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[FallenAngel]

Huh. Either way, they're plentiful and nigh-endless underground, so you're going to have a good population of them. They don't butcher for all that much but it can help if you're in trouble or have way too many males.

[bennerman]

Honestly? Draltha are good, and it was a mistake on Toady's part to make it impossible to keep them fed, so I don't think reducing their food intake in the raws is cheating. Thoughts?

Edit: I believe soapyboar had a good draltha industry because I reduced their grazing, but it's been a while

[TruePikachu]

Bacon

[Itnetlolor]

If I recall correctly, I think turkeys are the most ideal. They are big (plenty of meat), grow fast, have large eggs, lay a fair amount of them (allowing for a clustercluck of them by Year 3), minimum upkeep, and cheap to purchase. Not to mention, your bone industry will have it's hands full with the excess bones provided by them.

[Orange Wizard]

If I recall correctly, I think turkeys are the most ideal. They are big (plenty of meat), grow fast, have large eggs, lay a fair amount of them (allowing for a clustercluck of them by Year 3), minimum upkeep, and cheap to purchase. Not to mention, your bone industry will have it's hands full with the excess bones provided by them.

Size of the egg doesn't influence fillingness, only amount.
So geese are best for egg industry, and zombie giant sperm whales are best for the meat industry.

[Button]

IMO the best (unmodded) animal for your meat industry is rocs, because in addition to being friggin huge their meat is also very valuable, which is passed on to the roasts you make with them. Though they lay small clutches, they also grow to adulthood ridiculously fast.

[Snaake]

IMO the best (unmodded) animal for your meat industry is rocs, because in addition to being friggin huge their meat is also very valuable, which is passed on to the roasts you make with them. Though they lay small clutches, they also grow to adulthood ridiculously fast.

Yes, apparently they do have CHILD:1, but this is only a tag for sexual maturity. Their size/growth tags are [BODY_SIZE:0:0:200000], [BODY_SIZE:1:0:5000000], and [BODY_SIZE:20:0:20000000]. For comparison, 200k is an adult grizzly, 5 million is an adult elephant and the only things 20 million or larger are bronze colossuses (20 million), fully grown dragons (25 million), whale sharks (20 million), giant orcas (20 million), Giant Elephant seals (24.12 million), Sperm whales (25 million), and Giant sperm whales (100 million). Ok so yea, Rocs are pretty amazing, if you butcher them as soon as they're adolescents (since that's when their growth slows down), largely thanks to the x15 value multiplier, which is only shared by dragons. But dragons grow at a steady pace from 6k at hatching to 25 million at 1000 years old, which comes to a rate of about 25k a year. That's some growth spurt on the rocs' part.

But cave crocs are still one of the best options. 20-60 eggs per clutch, x4 value multiplier, 600k (cow-sized) adults at 2 years, or half that at 1 year. Comparing total volumes for a rough comparison of butchering returns, 20*300k cave crocs is 12 million cm³, so if it weren't for the huge value multiplier on the rocs, crocs would be pretty competitive when it comes to actual amounts of meat, because rocs only lay clutches of 1-2.

Saltwater crocodiles "only" have a value multiplier of x3 and are more restricted in biomes, but grow to 800k in 2 years (again, half that at 1 year) and lay clutches of 20-70 eggs.

With enough patience to amass a larger breeding population of females, rocs outstrip crocs even more because with crocs, you hit the species pop cap pretty quickly, but with rocs you could be raising a 20-30 of them per year after a few years. And crashing the global economy with your high-value food exports.

[Telgin]

If I recall correctly, I think turkeys are the most ideal. They are big (plenty of meat), grow fast, have large eggs, lay a fair amount of them (allowing for a clustercluck of them by Year 3), minimum upkeep, and cheap to purchase. Not to mention, your bone industry will have it's hands full with the excess bones provided by them.

I'll second turkeys.  They're almost cheating.  A dozen of them laying eggs can feed over a hundred dwarves alone, if my memory is accurate.  Butchered byproducts are a bonus.  Of course, any egg layer is like that.

One thing to note about this: if you're using DFHack you probably want to install the fix that allows babies to grow to full size as they get older.  I was mighty puzzled about why butchering my turkeys rarely gave any meat until I read about that bug a while back.

[Orange Wizard]

Now I need to get me a breeding pair of rocs.

Someday...

[Fluoman]

The problem with Rocs (and any other feral animal) is that you have to get them on your map and reproduction is not guaranteed.
Compare with pigs, which don't cost too much at embark and generate a large amount of meat, bones and leather... They don't even graze!

[Beast Tamer]

The problem with Rocs (and any other feral animal) is that you have to get them on your map and reproduction is not guaranteed.
Compare with pigs, which don't cost too much at embark and generate a large amount of meat, bones and leather... They don't even graze!

Using Wild Boars in place of pigs so I may train my animial trainer a bit and get ivory when butchering them. So far, however, it seems that wild boars and Emus will suffice for now. Once I reach the caverns I may attempt to capture a creature or two to add to my industry, but for now I will have enough food.

[Eric Blank]

Emus are actually a very good choice for meat producers, in my opinion. They breed rapidly yet in a controlled manner if you manage the nest boxes effectively, and produce a respectable amount of meat, much more than turkeys and still produce a similar amount of eggs. The eggs are also a good excuse to keep some of the hens around. I'd give them some nesting rooms to use and let all your hens raise one clutch of chicks, then sort out the good breeding stock from the meat stock, and take the breeding hens' eggs until you're ready for more chicks. Wild boar are also better than domestic pigs: they grow to be around 33% larger in the same time period (2 years), both start breeding at 1 year, and wont start dying of old age until at least 15, versus 10 in domestic pigs, although neither will live to be older than 20.

Giant emus are far better, though, just because they produce more meat.

[Beast Tamer]

Emus are actually a very good choice for meat producers, in my opinion. They breed rapidly yet in a controlled manner if you manage the nest boxes effectively, and produce a respectable amount of meat, much more than turkeys and still produce a similar amount of eggs. The eggs are also a good excuse to keep some of the hens around. I'd give them some nesting rooms to use and let all your hens raise one clutch of chicks, then sort out the good breeding stock from the meat stock, and take the breeding hens' eggs until you're ready for more chicks. Wild boar are also better than domestic pigs: they grow to be around 33% larger in the same time period (2 years), both start breeding at 1 year, and wont start dying of old age until at least 15, versus 10 in domestic pigs, although neither will live to be older than 20.

Giant emus are far better, though, just because they produce more meat.

Thanks for the info, Eric. Would you recommend any other animals?

[Rogue Yun]

My dear friends! Are we neglecting the humble yet tree sitting peafowl?

Yielding eggs that are 15% larger than the turkey and only taking half as long to mature and (at maturity) only 1/5th smaller than the turkey. At the year mark while patiently waiting for your turkeys to have matured to lay more eggs, already a batch of peafowls is sitting on their nests ready to go! Their average of seven eggs is much less than the turkeys twelve, I admit, but given the fact that you can get them to adulthood at half the time makes it worth it don't you think? 7x2=14  vs 12. I would say the blue peahen is much neglected in its capacity to overrun a fort with meat and eggs. Besides, they make a great early warning system when placed around the map!

[Larix]

Once again, egg size doesn't matter - five roc eggs feed as many dwarfs as five duck eggs(x). The only thing that matters is egg number, and peafowl are decent but not especially great here. Their main advantage is the lower maintenance required, because of their longer lifespans.
(x) in a longer-running fort, egg size doubly doesn't matter because some bug makes all eggs weightless when saving and restoring.

Other good candidates for capture- or elf-sourced poultry are ostriches and giant ostriches: even larger than emu, even bigger average clutch size, and as a side bonus, provide gizzard stones as butchery return.

For pure meat, wild boars are good if you can get them, other than that, the various predators are quite attractive, because they currently don't need food; and many of them are prestigious enough to have enhanced value, which is nice for trade. Dingo, coyote, wolf, hyena, all bears and all large felines and especially giant versions where possible. Many of them can be trained for war, to pull double duty as meatshields.