Barn and owned animals
Complete Thalen Meadowrun's Barn and finish his recruitment quest. The core barn keeps purchased animals and produces inventory items. Townsfolk Ranching workplaces provide population food support with their own automatic animals instead.
Choose and assign animals
Choose Animal shop when speaking to Thalen to open his separate shop. Common animals cost 100 gold at Rancher Mastery 1, uncommon animals cost 250 gold at Mastery 4, and rare animals cost 500 gold at Mastery 7. Ask Thalen about Building upgrades to unlock more pens and improve the barn.
Food is shown as a small corner badge on each animal portrait. Resource storage starts at 10 per resource and gains 10 with each storage upgrade. Existing excess stock stays available to collect.
Your barn starts with one active pen. Building upgrades unlock up to five pens. Choose Choose on a pen to open a grid of animal cards showing their picture, name, hearts and preferred food. Select a card to assign that animal. Choosing an animal already in another pen swaps the two animals. Rest empties a pen without losing its animal. Animals keep their names and hearts while resting. Rename them from My animals.
Animals stay at their marked pen and cannot be killed or captured. You do not need to bring wild animals, find a breeding pair or raise offspring. Building authors mark five animal pens in the building editor by clicking the floor where each animal should stand. Face the direction it should look. Use Adjust or remove on a marker to remove it.
Older community barns without pen markers automatically look for clear floor spaces inside the barn. Each automatic pen needs a 3 by 3 floor with four clear blocks above it. The pen screen tells you when space is missing. Your animals and upgrades stay yours; updated building designs use their author's pen positions.
Daily food and hearts
Each active animal eats one serving of its own food each day, beginning at dawn. Choose Supply all in the Food bin to transfer as much of that food as fits, up to 64 servings per type. Couriers can also supply it from farm output and town storage. Automatic deliveries keep eight of each active food by default. Choose a different target or turn deliveries off using the courier button. You need a Warehouse Manager and a townsfolk worker with Logistics enabled.
Common animals eat early crops:
- Chicken: Corn, Farming Bench tier 2
- Pig: Turnip, tier 3
- Rabbit: Carrot, tier 2
- Sheep: Lettuce, tier 1
- Goat: Cauliflower, tier 3
Uncommon animals eat later crops:
- Cow and Deer: Pumpkin, tier 4
- Boar and Camel: Aubergine, tier 4
- Tetrabird: Tomato, tier 5
- Skrill: Chilli, tier 5
Rare animals need the latest vegetables or meat:
- Bear: Raw wildmeat
- Mosshorn: Onion, tier 7
- Moose and Armadillo: Potato, tier 7
These tiers refer to the ordinary seed recipe at the Farming Bench. Wheat is not animal food.
Feeding gives 20 affection. Use the interaction prompt on an animal to pet it for another 10 affection, once each day. Each 100 affection earns a heart, up to five hearts. Each heart adds 20% to resource yields over time. Naming, resting or moving an animal does not reset its daily care.
Animal resources
Active, fed animals produce all their resources every six hours of loaded game time. Production speed upgrades shorten this interval. Hearts increase yields. Chickens and Skrills give eggs. Cows give beef, medium hide and milk. Sheep give wildmeat, light hide and wool. Tetrabirds give wildmeat and dark feathers. Armadillos give wildmeat and sturdy chitin. Other animals give their normal meat and hide. All animals slowly produce poop.
Open Resources to see each product's stored amount and capacity, including products that are still empty, and collect supplies. Bring an empty bucket for each milk bucket you collect. Full storage pauses the next resource bundle until there is enough room for every item. Animals that are resting, waiting for food or outside loaded chunks do not produce. Animal products never consume or kill an owned animal.
Apprentice ranch workplaces remain separate from the core Barn. Craft a Feeding Trough at the Workbench from 5 tree trunks and 10 Plant Fiber. Mark a Ranching workplace around it and leave clear floor space nearby. A cow and a chicken appear automatically and stay inside the workplace. You do not need to bring animals. Regular Apprentice tending provides town food support rather than item output.
If an animal is missing or not producing
Check that you own the animal, have assigned it to an unlocked pen, have enough clear space and have loaded the barn. For older designs without pen markers, each automatic pen needs a supported 3 by 3 floor with four clear blocks above it inside the plot. The herd screen reports missing space; it does not build over furniture to make room.
Then check the portrait's preferred food and resource capacity. An animal resting in My animals, waiting for food, or outside loaded terrain does not produce. Your animals, names, hearts and purchased upgrades remain when an old design gains authored pen locations.