you slaughter as adults you get the best efficiency from Tortoises.
Ibex are on the 2nd spot and horses and gazelles share the 3th spot.

Since horses are a good pack animal and give the best caravan speed bonus i tend to keep horses as my main source of meat.

I also tend to avoid using small animals for performance issues late game.

[The Blind One]

The King's List of Animals: These are objectively the best animals if one merely looks at productivity and not cuteness or some other metric.

Horses are the superior pack animal and provide superior amounts of meat and leather as a grazer. If you can get only one animal type and just need pack animals plus meat and leather. Get horses.

Cows are the best consistent animal product providing animal when it comes to milk, having one per colonist ensures you can always produce fine meals, it's also amazing in how much beef and leather you can get off one of them when slaughtered.

Chickens, they grow like chickens, you'll discover this by yourself when you don't eat the fertilized eggs fast enough. You'll need about 2 per colonist to produce fine meals consistently. They are technically more efficient than cows but due to game mechanics they aren't quite up to snuff unless you run a grazing mod. They can be incredibly labor efficient if you properly place an egg box in the pen. (be sure to do that)

Alpacas, if you need superior wool and some of the better leathers in the game, alpaca's the way to go, these adorable little fluffballs will provide you with some of the best animal wool and leather you can get while also providing some meat in the process. They are better than sheep otherwise sheep would be in the kings list. Sheep suck, get alpacas. Bonus points if you name your first male alpaca 'Tupaca'.

Honorable mentions:

Pigs, pigs eat anything, including corpses, so you can feed dead raiders to them and get some additional nutritional efficiency if you really desire that. They are not as nutrition efficient as grazers as horses (go figure) so if you're not determined to feed your pigs with human leftovers, the objectively better choice is horses. They also breed faster than other grazer animals so you can technically breed more meat and leather as long as you have the raw food to supply that growth.

Yaks, cows but for cold biomes, they are also pack animals so they do make a great combo animal. They produce a little less milk so consider 1.2 yaks per colonist.

Dromedary, same as yaks except for hot biomes. Produce a tiny bit less milk again compared to Yaks so you need 1.3 dromedary per colonist for fine meals.

Megasloths, produce the most amount of wool of all the wool producers, very high quality wool as well but is a high maintenance animal, so beware.

Boomalopes, you want walking chemfuel dispensers? Here they are.

A basic farm mixup is something like 1 cow and 2 chickens per 2 colonists. I have a farm of 8 colonists, so I need 4 cows and 8 chickens to ensure all my colonists are fed fine meals everyday. (however I'll also need spare animals, so I'd need 1 extra bull and 1 extra rooster for 5 cows and 9 chickens)

[AldouzTek]

This is Rimworld in mid game you will have problem with raider corpses, so I recommend wolves they're eat less and can be trained to attack, just store those raider corpses in freezer you don't need to worry feeding your wolves.

[Dis Lexic]

I usually go with either Moofalow or Alpaca when I farm. Just have two of each male and female and you get plenty of useful things from them.

[--<[ Blei ]>--]

Originally posted by Mil:

dont
u need more than ur pop to substain ur demend of meat
why feed them ur food to eat them less than u grow urself?

some animals fur is really useful in cold areas to make warm clothes, so it's not only about meat. both meat and fur can also be a money source if you trade them.

i have a base at the most northern position in Rimworld and there the animals are worth alot.

[Andy Mil]

Ahh SORRRY I forget they can eat grass too
I only remember I been feeding them and saw them die due to either war or cuz out of grass. Last time I actually wanna play like farmer was since early version 1.3?? it that looong soo I dont remember much but for sure is couple of in game years or so to finally have them yield what i wanted for profit. I dislike that kind of long term investment but they can take care of themsalve then I guess

alpaca are all rounded if ur colonist dont have good animal skill and you want milk and wool
chicken I remember back in 1.0 that it will yield egg everyday and u can make fine meal with that
Cow yield quite amount of milk but expand slower than chicken and I think they take awhile to get milk too

I vote for chicken if u want to expand quick and substain in meat and veggie meal to your coloist

everything else either war animal or pack animal which I rarely use if I play modded

[Playzr 🐵]

Cows are my favourite for a nice steady flow of lavish meals. Best to let them grow in number so you have enough females then turn the males into beef. They can graze the grass with a big enough field. You'll need hay if there's a cold winter.

[null]

When I started my colony, I opted for chickens but as other have mentioned, late game, chicken kill performance. I had forgotten to put the eggs in the eggs box. OMG. I got trapped in a doom of slowness when I established a second colony and forgot about my chickens. When i came back I had like 600 chickens. It was a freaking mess; I had to kill them all and for weeks I had rotting chicken on the floor. Not good for hygiene let me tell ya :)

As a side note, I like to have more than one colony; one at the center of the map, to act as a fuel and resource depot, and others more specialized colony. Some biome are better for farming than others and also it provide a larger variety of animal to tame. Having more than one base also allow us, the player, to carefully design a base from scratch using more specialized material.

Mid game, I opted for big animals providing either wool or good leather for cold temperature. Late game when I see a couple of animals (male and female), I tame them then I put them in cryptosleep casket in case I need to start to farm them later on. I find that strategy useful in the late game.

I also keep big tamed predator in my colony. It is both fun to see them navigate the base but also, it can provide extra security for my colonists.

Regarding the feeding part, I find kibble to be easier so I almost only use that.

[SievertChaser]

One notable addition: you can ride dromedaries. They're a really versatile animal.

I'm also increasingly thinking about terminating my duck population in favor of a mixture of horses and muffalos.

[Swiggy]

Cows or goats. Any animal that can be milked is usually worth keeping. Milk and rice is a great fast way to make pemmican.