Best animal for each category?

[Padoru]

Im currently at temperate forest. So far based on my research, this is my liking on what I think is best:

Husky/Labrador - haul
Horse - caravan
Alpaca/Muffalo - wool (for when winter hits)

For armor idk whats good. Should I go for leathers are they good (rhino/heavy fur)? Or just go for devilstrand then go flak armors?

Cant decide for milk and meat - cows or dromedary?

Thats all I think? Did I miss other category?

[brian_va]

I believe cows produce more nutrition than they use but I could be wrong.

If you have elephants or rhinos on the map and you can safely hunt them they can be a good early source for armor before you could potentially get devilstrand or hyperweave. Throumbofur is excellent but it might be a while before you can down some safely.

I don't bother with hauling animals, they aren't consistent enough and there's usually enough labor to go around that I don't need them. Otherwise, the dogs are good options

I don't really bother ranching either, just horses for caravans and butcher or sell the excess

[Steelfleece]

I'm a fan of bears for hauling. A little messier, sure, but they can handle themselves in a fight.

For meat/animal products, it's hard to beat chickens. I mean, it's hard to beat them in terms of efficiency, not so much that it's hard to beat them physically, say with a large club. That's the easy part. They reproduce like crazy if you let them, and even the vegetarians will enjoy eggs.

[Padoru]

Originally posted by Steelfleece:

I'm a fan of bears for hauling. A little messier, sure, but they can handle themselves in a fight.

For meat/animal products, it's hard to beat chickens. I mean, it's hard to beat them in terms of efficiency, not so much that it's hard to beat them physically, say with a large club. That's the easy part. They reproduce like crazy if you let them, and even the vegetarians will enjoy eggs.

Yeah I've read that chickens and the likes were the good ones in terms of products. The only reason I didn't consider them is the micro-managing, if left unattended their numbers can get out of hand.

[brian_va]

you can put the male chickens in a different pen to help control the population while still having some around if you need new hens.

[Thanatos]

If you get the chance get a pair of dromedary, it can caravan/produce milk/ slaughter for meat. They are not the best but are multipurpose that could reduce the pen size and animal management.

[VoiD]

Dromedary is the universal animal.

You can use it for everything other than hauling.

[The Blind One]

Here's an amazing reddit post on which animal to pick when.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/p92wwt/13_animals_guide/

[Midnight_Toker247]

You may not have access to them since you are in the temperate forest but I would say elephants, elephants, elephants. In my opinion they are the best animal in the vanilla game.

Hauling - NO ANIMAL can haul like the elephant can haul, chop down an entire forest and watch as your elephant grabs ALL of the wood in one go, they can carry more than most animals by quite a bit.

Caravan - Elephants can be ridden, they also can be used as a pack animal (unlike a thrumbo), and once again they can carry a lot, more than a horse.

Leather/meat/tusks - If an elephant dies or you slaughter it obviously enough you get elephant leather, which is a very high quality expensive leather, not as good as thrumbo fur but not far off. They provide a ton of meat. And the males give you tusks which can be sold for extra cash.

Fighting - Elephants are powerful animals that take quite a few hits to take down, in the early game especially elephants will make all the difference in a tough battle.

Elephants do eat a lot, but in the early game at least you can let them free roam with little worry, other animals won't mess with them and if you get attacked they can for the most part take care of themselves, in the late game you may want to keep them behind your walls unless needed so be prepared to make a large grazing area for them.

Another animal I don't think gets near enough praise are cats. No they don't haul or fight or any of that but they do nuzzle giving mood boosts and most importantly they are always giving you gifts, sometimes it's just a piece of rat meat, or 3 pieces of cloth, or some bird skin, but other times it's a little bit of gold or my favorite human organs lol. Late game none of this matters much but early game cats are great to have around.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Padoru:

Alpaca/Muffalo - wool (for when winter hits)

I would say the only wool potentially worth using is megasloth wool, and that is questionable. Wool has terrible stats, and "winter clothes" are only necessary on the most extreme permanent winter maps. Even then a heavy fur parka is going to get the job done and be a lot more protective than any wool. Megasloths at least can be slaughtered for heavy fur, and their wool is the most protective wool even though it's inferior to even plainleather.

As far as animals and textiles, I would say the best viable option is Chinchillas. Their leather is very high beauty and value and you can make some real nice chairs out of them. Though really they aren't much better than devilstrand, and devilstrand is of course a lot better than wools or other leathers (except thrumbo) for making clothing, so there isn't much reason to ranch any animals for textiles at the end of the day. A thrumbo ranch is a nice dream, but that takes like over a decade to really get going.

If you use a mod or dev mode to make a crazy cold map where the warmest possible clothes are necessary for survival, guinea pigs would be the answer. They produce the highest insulation textile in the game, it's also decent beauty and value and better protection than wool, but they are not a pen animal and produce very little leather each so it's a very labor intensive process. Getting guinea pigs on such a map is also going to be tricky without starting with a breeding pair.