Stardew Valley - Animal Products

What the farm animals give: eggs, milk, wool, truffles and the rest. Most are worth far more once a machine has worked on them.

Overview

Animal products are everything a tended creature hands over in the morning. Some of it is waiting on the floor of a Coop or a Barn. Some has to be drawn out with a Milk Pail or clipped off with Shears. A pig leaves its find in the grass outside, a stocked pond offers up roe, and a watered Slime Hutch grows slime balls overnight. The branch is the quiet half of a farm's income, because it keeps paying through rain and through Winter when the fields are bare.

Two hidden numbers decide what appears. Friendship is the heart rating, raised by petting and by milking, and lowered by a neglected or locked-out animal. Mood is a separate score that resets to full the moment an animal eats fresh grass outdoors, and it is the one the game checks when it rolls the morning's produce. A fed animal with a good mood gives something. A hungry one gives nothing at all, and a miserable one gives something only part of the time.

Quality and size ride on those same two numbers. Grazing, petting and a closed Barn door at night are worth more than any machine, because a silver or gold product is simply the same item with a better price, while a large or deluxe one is a different item altogether. Large milk and large eggs need a couple of hearts before they can appear at all. A Duck Feather and a rabbit's foot also weigh the day's luck, which is why they turn up in clusters on a lucky week and then stay away for a fortnight.

One oddity is worth knowing from the start. When an animal is due to produce but fails the roll for a quality or large item, the game does not record that it produced anything, so an every-other-day creature such as a goat turns up ready again the very next morning. A Barn full of middling goats therefore gives milk more often than its stated schedule suggests, and a Barn of adored goats settles into the slower pattern.

Groups

Eggs are the broadest group and the cheapest to get started with. White and brown chicken eggs are the baseline, their large versions arrive once the hens are fond of the farmer, and duck eggs sit a tier above both. Beyond those come the eggs that cannot be bought: the Void Egg left behind by a witch flying over a Big or Deluxe Coop, the Ostrich Egg hatched from island loot, the Dinosaur Egg dug out of the ground, and the Golden Egg that only a finished run can produce.

Milk is the steady group. Cows give it daily and goats roughly every other day, both of them in a normal and a large form, and both of them worthless to sell raw once a Cheese Press exists.

The third group is fibre and curiosities. Wool comes from sheep in the Barn and rabbits in the Coop. A Duck Feather and a rabbit's foot are the deluxe rolls of their respective Coop animals, and neither has a machine to improve it, so both go straight to the bin or into a gift.

The last group is not really livestock at all. Roe is produced by fish living in a Fish Pond and takes its price from the fish that laid it. Slime and slime balls come from the hutch, and they are raw material rather than income.

Order

A first-year farm starts with chickens because a Coop is the cheapest building that pays, and because eggs feed the Mayonnaise Machine, which only wants Farming level two. Cows follow once a Barn is up, and the Cheese Press arrives at level six. Ducks and goats come with the first upgrade to each building, and both are a clear step up in value per animal.

Rabbits and sheep belong to the fully upgraded buildings, and by then the farm wants a loom. Ostriches wait on the island and the incubator recipe that Professor Snail hands over. Golden chickens are the last thing in the branch, since the first Golden Egg cannot be had until a run is finished.

Best

Judged purely on what it changes, the rabbit's foot is the standout of the whole branch, and almost none of that is about money. Nearly every resident in the valley loves it, which makes it the single most efficient gift item a farm can carry, and Penny is the one exception. Keeping one in the bag also changes how the large late-game gathering scene plays out, and the Enchanter's Bundle asks for one.

For income, the Ostrich Egg is the most lopsided thing in the game, because a single egg becomes ten jars of mayonnaise in one pass, and it is one of only two animal products whose own quality carries through to the finished good. The Golden Egg is close behind, since each one yields three gold-star jars.

Among the everyday items, Large Milk is the best-behaved. A Cheese Press turns it into gold-star cheese every time with no thought required, and a cask in the cellar lifts that cheese further over the following fortnight. Wool is the best value per animal in the Coop or Barn, and cloth is also the material that tailoring and several recipes keep asking for, so it is worth making even when the gold is a wash.

Prices

Two professions matter here and they sit at different levels. Rancher lifts the raw product and the animal-derived artisan good by the same fifth, so it is the simple choice for a farm that sells milk and eggs as they come. Artisan lifts the processed good by two fifths and leaves the raw item alone, which makes it the better pick for any farm that owns the machines.

Processing is nearly always right, with three traps. Every kind of egg is worth running through the Mayonnaise Machine at every quality, in every profession. Milk and Goat Milk are worth pressing at normal, silver and gold, while an iridium jug is better sold as it is unless Artisan has been taken. Wool is the awkward one: the loom ignores wool quality for the price of the cloth but uses it for the chance of a second bolt, so a single bolt from gold wool is a loss and two bolts are a handsome gain. Over a season the gamble pays, and iridium wool always gives the pair.

The Dinosaur Egg has a trap of its own. Once the appraisal book has been read the egg counts as an artifact and sells for three times its base, at which point mayonnaise is the worse option for most farms.

Strategy

The whole branch rewards one habit: open the animal door every clear morning and close it again at night. Grass sets mood to its ceiling, which is the condition for quality and for large produce, and a closed door stops the herd wandering out before they have been petted. Animals left outside overnight wake up grumpy and are at risk from whatever prowls the farm.

Plan Winter in Fall. Grass goes dormant and yields less when cut, so the sensible move is to fill the Silos while the farm is still green and to put a Heater in each building before the first snow.

Spend the Golden Animal Crackers carefully. One doubles a creature's output for good, so it belongs on the highest-value producer in the building rather than on the first animal to be petted.

Keep the machines where the produce lands. A Mayonnaise Machine standing inside the Coop and a Cheese Press inside the Barn turn the morning round into a single walk, and the animals are untroubled by the clutter.

Notes

An Auto-Grabber collects a whole building's produce without a walk, at the cost of a trickle of friendship each day. An Auto-Petter beside it cancels that loss and keeps the herd climbing.

Wool is the only product the Bulletin Board will not request until a sheep or a rabbit actually lives on the farm, and the board pays far better for it than the shipping bin does.

Roe has no category of its own, so no profession touches its price, and Pierre's General Store refuses it. The Fish Shop and the shipping bin both take it, and a Preserves Jar turns ordinary roe into Aged Roe and sturgeon roe into caviar.

Slime balls are opened for their contents rather than sold. Krobus sells slime itself every Monday, which is often quicker than running a hutch for it.

All Animal Products

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image	Animal	Price
Animal Products Profitability	-	-	-
Dinosaur Egg		Dinosaur; Artifact Spot in The Mountains / Quarry (0.6%); Fishing Treasure Chests (0.7-0.8%); Pepper Rex drop (10%); Prehistoric Floors in the Skull Cavern; Crane Game in Movie Theater	350g
Duck Egg		Ducks	95g
Duck Feather		Duck; Cat	250g
Egg		Chicken	50g
Goat Milk		Goat	225g
Golden Egg		Golden Chicken; Marnie's Ranch; Qi's Walnut Room; The Witch; Fishing Treasure Chest (0.12%)	500g
Large Egg		Chicken	95g
Large Goat Milk		Goat	345g
Large Milk		Cow	190g
Milk		Cow	125g
Ostrich Egg		Ostrich	600g
Rabbit's Foot		Rabbit; Traveling Cart; Serpent drop (0.8%); Cat	565g
Roe		Fish Pond; Fishing Treasure Chests	-
Slime		Slimes; Krobus; Slime Ball; Traveling Cart; Fish Pond	-
Slime Ball		Slime Hutch	-
Void Egg		Void Chicken; Witch; Krobus; Void Salmon Fish Ponds	65g
Wool		Rabbit; Sheep	340g