Does anyone know whether the cow/chicken(s) that are bought through your steward have any practical purpose or are they just aesthetic? Thanks in advance for any answers.

Edit: Derped on title, forgive my spelling.

The chickens give eggs not sure about the cow. still working on my house 5 million pounds of Iron later!!!

Actually you get jugs of milk that show up in the kitchen or in the drawer of one of your cupboards if you have the cow. You get one chicken nest and one egg every 10 days or so no matter how many chickens you have (I have 3) Oh and if you have a butter churn in the kitchen you get regular "butter" in your kitchen too. One character does the other character is just butterless even though she has the cow...she gets the milk but no churn is in her kitchen...have to figure out what I put into the kitchen that "included" the churn so the other character can get butter too.

The free milk is handy if you have a kitchen, but the respawning egg and butter in the churn require you to be absent for ten days, so not really worth it, better to buy the butter or pick it up raiding, and raid other chicken nests for eggs. Or you could be heartless, collect the one egg you get from your chickens, knock off the chickens for dinner and then wait ten days, you should get egg and chickens back, even though the chickens had been absent. The chickens will respawn, and even if they are at the house, sometimes you will get no egg for patiently waiting.

If you have a greenhouse, it will eventually mysteriously turn up with a nest and egg, the egg very occasionally respawns, it is either very buggy, (at least for me) or it takes a lot longer than 10 days to respawn. The hawk nest on the roof will also usually respawn if you are absent for 10 days. So if you are not fussy about what your egg looks like, you could always just not bother with the chickens. You can also occasionally buy milk.