I am in midgame (year 5) with a fairly large colonist count (28). I am running low on meat. Due to Scaria introduction, I am having some difficulties keeping the meat amount high.
Since the livestock got a buff (+50%), I was looking into animals that would fit the role.
Cow seems to be a good choice since you can slaughter the male. Females give you milk on top of the slaughtering bonus.
Other not so obvious choices would be....bears. (LOL). They have the same hunger rate as a chicken and they are self-sustaining from my experience. By the time they get scars they go to the slaughterhouse. Something seems wrong killing bears for meat though.
I was also looking into smaller animals but the hunger rate + maturity + meat amount don't add up that well.
Any suggestions?
For smaller animals only chicken for eggs are an alternative. The meat from them isn't that important. But with the egg's you pretty could plan how many you need to keep for each colonist to get enough eggs/day.
Drawback, since you allready have alot of colonist, you need alot of them which could be a large hit at your tickrate, since each animal need to calculated.
If you allready play with mods, maybe you should look into one that let your grow a meat substitute like mushrooms. Or build up a fish industry.
cows by far
don't keep a bull around full time, crypto him when he's not required
I'm reading geese produce more eggs than chicken, although they eat a bit more (hunger rate for chicken is 0.35, goose 0.45), so I've been thinking about getting them just to see if I like them better. More meat in a goose too, plus it yields birdskin. Used to like chicken farming before A17 (who didn't?) but after that I thought they eat much compared to what they produce.
For my colony's fashion line trading I plan to get guinea pigs for their fur.