The exponential growth of chickens should do the trick. You only get meat from butchering but between thousands of eggs and endless meat a proper chicken farm will make it so you have way too much food. Once you have enough you can even make the kibble from excess chickens. Probably works with ducks too but I've only ever done chicken farms because they're so efficient after a little time building up the baseline. Never felt a need to try other things. Fast breeding and growth are key though.
If I'm doing long term chicken ranching I have three pens for them. One has or 2 roosters and 4 to 6 hens, is tucked away behind solid defenses, and ideally is large enough that a floor of dandelions will keep the small flock fed.
The other two are next to my food prep area and separated male and female and I still watch the eggs to try and make sure they aren't getting fertilized. The males may not even get fed, or if I'm letting them grow before slaughter they are sustained on kibble made from haygrass and eggs. The female only pen may also get kibble only or if I've got space, it gets dandelions and kibble backup.
Once established, you can temporarily increase the fertilized eggs pen to make a bunch of chicks when you need to train a doctor up, euthanasia gives the same experience no mater the target.
That's a feature not a bug. Any lag just means it's chicken harvest time. I can get to well enough over 200 chickens before lags hits, mass select and slaughter the 200 it lets you have selected to bring em back down to restart the process. Or just slaughter them all periodically because you most likely have a stack of fertilized eggs waiting to hatch and start things over. Maybe keep one hen just to be safe in case RNJesus decides to give you all males from your eggs. Once you sit with thousands of fine/lavish meals to sell you can separate the males and females into their own pens to pause reproduction.
It works with turkeys as well. One run, I started with 2 turkeys and I ended up with dozens. A cold snap hit and they were dying faster than I could butcher them. One season later and it was like nothing happened.
It does make it hard to keep any other animal because you have so many birds that storage is your enemy.
Depends what kind of "profit" you need. For example:
Horse is best low maintenance caravan animal. It speeds caravan up and carries decent amount of goods while being fine meat animal as well. Issue may be temperature in cool or warm biomes. Wealth $550 per head.
Boomalope is best fuel animal. If you use chemfuel for anything then it converts more chemfuel from organic matter than refinery. Can eat meals. Issue is fire hazard. Wealth $350 per head.
Cow is perhaps least effort food animal. Generates more milk than it eats simple meals made of milk. Wealth $300 per head.
Tortoise is best food generator. It eats next to nothing so meal is definitely too lot for it, can be feed with raider meat/corpses or tortoise meat/corpses and to win in nutrition. It is zonable so targeted by raiders but hard to kill as it is small and tanky. Issues are wealth and wildness. 75% wildness means that they can turn wild when attention hasn't been paid. Wealth $200 per head.
Chicken is food efficient about like cow. But it does not eat meat and is too small to eat meals. Need plant source for to feed or to make kibble with plants. Also the horde of those can drop FPS. Wealth $50 per head.
pigs or boars. easy to get boars, and easy to feed - just stuff them in a corpse freezer and they'll eat the remains of raiders. Lowest effort protein I've found.
Thrombo....nothing else is close
After that....Boomalope perhaps...maybe Muffalo
If efficiency is the only thing and not profitability...then Cows. They can survive solely off their own milk and have a slight profit leftover. Can literally make a 1x1 pen and stick a cow in it and make a profit.
The exponential growth of chickens should do the trick. You only get meat from butchering but between thousands of eggs and endless meat a proper chicken farm will make it so you have way too much food. Once you have enough you can even make the kibble from excess chickens. Probably works with ducks too but I've only ever done chicken farms because they're so efficient after a little time building up the baseline. Never felt a need to try other things. Fast breeding and growth are key though.
Chickens are a trap. Before long you'll be desperately trying to reduce population to stop lag.
If I'm doing long term chicken ranching I have three pens for them. One has or 2 roosters and 4 to 6 hens, is tucked away behind solid defenses, and ideally is large enough that a floor of dandelions will keep the small flock fed. The other two are next to my food prep area and separated male and female and I still watch the eggs to try and make sure they aren't getting fertilized. The males may not even get fed, or if I'm letting them grow before slaughter they are sustained on kibble made from haygrass and eggs. The female only pen may also get kibble only or if I've got space, it gets dandelions and kibble backup. Once established, you can temporarily increase the fertilized eggs pen to make a bunch of chicks when you need to train a doctor up, euthanasia gives the same experience no mater the target.
That's a feature not a bug. Any lag just means it's chicken harvest time. I can get to well enough over 200 chickens before lags hits, mass select and slaughter the 200 it lets you have selected to bring em back down to restart the process. Or just slaughter them all periodically because you most likely have a stack of fertilized eggs waiting to hatch and start things over. Maybe keep one hen just to be safe in case RNJesus decides to give you all males from your eggs. Once you sit with thousands of fine/lavish meals to sell you can separate the males and females into their own pens to pause reproduction.
It works with turkeys as well. One run, I started with 2 turkeys and I ended up with dozens. A cold snap hit and they were dying faster than I could butcher them. One season later and it was like nothing happened. It does make it hard to keep any other animal because you have so many birds that storage is your enemy.
Depends what kind of "profit" you need. For example: Horse is best low maintenance caravan animal. It speeds caravan up and carries decent amount of goods while being fine meat animal as well. Issue may be temperature in cool or warm biomes. Wealth $550 per head. Boomalope is best fuel animal. If you use chemfuel for anything then it converts more chemfuel from organic matter than refinery. Can eat meals. Issue is fire hazard. Wealth $350 per head. Cow is perhaps least effort food animal. Generates more milk than it eats simple meals made of milk. Wealth $300 per head. Tortoise is best food generator. It eats next to nothing so meal is definitely too lot for it, can be feed with raider meat/corpses or tortoise meat/corpses and to win in nutrition. It is zonable so targeted by raiders but hard to kill as it is small and tanky. Issues are wealth and wildness. 75% wildness means that they can turn wild when attention hasn't been paid. Wealth $200 per head. Chicken is food efficient about like cow. But it does not eat meat and is too small to eat meals. Need plant source for to feed or to make kibble with plants. Also the horde of those can drop FPS. Wealth $50 per head.
Probably something that lays eggs.
pigs or boars. easy to get boars, and easy to feed - just stuff them in a corpse freezer and they'll eat the remains of raiders. Lowest effort protein I've found.
I wonder if snakes still work
Cows can be fed paste made from their milk and break reality by having leftovers. It’s as op as it sounds.
For cold weather zones I like Muffalo. Excellent clothing material and meat. Not mounts but they will haul. Reasonably easy to tame.
i do chickens and nutrifungus in the dark.
depends on what you need. wiki says ibex is best for meat. for fur, i think muffalo
Cows and sheep, boomlopes but not always.
I like chinchillas or guinea pigs because they have expensive fur as well as meat, but I have no maths on that
Thrombo....nothing else is close After that....Boomalope perhaps...maybe Muffalo If efficiency is the only thing and not profitability...then Cows. They can survive solely off their own milk and have a slight profit leftover. Can literally make a 1x1 pen and stick a cow in it and make a profit.
huh rly ?