Chicken...and since I'm taking the animal, I'd get eggs, too.

My first thought was that I'd probably taste dog before ruling that out, but then a) I don't know if I'd have the heart to slaughter one, and b) they need animal food themselves so that would present a problem. Chicken sounds quite practical.

cob

Horse? Swan? Is there another animal meaning for cob that I don't know?

But I'd opt for chicken, too.

Something pregnant. Maybe a cow. Though a chicken is a good choice if it will give me fertile eggs to eat and some to incubate. (whatever that process is).

Any animal that is sure to reproduce. A pregnant bunny has a sure litter of many offspring. A guinea pig pregnant is a multi-littered creature. : )

I would risk a cow pregnant with twins, male female and hope for the best, fingers crossed.

I'm with you on the chicken. Not because it's my favorite meat, but if I was told I could eat only one protein food for the rest of my life it would be eggs.

That's one kind, rather than one animal, right? So they'd (hopefully) reproduce? I'm torn between chickens, goats and cows. So. It takes a lot of preservation to use up a whole cow, and they don't reproduce fast. Goats are good eaters, though they eat things they're not supposed to. Birds aren't as adaptable; ruminants need range. I'd need more info to make a firm decision, but I'm thinking goats if they'll have room to graze. If they have to be sheltered, I'll take chickens.

...though, once I mentioned eggs, I also thought of bacon! and a planet without bacon is...

I know it's off topic.

We don't have to limit to only one animal. We already have now a common technology , which is like a modern version of the ark.

In a space ship, we have the capability to take all animals to another planet. All we need are a few cells from each animal to produce as many copies as we want.

Back on topic, only one animal? bees.

No bees? Survival of other animals can be very difficult. That's the most important link in the food chain.

dcarch

Cows...because without butter and cheese what's the point?

While I agree with dcarch on the bees, I'm thinking that this other place has a food supply or we couldn't go there with our animals, the OP said "habitable". That means there must be pollinators of some type already there.

I'd take chickens. Although rabbits reproduce rapidly and prolifically, eating too much can actually kill you, so I wouldn't want that as a sole protein source. Chickens could produce eggs, meat, some fat for cooking, they are big enough to eat in a few months. Pigs also reproduce quickly (3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days gestation, or something like that), but they take another 5 or 6 months to grow large enough to eat. Beef takes too much to raise, too much time and too many resources.

Fortunately, only our animals are limited, so I could take a big bag of beans for planting, corn, various other seeds. Hopefully I could grow enough vegetables to swap some for milk and meat.

Annie

Bees and science aside, if one 'kind', meaning a herd or some of one kind i would stick with cow. Bacon is nice, but milk and cheese trumps bacon in my house.

Newfoundland introduced 4 moose to the island in 1904. Now over half a million roam the land. A small family just needs one for the winter months. Not an easy creature to milk me thinks.

I have been wrestling with this weighty question.

To clarify, yes you get to take a whole herd, flock, pod or school of whatever animal, and we assume they will breed fast enough.

Chicken: you get eggs, while the meat itself is versatile but kind of homogenous.

Cow: you get milk and more varied cuts of meat. Milk means butter and cheese. It's a tough call, but I'd do without eggs before I'd do without butter, cheese, cream and milk.

Pig: you get bacon, also some variety in cuts. I can probably find a rough substitute for bacon somewhere on a cow.

Goat: kind of like beef, I think - milk and meat. But I prefer cow's milk to goat's.

Sheep: milk and meat. I don't have any experience with sheep milk, but since the French don't have dozens of tasty sheep milk cheeses I'm going to assume there's a reason. Lamb is nice but kind of homogenous. I don't know what mutton tastes like.

So, of those basic farm staples, I think I'd choose the cow.

Now, what about other farm animals? I have no idea what horse tastes like, ducks are just better chickens, geese are big ducks, rabbits don't bring eggs or milk, cats are scratchy, bitey rabbits, and while Chinese are known for liking dogs, again there's the lack of either milk or eggs.

Fish? Shellfish? If I could bring all the ocean's fish and shellfish, that might trump cows, since there is so much variety in the sea. Clams, mussels, shrimp, lobster, crabs, snails, finfish, eels, sea urchin, abalone . . . I'd take that bounty over the dairy portfolio. But being stuck with just one kind of fish would get old very fast. I recall one summer salmon was really cheap so we ate it all the time; I didn't want to touch the stuff for a decade.

Whales have milk, maybe? But I'm not sure how to get it. Seals, ditto.

The big mammals have potential. I'm sure some primitive chef once knew all the best cuts of mammoth, ox, hippo, antelope. But without first-hand experience, those seem too risky to pick.

Let's forget about insects. And about cannibalism.

In the end, for me it comes down to dairy vs eggs, and I'd take cows.

Funny, because in real life I eat pork and chicken way more than beef.

Moo. And beef is an occasional thing with me --- but I'll miss chicken.... but I assume we'll have a bounty of vegetables and things like soy.....

Definitely cow.

Chicken is nice but nothing beats beef.

Don't forget, cow hide is very useful.

Cow dung for fertilizer.

Cows can perform heavy work..

dcarch

Horse tastes like venison. You can also obtain milk and use the hide and they can perform farm work. Many people have a problem, though, with eating them. During the PBB poisoning of cattle here in Michigan in 1973, many animals were fed contaminated feed, died and were buried in landfills. That included about 1.5 million chickens, 30,000 cows, 5,900 pigs, and 1,470 sheep. Horse became a common meal for some. Not for me because we had our own cattle with our own feed and thus were uncontaminated, but many were not so fortunate. It was the largest chemical contamination in the history of the United States, and ongoing studies show that many people still have health issues due to that.

So anyway, I know what horse tastes like. I do like milk but don't care for cheese, but dcarch has a valid point, cattle are strong and can work as well as horses, usually better.

Annie

Agreed about the usefulness of oxen, but the question was specifically food animals. We're making a lot of fill in assumptions: A reasonable assumption is that "habitable" means breathable atmosphere. Is the foliage edible? Is the native foliage farmable? Will it be available for fodder and agree with the animals? Or is the planet habitable for Earth plants without them becoming invasive and destroying the local ecosystem, so we can grow fodder? What about all of the microorganisms that we and our food animals can't live without? Will we be filtering them to prevent contamination of the planet? Will we be growing our own food and fodder in controlled environments? Will the whales screw up the water? Assuming it has the precise salinity and krill analog to support them?

Will there be other colonists to help with the herding? Will they have other animals? Or are we choosing one for the whole group?

Or is there plenty of local food, bio-similar plant and animal life, and we're just taking one kind of animal to remind us of home? In that case, and given ample range land and people to tend the beasts and do the milking (that could be robots) and make the cheese and all, I could see cows being the best for greatest diversity of food from home.

Our scientists have figured out all that pesky stuff. The food animal we bring will thrive there and be the only one available on the planet, otherwise all food will be vegetables and grains. Robots and machines will handle all the heavy work, plowing etc, so the food animal's only necessary purpose is to be eaten.

Assuming dairy has been synthesized: I would take the pig. It's necessary to have the agrarian infrastructure to raise them; pigs go feral faster than any other meat animal so they need a controlled environment.

If dairy is not available, then a cow or goat, depending on how many I'm trying to feed.

Cow, not complicated.

Not to beat a dead horse. :-)

But if you want to have string musical instrument. You will need horse tail hair.

No horse feathers? Horse hair makes unique and wonderful fabric.

It's just not the same riding in the sunset on a cow.

dcarch

Here's another vote for the chicken.

But Dcarch, we have those flying motorcycle things and don't have to ride the cow!

Thanks, John, for filling in the picture. I think you're right about ducks being better chickens, but I couldn't do duck only. I can do without butter if we can make vegetable shortening. I can render schmaltz. If we're going all the way to another planet, perhaps we could get Tal Ronnen to share how to much such fantastic nut cheeses (there are nuts, right?). So I'm back to chickens. It's easy to use almost all of the chicken (I don't know anything to do with the guts). Eggs are magical. Veggy eggs are moderately okay for making things stick together, but they're not magical.

Hmm. Torn between goats and ducks. Goat meat is wonderful (something of a cross between beef and lamb), and they're smaller and quicker to raise up than cattle. Plus I love goat yogurt and goat cheese.

Ducks -- well, poultry eggs are a staple in my house. And duck does taste better than chicken (the breast is so so SO much better!) although I could go with either.

As for the guts of either -- I can and do eat these...

Nut-based "cheeses" wouldn't work for me, due to a tree-nut sensitivity issue.

I love seafood, but couldn't limit myself to just one species of fish/shellfish...

I guess I'll go with duck. I'll do without cheese if I can have my eggs - and render out some duck fat for cooking purposes.

Artemis, do you really mean you eat the guts? Or did you mean giblets? It's the chicken intestines I've never heard of people using. If you do eat them, will you share?

Are there any cows that lay eggs?

But if you want to have string musical instrument. You will need horse tail hair.

Only for bowed ones. You could have a harp with cows or sheep if you don't mind doing what has to be done to make gut strings.

But my vote is still for chicken. I could do without meat and milk, but not without eggs.

Westsider, that would be the perfect solution!

I think the magic scientists who make the physiologies match could deal with the strings. As it is, most guitar strings are synthetic and/or metal. Harp strings are also made of nylon and/or metal. Piano strings are metal. Violin strings are also mostly synthetic and/or metal, though sheep's gut is still used sometimes for authentic historical sounds. The sticking point is the bow. Current synthetic bow filaments are too smooth and not as well liked as real horsehair, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't be made better. It's just not worthwhile to develop specially to imitate horsehair while horses are still being slaughtered in sufficient quantity to provide the real thing.

I would think the magic scientists could also come up with a cow that lays eggs...;)

If we absolutely must have both eggs and milk, I suppose we could skip both the cow and the chicken, and take the platypus.

I am not sure what platypus milk tastes like, or what cheese you can make from it, but we could set our scientists to work on it. As for the eggs, they are only 11 mm in diameter, but I suppose we can all go on diets and be very slim and hawt on our new planet.

A few varieties of spiny anteater (echinda) are also mammals who lay eggs, and apparently those eggs are larger (140 mm?), so we might have our scientists investigate anteater cuisine too.

And the male would be a bullcock?

Or a cock-'n-bull story?

If our scientists do their job, we won't need any males . . . Referring only to food animals of course.

"If our scientists do their job, we won't need any males . . . Referring only to food animals of course."

That has been done for a while already. It was in the new recently that China is building the world's largest cloning factory to mass clone farm animals.

dcarch

Life is not worth living without cheese. Cheese and bees, that's all I need from the animal world of foods.

I read about the Chinese cloning factory project. I don't understand how it will be cheaper to produce a calf embryo via cloning rather than normal insemination, and then I don't see why birthing that calf and raising it to slaughter will be any cheaper for a cloned embryo.

I can see that the Chinese would want to genetically engineer cows for certain attributes, and then cloning those to get enough breedstock, but using cloning to make "prototypes" seems different from using cloning on the "production line".