Efficient meat production

[gmen85]

Which is the most input food-efficient way of generating meat/animal products in large scale?

I find it strange that despite having a huge modding community, and threads all over reddit, and a wiki, that I can't find the information needed.

- How often do animals produce milk/eggs? Is this list https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/List_of_animals correct for v1.0?
- How ofter do animals reproduce, how long is the gestation period, how fast does their mass grow, and how much do they eat for any mass state?

From the linke I mentioned, the chicken page has the most info I've ever seen on one site. But it still doesn't state how much a cockerel vs a rooster eats, so I don't know whether it's more efficient to slay one or the other (not considering pawn workhours but only food eaten).

[mebe]

You are right, there isn't too much min max information out there, possibly because the game has been changing continuously. Actually I quite like that, keep changing it Tynan.

Assuming you are farming indoors then possibly the most efficient is rice -> nutrient paste -> animals (or possibly corn over rice). Would have to work out the output efficiency (chicken eggs are good but such a pain) - ok you said meat so forget that.

[Shurp]

I've calculated a variety of details for my own use, but first some general rules of thumb:

1) Don't feed meat to livestock, it's seriously counterproductive.  Which rules out kibble unfortunately. 
2) Don't provide meals to small animals that can't eat a full meal (eg: chickens)
3) Nutrient paste is far more efficient than cooked meals, but takes considerable micromanagement.   I usually cook simple meals for my livestock.
4) Livestock that can eat corpses turn raids into free food!

As for calculations... I had done a bunch of calculations for B18, but let me see what I can whip up for 1.0:

Wolf: Gestation 26 days, litter size 1.78 average, .45 years to adulthood, so from conception to breeding is 53 days, and that gives you 0.89 breeders, so 60 days per breeder, which is +1.7% per day.

Pig: Gestation 17 days, litter size 1.325 average, .4 years to adulthood, so from conception to breeding is 41 days, yielding .66 breeders, or 1.6% per day... wow, I didn't realize the litter size on pigs was so punative.  It's now definitely more worthwhile to go with the dogs.  Especially since they eat much less too (hunger .18 instead of .45).

[pllovervoltage]

IMO pawn work is the largest bottleneck most situations. To minimize work per meat,

1. Grow corn for livestock. (more nut /work than hay)
2. Cow farm and milk them. Get as many cows for milk as you need and slaughter all but just 2 bulls and keep them in a seperate area than the cows.

Butchering adds not only work for pawns but work for the player so I prefer milk/egg farm which cows and chickens are best for.

Some changes I would make depending on the situation

-Chicken egg farm if you don't have good handlers and/or need animal product production more immediately(since breeding cows take longer). But I would phase over to cows. Chickens don't need handlers for egg but need more nut/animal product produced and you need larger num of them vs cows which may hurt your game perf late game(biggest factor for me).
-Hay stacks better so better storage efficiency than corn. Useful for minimizing freezer energy consumption or just storage size.
-If you have limited soil and you have hydroponics farms, grow potatoes and not rice as they have better nut/work(both for your pawns and animals.
-Corn in soil and potatoes in hydroponics is always best for pawn work efficiency. if you're limited by food prod for your animals just try to expand growing area. Only if you really can't expand growing area switch corn to hay and then to strawberries and for hydroponics potatoes to strawberries. Rice is overrated. They require significantly more work per nut.
-However rice in soil is useful if you're in a biome with a short growing season... other than that stick to the other plants.

[mebe]

Bit confused about work. Surely the quicker it grows (rice) the less often you need to do it and can do other crops (drugs etc)?

[Shurp]

The quicker it grows the sooner you have to go out and harvest it.  So if corn takes 4 times longer to grow, and yields 4 times as much food when finished, that's three harvests your pawns can skip.  They just do one monster harvest at the end.  So it definitely saves labor.

The downside is that if a raid burns down your fields at 50% you don't lose much time with the rice, but a lot with the corn.

[zizard]

As a rule the community doesn't care to play well.

[Canute]

As a rule of new community member doesn't care about to search to forum first.

[KalkiKrosah]

I recall Tynan making a video (or maybe it was a thread) about the most efficient animal for farming for meat was actually squirrels. But that was a long time ago and balancing may have changed that.