Question involving fence and animals

[Gloominatti]

I've played for a while but started over to focus on being a rancher, can you just build fence and gates around all the exits to prevent your livestock from escaping or do you have to box in the buildings? I'd like it more if the animals could just sort of roam.

[IEatCray0ns]

When first starting out, I always let my animals roam freely.
They never escaped or anything like that, your animals will
do their thing and they return to their buildings around 5:00 PM.

[NotThatHarkness]

The animals don't wander off your farm. In my first game I fenced in the crops so they wouldn't get away. In my 2nd game I put a fence around a very large field in front of the buildings. As long as the animals can return to the buildings at right you should be ok.

[NoMercy Rider]

Fencing in barns/coops only really helps with convenience. If you don't bother closing the door at night, you will likely have to scour the entire farm to find each animal to pet/milk/sheer. This can be a bit of a hassle. If you fence in the buildings, then the animals can't wander as far and makes them easier to manage. This is a non-issue if you go through the effort of closing the doors each night and doing those chores within the building itself.

Also, fences are a godsend if you have pigs for truffle farming. Without the fences, pigs can dig up truffles anywhere and it becomes much more difficult to locate.

[moonlady3000]

The reason you want fences is so that you don't have to close the animals into the building every night.
I've been told that fencing off the entrances will stop that, but cannot confirm.
It is possible for a wild dog or something to come and eat your chickens. If you hear a scream during the night it's because something was able to get to the animals, and you'll have one less in the morning.

[NoMercy Rider]

Originally posted by moonlady3000:

The reason you want fences is so that you don't have to close the animals into the building every night.
I've been told that fencing off the entrances will stop that, but cannot confirm.
It is possible for a wild dog or something to come and eat your chickens. If you hear a scream during the night it's because something was able to get to the animals, and you'll have one less in the morning.

This is not entirely true (confirmed by game code and the Wiki[stardewvalleywiki.com]). Your farm animals will not be attacked as long as they all return inside the barn/coop at night. The only risk of this happening is if you close the doors before all the animals return. As long as you keep the doors open the entire time, you will never run the risk of them being attacked. The only caveat, as I mentioned in my previous post, is that you now have to manage animals that have run amok first thing in the morning.