How to Manage Animals

This page of the guide will detail how to house, care for and expand the animal-based corner of your farming empire. Whilst available from the start, you will typically begin your journey with animals deeper into the game. Here you will find breakdowns of what each animal requires, the right conditions for breeding, and the benefits available for having pristine condition livestock at your disposal.

Whilst there is a number of differences in the approach you need to take to care for each individual type of animal, there are a number of general rules and expectations to have.

With those universal points out of the way, let's begin. Looking for a specific animal? Click one of the links below to jump to...

Bees are by far the easiest animals to have on your farm. All that is required is a hive to be built, and a space for pallets of honey to be placed. Other than that, bees require no care or maintenance.

With the pallets of honey, you can either sell them directly at a sale point, or you put in some extra work and mix them with raisins and grains at a cereal factory (available on the Elm Creek map) to greatly increase your profits.

Chickens are also deceptively easy to maintain. You will need to build a coop or a pasture, whichever you can afford, and then purchase some chickens through the animal dealer in the shop menu. NOTE: There doesn't appear to be a way to transport chickens yourself, so you will need to pay the small fee for automatic transfer to your farm.

With water dealt with as described in the introduction of this page (if relevant), you'll want to provide the chickens with wheat to feed on. You can of course cultivate and harvest your own wheat to feed them, but separating the wheat you make and the wheat grain you buy will help immensely. Buying pallets of wheat from the shop will allow you to fill up your trailer straight away, offload it outside their coop, and voila, job done!

You'll note a yellow and black box to the side of the coop, and this is where you will find the eggs that your chickens will begin to produce. You can track their reproduction cycle in the animal dialog menu (denoted by a blue paw print symbol), which will typically be around the -month range. With those eggs you can sell them as is, or you can transport them to a bakery to incorporate into products like bread or cakes.

Horses are a unique animal in the game, in that you can care for them but you can also ride them. This provides an alternate form of transportation, and it can help to increase your potential profits. You will, as expected, need to build either a pasture or a barn for them, provide water with the former, and Oat as food for both structures (they can also eat sorghum or grass, but Oat is most easily purchasable and you'll want to save your grass for sheep). You can grow it yourself, or purchase pallets to offload directly - your choice.

Riding the horses isn't just for aesthetics either, you'll need to ride them to ensure they reach 100% health, and therefore are most capable of breeding (which takes around 10 months) and, should you decide to, being sold on for a profit. Refer to the Giddy-up! achievement for reaching 100% with the riding status. At the same time, you will need to brush your horses. To do so, approach them and a prompt will appear. Continually do this until the 'Cleanliness' status is at 100%.

Cows are one of the more versatile animals in the game. They have a multitude of profitable options depending on the breed that you choose to bring onto your farm. Holstein and Brown-Swiss cows are best for dairy production, and Limousin and Angus cows are better geared towards beef production and breeding. Cows, similar to horses, have a reproductive cycle of 10 months.

Cows require arguably the most complex work in terms of food. They require the Total Mixed Ration, which is a balanced mix of Hay, Straw, Silage, and Mineral Feed. Using a mixer, you'll note there are individual gauges with sweet spots for each ingredient that you'll want to sit within. You can use just silage and hay as a mix early on, but as you expand to a larger barn with the feeding robot, you'll want all the ingredients to gain the best yield from your cattle.

Milk produced by the dairy cows can be sold on or delivered to factories on the map for use in products like cheese. Your beef cows will need to be sold after they've matured for the best profit margin.

Pigs are also difficult to care for, mostly down to their diet (should you wish to provide it yourself). Whilst they are not picky as to what they eat, to get the best results you'll need to provide a balanced diet. You'll need a combination of the following, one from each bullet point to equal 100%:

If you don't grow all of these, you can skirt around the issue by purchasing pallets of ready-made food at the shop, findable in the 'Objects' tab of the store.

After maturing and reproducing (which takes place every 6 months), you can sell pigs on, but they are also very valuable to keep around your farm for the sheer amount of manure they produce, which you can later use to increase the effectiveness of your future crops. To get manure, you'll need to provide straw for the pigs, and you'll need to build a manure heap - so prepare in advance. Slurry is also produced by the pigs which can be sold for a sizeable profit.

Sheep are also relatively versatile. You can sell them once they reach maturity, but at the end of each day a small amount of wool will be produced in the yellow and black marked zone (similar to the one you'll find by the chicken coops). You can sell that wool as it is, or if you're looking for bigger paydays, you can purchase a Spinnery and make cloth to create clothes at a Tailor Shop.

Sheep require either hay or grass to feed on. Like many of the animals, you can grow and harvest the supplies yourself, or you can purchase pallets and/or bales if you are strapped for time or are impatient. To collect grass, attach a mower to the front of your tractor and a forage wagon to the back. Mow land that you own and the grass will be yours to utilize. Both pieces of machinery can be found in the 'Tools' section of the shop menu.