Free Hay

[Revenant]

Hey gus sry i cut all of my grass and i dont have any hay for my animals how can i get free hay please help me

[ehyder]

there are mods you can use that allow grass to grow in the winter, other than that the only source is to buy it from Marnie

[Ryvaken Tadrya]

Grass does occasionally start growing spontaneously on open, untilled ground. The first day of spring, summer, and fall all see a burst in such growth. You can also start it growing by purchasing grass starter from Pierre.

However, you're going to need to let it grow and spread to reach enough volume to let your animals feast on it without killing it all and setting you back to square one. Until then, you're stuck with buying hay.

I like to maintain a field of grass away from my animals. Every few days I take a scythe through it and thin it out, let it grow back, then thin it again. By the time winter rolls around I have a stockpile big enough to go all year. By year two, though, it's usually more time-efficient to turn the land to fields and just buy the hay.

[ehyder]

Another trick is to buy grass (from Pierre) and plant under fences. Animals will not be able to eat it and the grass can spread from the fence. Still not free hay, but it will help you replenish the grass.

[landscape]

you need a silo to store the hay before you cut the grass. any other advice is already posted above.

[Revenant]

ty gus

[Nakos]

Never clear-cut your grass.

Cut it "badly" (so that there are tufts remaining). That way it'll regrow quite quickly and you can cut it again, rapidly filling whatever silos you have.

[Futa Fanatic]

With me I have a section of my farm just to grow hay, that will produce enough to last months.

[Degurechaff]

There's a starter grass in pierre's store, buy just one and wait for it to grow lots. Or you can just wait a bit longer, as long as its not winter it'll eventually grow.

[schildkröte]

You can also get lucky and recieve some hay as gift from marnie in the mail

[childcrone]

Originally posted by Nakos:

Never clear-cut your grass.

Not exactly never: I suggest doing so at the end of fall.

[ehyder]

yes, I start eliminating the number of animals after getting the products I need for gifts, recipes, and bundles. The autograbber helps, but really need one of those for the poultry to continue to make the coop animals worth the effort.

If you get the foraging skill up to 10 (Gatherer then Botanist) you will get purple truffles, making the truffles much closer in profit to the oil. The pigs will produce more truffles if friendship stays high, so that can still be a bit time consuming to keep petting them.

Anyone know - How often do you actually need to pet an animal per week to maintain the max friendship level?

[ehyder]

@red255 - great, thanks. So once you get the pigs to max friendship you just need to pet them if they are stuck inside because of rain, or for the winter. No milking or shearing, although I have accidentally tried to milk the pigs :)

[Včelí medvídek]

Just small tip - place couple of lighting rods over the planted grass (or your grass field) - you can still let animals feed there but they will never eat those spots so the grass continously grow over there.

Anyway, long term get used to buying hay - it is not worthy of your time to care about grass and profit from animals is many times higher than the hay price.