Humans bring to multiple Thranityr worlds the farming of goats and cattle. How to properly raise them, how to milk them, and how to make cheeses and butter. Along with other human foodstuffs they've not grown or raised yet. -- Anon Guest
There exists a perfect machine for turning cellulose-based life into protein. It's versatile, self-powered, self-replicating, and capable of adapting to most terrains. It can flourish in deserts. The byproducts of its processes are excellent for fertilising crops. It's even autonomous.
It's called a goat.
There's others like the sheep, or the pig, that can go many places and have plural uses. Cows require plains or plain-like habitats. But for sheer versatility... very little surpasses the goat. Which was why, in an effort to assist the Thranityr in sustaining sufficient resources for their population, the Humans brought goats with them. The toughest breed they had.
There would be others, later, once the gengineers had fully analysed Thranityr plantlife. There were others working on a new edition of goats for the Thranityr, too.
At least they had a beginning.
Thranityr gathered to watch the Humans as a flock of goats followed their handler onto the purplish grasses that few creatures could handle. The grass that was nigh-inedible for Thranityr cattle. This did nothing to stop the goats from nibbling it.
Human bio-engineers scanned everything, of course. There was a team monitoring the goats. There were five teams taking samples for full chemanalysis in the shipboard labs. And there was one team setting up a platform close to some interesting equipment.
"It's for milking," said the Human putting a frame together. "Goats are great at what they do, but they're short. So we put them up higher to help with getting the milk."
There was, of course, a seminar. How to lead goats. How to milk them, including tips and tricks for the inevitable obstinate sods[1] and the tricks they were wont to pull.
And they made, with a little help from a molecular fabricator, goat cheese. Which was a lot more amenable to the Thranityr digestive system than bovine dairy products.
They'd be working on that too.
[1] Gengineering and selective breeding has been working for centuries on eliminating vicious ill-temperedness from goats. They failed.
[Photo by Peter Neumann on Unsplash]
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