Potion was an example and can do the job, the problem with this sort of item is as you can solve any problem with these there is always a risk of having a resulting game based on one unique feature (in this case crafting potion).
After that there are plenty of solution, depending the depth you want to have in the game and on breeding. Another classical example, having the advantage of using more than one feature, is to have, in the same way as the crafting cells, some cells dedicated to pregnant women and increasing the quickness of pregnancy depending of the level of the cell.
In this way you can limit the number of pregnancies, which can't be done with potions, and give more importance to general crafting and scavenging.
The important thing is to define a list of the features you want in the game, permitting to dispatch them on the mechanics you want, to have a balanced game, not one mechanic rassembling most of the features.