Ranching Options

[KingdomCody]

To start things off, I like playing Rimworld with farm animals, I like the bit of extra work. I've always wondered what's the best animal to ranch in the game without using Nutrient Paste (unless there's a mod that allows animals to collect from the dispensers somewhere.), this can be from Eggs, Meat, Milk, or all three. I'm ignoring every other factor for right now, that means hauling, combat prowess, or other misc means (like Boomalopes for chem fuel).

[Illuna]

the best animal would be pigs or wild boars if you have grass. if you only have meat, use foxes.

[Astasia]

I'm assuming you mean best in terms of nutrition efficiency.

This chart has mathed out the efficiency of the base game animals, in terms of how much nutrition they eat over the period it takes to become adult vs how much nutrition they generate when slaughtered and factoring in milking and eggs. I don't know the formula used or how perfect it is, but it's existed on the wiki since around 1.3 came out and doesn't look like it's been tweaked much.

https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Animals#Feeding_animals

Technically tortoises appear to be the most efficient, they are not pen animals though and require constant training which consumes food and I don't think that's factored into the math. They aren't bad, they can eat corpses, but I imagine it's a lot of handling work so I don't think they are actually "the best."

I would suggest horses. Ibex are marginally better but horses are pack animals that make your caravans faster. You said ignoring other factors, but the difference in efficiency is quite small and the utility of horses is quite significant.

[KingdomCody]

Originally posted by Astasia:

I'm assuming you mean best in terms of nutrition efficiency.

This chart has mathed out the efficiency of the base game animals, in terms of how much nutrition they eat over the period it takes to become adult vs how much nutrition they generate when slaughtered and factoring in milking and eggs. I don't know the formula used or how perfect it is, but it's existed on the wiki since around 1.3 came out and doesn't look like it's been tweaked much.

https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Animals#Feeding_animals

Technically tortoises appear to be the most efficient, they are not pen animals though and require constant training which consumes food and I don't think that's factored into the math. They aren't bad, they can eat corpses, but I imagine it's a lot of handling work so I don't think they are actually "the best."

I would suggest horses. Ibex are marginally better but horses are pack animals that make your caravans faster. You said ignoring other factors, but the difference in efficiency is quite small and the utility of horses is quite significant.

Don't horses need to be trained regularly?

[glass zebra]

They do not. They are pen animals.

[brown29knight]

I would suggest chickens, cows, or horses.

Chickens: Eggs are extremely efficient as an ingredient, one egg acts as 5 meat, and hens can lay an egg per day, letting you explode your population quickly, and then slaughter the roosters for meat while you gather eggs. Eggs also stack up to 75, so you can make 5 times the meals in the same raw ingredient storage space. If you have the land (or the ability to make enough kibble) you can easily get over 100 hens in a couple weeks (starting with only one breeding pair) and then kill all or most of the roosters, and enjoy 100+ eggs a day. Eggs also keep for a couple weeks without refrigeration, and are bought by every friendly town, making them a great trade item to take on trade caravans.

Cows: Between the milk and the meat, cows produce more food than any other animal. They can also keep breeding while producing milk.

Horses: Lots of meat per animal, and they are a great pack animal. Also live horses sell well in towns, so you can bring extra horses to sell, AND load them up with goods on the way (just be sure you still keep enough horses to haul all that silver back.)

My biggest colony uses both chickens and horses. I eat and trade the eggs, and use the horses for hauling and riding.

[brown29knight]

Originally posted by Astasia:

I'm assuming you mean best in terms of nutrition efficiency.

This chart has mathed out the efficiency of the base game animals, in terms of how much nutrition they eat over the period it takes to become adult vs how much nutrition they generate when slaughtered and factoring in milking and eggs. I don't know the formula used or how perfect it is, but it's existed on the wiki since around 1.3 came out and doesn't look like it's been tweaked much.

https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Animals#Feeding_animals

That chart shows the food per day from milk and eggs, but I wouldn't say it factors it in to a total. The final column is the efficiency of meat vs. feed needed to make that meat, NOT taking into account milk or eggs, which are separate, and provide continuing nutrition. If milk and eggs were factored in, Those animals that make milk and unfertilized eggs would have much higher eff#, but to do that would require calculating when milk/eggs first get produced in each animal's life cycle vs. when you would have peak meat production, and displaying both on a bell curved graph to show the ideal slaughter date... far too much work for a simple chart.

[ambi]

Originally posted by brown29knight:

I would suggest chickens, cows, or horses.

those are good recommendations. i prefer cows as they need less micromanagement than chickens.

[brown29knight]

Originally posted by Ambigore:

Originally posted by brown29knight:

I would suggest chickens, cows, or horses.

those are good recommendations. i prefer cows as they need less micromanagement than chickens.

Do they? I use egg boxes, and half the time my pawns will not do anything until there is 25 eggs in one box. (the other half the time the eggs are out in the fields, and the pawns hunt each egg down singly, or in small groups) When I had a boomalope farm going, one pawn would milk, and another would haul. Always seemed like more pawn-time then the chickens, but I honestly couldn't prove it either way.

I'm a fan of chickens due to the low startup cost, (2 chickens can be bought from traders cheap, if they don't wander in on their own, and can become a hundred or more seemingly overnight.) the massive silver you can make trading the eggs, and the better storage amounts (I'm always running out of refrigerated storage, so anything that lets me hold more in less space, I'm all for.) Also, you can feed 4 chickens (.88) for almost the same food as one cow (.86)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2821617570

Those are my hens, so I get 123 unfertilized eggs per day, with plenty of grass to spare for the mares (pen is females only, I have a separate pen with a few roosters and stallions, just in case I need to repopulate)

[ambi]

i found once your colony gets big enough, cows get easier to manage than chickens.

[brown29knight]

I'm pretty new, so I've only ever had small (16 pawns or less) colonies. Thank you for the information. I'll keep it in mind for as I expand.

[Vermillion Cardinal]

While everyone else debates the right animals to ranch with, I'll address the mod question:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1098354593

With this, once you've reached a huge herd of cows you can practically feed them off their own milk using the nutrient dispenser. I've got over 100 cows that feed both themselves and several horses, ducks, seven megawolverines, a penguin, and a megasloth, and I have thousands of milk, beef, and leather available just for trade. Some of that paste is also used for feeding prisoners when I house a few from time to time.

[whatamidoing]

They're zoneable animals and not pen animals, but a couple fun facts about rats:
-they eat basically anything, including grass and corpses
-they grow up, reproduce, and give birth to the next generation faster than they lose tameness with zero training
For actual pen animals, I'll have to second horses.

[KingdomCody]

Originally posted by Vermillion Cardinal:

While everyone else debates the right animals to ranch with, I'll address the mod question:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1098354593

With this, once you've reached a huge herd of cows you can practically feed them off their own milk using the nutrient dispenser. I've got over 100 cows that feed both themselves and several horses, ducks, seven megawolverines, a penguin, and a megasloth, and I have thousands of milk, beef, and leather available just for trade. Some of that paste is also used for feeding prisoners when I house a few from time to time.

Animal Logic enables Nutrient paste useage for Animals?

[brown29knight]

Originally posted by KingdomCody:

Originally posted by Vermillion Cardinal:

While everyone else debates the right animals to ranch with, I'll address the mod question:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1098354593

With this, once you've reached a huge herd of cows you can practically feed them off their own milk using the nutrient dispenser. I've got over 100 cows that feed both themselves and several horses, ducks, seven megawolverines, a penguin, and a megasloth, and I have thousands of milk, beef, and leather available just for trade. Some of that paste is also used for feeding prisoners when I house a few from time to time.

Animal Logic enables Nutrient paste useage for Animals?

yep, or it least it says that it does in the description.

[Vermillion Cardinal]

Originally posted by KingdomCody:

Animal Logic enables Nutrient paste useage for Animals?

Pretty much. Back in 1.2 I used to secure as much land as possible for grazing, and in 1.3 I used Graze Up to greatly reduce the land requirements of my herds by making the animals not destroy plants after grazing (it also saves on farm labor dedicated to replanting grass and dandelions when I choose to do so).

But when I'm in the tundra, glacial shield, or anywhere I expect to have very limited growth time and/or extremely limited arable land (or when I desire to have pocket-sized bases) I take advantage of the nutrient paste option from this mod. In fact, those 100+ cows and other pen animals I mentioned are all crammed with their dispenser into a barn about 10x7 in size or so; it's pretty ridiculous but it does save on space in a -50c (during winter) frozen wasteland.