Stardew Valley - Animals

Farm animals live in a coop or a barn and repay feeding and attention with eggs, milk, wool and more. Marnie sells them, hay keeps them fed through winter, and a happy animal gives better produce. Their raw produce turns into far more valuable artisan goods.

Overview

Animals fill four separate roles in the valley, and only one of them is about money. Livestock bought from Marnie's Ranch live in buildings Robin puts up, and they turn grass into goods every morning. A cat, a dog or a turtle lives in the Farmhouse and gives nothing back but goodwill and the occasional present. A horse lives in its Stable and makes the whole map smaller. Everything else is scenery: butterflies, squirrels, owls, seagulls, frogs and the crows that eat the crops.

Livestock arrives in a strict order because the housing comes first. A building has to exist before Marnie will sell the creature that lives in it, each building holds a fixed number, and every new arrival is assigned a home the moment it is bought. Reassigning one later means petting it and then interacting a second time to bring up its menu. Robin takes three days over a new Barn or Coop and two days over an upgrade, and she stays inside the half-finished building during an upgrade, which is a convenient place to find her.

Babies cannot produce anything until they have grown up, and each kind takes a different number of days to get there. A baby still eats a full portion every day, and a day without food is a day it does not grow. That makes the Silo the real first purchase of this branch rather than the Coop, because an empty Hay Hopper is the one mistake here that costs weeks.

Groups

Coop animals leave their goods on the floor overnight, which makes them the low-effort half of the farm. Chickens come in white, brown and, after a scene with Shane, blue, and all three behave identically. The first upgrade to the Coop adds an incubator and opens the door to ducks, void chickens, dinosaurs and golden chickens. The second upgrade adds rabbits and an automatic feeder.

Barn animals mostly need a tool. Cows and goats are milked, sheep are shorn, and only the ostrich drops its egg on the floor like a Coop animal. The Barn's own tiers gate the roster in the same way: goats with the first upgrade, sheep and pigs with the second. Pigs are the exception to every rule in the building, since they find their truffles outdoors and ignore the Barn floor entirely.

Pets are a small branch of their own. The first one is free, delivered to the Farmhouse door by Marnie on a sunny Wednesday or Friday morning in the first Spring once the farm has earned a little money, and it arrives regardless by the twentieth of the season. Further pets are bought as licences from Marnie once the first is adored or once a second year has begun.

The horse stands alone, and the wild critters are there to be looked at, with two exceptions that matter: squirrels knock tree seeds loose, and rabbits shake berries out of the bushes in berry season.

Order

A sensible first year buys a Silo, then a Coop, then chickens, and leaves it there. The Silo is cheap and it starts filling the moment the farmer owns a scythe and some grass, so it turns the Coop from a running cost into an asset. A Coop also satisfies one of the opening story errands and feeds the Community Center's animal scroll.

A Barn follows when the fields can spare the wood, usually late in the first year, and cows are the natural tenants. Ducks and goats come next because their buildings need upgrading anyway for capacity. Sheep and rabbits belong to a second year, by which point the farm wants a loom standing in the corner.

Pigs are the end of the ordinary road. They are the most expensive animal Marnie sells and they need a fully upgraded Barn, so they belong to a farm that has already banked a good harvest. Ostriches, void chickens, dinosaurs and golden chickens sit outside the shop altogether and arrive through the incubator from eggs found in the world.

Best

For pure return, pigs beat everything else on the farm. A grown pig turns up truffles in the grass on any clear day outside Winter, often several in a morning, and an Oil Maker turns each one into Truffle Oil worth considerably more than the truffle. Truffle quality follows the farmer's Foraging skill rather than the pig's mood, which is the one place in this branch where petting is beside the point.

For a farm still finding its feet, chickens are the right answer and stay the right answer. They are the cheapest animal in the game, they lay every single day whatever the weather, and the Mayonnaise Machine roughly quadruples what an egg is worth. A full Coop of hens pays for a Barn.

Ducks and rabbits are the value picks in the middle of a run, because both have a second, rarer drop attached to high friendship that is worth several times the ordinary one. Sheep are the quiet favourite of anyone who takes the Shepherd profession, since the combination of high friendship and that profession brings their coat in every single day instead of every third.

The horse is the best purchase in the branch that is not an animal at all. It makes every walk across the valley shorter, it is unbothered by crops and grass underfoot, and most of the farm's daily business can be done from the saddle, including the shipping bin, the gates and the Barn doors.

Strategy

Run the buildings on a fixed routine. Open the animal doors on a clear morning, pet everything, collect what is on the floor, and shut the doors in the evening. Grazing is the single biggest lever in this branch because grass sets an animal's mood to its ceiling, and a closed door at night stops the herd leaving before it has been greeted.

Build for capacity before buying stock. An upgrade costs less than the animals that fill it, and the upgraded buildings bring an incubator, an automatic feeder and the chance of births in the night, so the building pays for itself twice over.

Treat Winter as a planning problem rather than a loss. Nothing grazes in the snow, so the hay has to be in the Silos by the end of Fall, and a Heater keeps the mood up through the long evenings. Pigs stop earning entirely, which makes Winter the right season to work the mines instead.

Watch the crows. They start appearing once sixteen crops are in the ground, one more crow for every sixteen after that, and a scarecrow in range scares them off. The fifteen parsnips a new farm is given are safely under that threshold.

Notes

A pet that reaches maximum friendship starts leaving presents on the ground when it is petted, and the three kinds give quite different things. A cat brings fish it has caught from the mountain and the forest river, along with the odd piece of cheese. A dog digs up clay, driftwood, hardwood and bone fragments, with a slim chance of an artifact. A turtle brings shore life: clams, coral, sea urchins and the occasional Nautilus Shell. A pet without its own Pet Bowl loses friendship every night, and filling the bowl with a Watering Can earns a little back by morning.

Barn animals can be set to allow pregnancy from their own menu, which brings a free animal in the night provided the Barn is upgraded and has a free space. Coop animals multiply instead through the incubator.

Animals are sold back by petting one and then using the coin button in its menu, and the price scales with how fond it is of the farmer, so a beloved animal is worth noticeably more than a new one.

Selling off a Stable removes the horse with it, and a horse left out in the valley overnight finds its own way home by morning. The Horse Flute calls it across any outdoor map, the island and the desert included.

All Animals

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image	Building	Price	Produce
Chicken		Coop	800g	Egg; Brown Egg; Large Egg; Large Brown Egg
Cow		Barn	1500g	Milk; Large Milk
Dinosaur		Big Coop	-	Dinosaur Egg
Duck		Big Coop	1200g	Duck Egg; Duck Feather
Dusty	-	-	-	-
Goat		Big Barn	4000g	Goat Milk; Large Goat Milk
Golden Chicken		Big Coop	-	Golden Egg
Ostrich		Barn	-	Ostrich Egg
Pig		Deluxe Barn	16000g	Truffle
Rabbit		Deluxe Coop	8000g	Rabbit's Foot; Wool
Sheep		Deluxe Barn	8000g	Wool
Void Chicken		Big Coop	-	Void Egg