How does auto grabber work?

[Bezerk]

so I just bought the auto grabber for my chickens and I placed it inside the coop and it doesnt work?! how do I fix that?!!!!1

[TamarLence]

It doesn't work on coop buildings unfortunatly. It will only work on barn animals like cows, goats, sheep, and pigs. Place it in the barn and the next morning all the items you get from them will be in the grabber. You still have to pet your animals though.

[I Kinda Fail]

Dumb af that it doesn't work on coops. Like, why?

[TamarLence]

Doesn't work on coops because you pick their eggs and feathers off the ground. The grabber needs to have the item on the animal to grab from like milk and wool. There might be a mod out there that fixes that.

[I Kinda Fail]

Yeah, but I mean, why didn't they make it work for coops, or add a second item? :P

[Bezerk]

Originally posted by I Kinda Fail:

Yeah, but I mean, why didn't they make it work for coops, or add a second item? :P

ikr. my skill is basically specializing with coop animals

[Clovis Sangrail]

Originally posted by I Kinda Fail:

Dumb af that it doesn't work on coops. Like, why?

Because the developer didn't code it that way.

If picking things up off the ground is too much effort for you, you could always learn to code and write your own mod.

Lazy coop owners everywhere will thank you.

[badwolf_rose]

There is a mod that makes it work for coop items, crops, foraging...

[Nulien]

The grabber is designed to save you the effort of having to use the milking and shearing tools, which consume energy (I think, been a while since I've had animals), so the grabber saves you the trouble of needing to bring those tools and saves you a bit of energy.

The coop products, on the other hand, don't require any tools at all, so there wouldn't be as much benefit.

[Eneicia]

Originally posted by badwolf_rose:

There is a mod that makes it work for coop items, crops, foraging...

A few mods I think.

Originally posted by Nulien:

The grabber is designed to save you the effort of having to use the milking and shearing tools, which consume energy (I think, been a while since I've had animals), so the grabber saves you the trouble of needing to bring those tools and saves you a bit of energy.

The coop products, on the other hand, don't require any tools at all, so there wouldn't be as much benefit.

I didn't know about the use of energy! That's cool!

[Gaz66d]

"Auto-Grabbers can be placed anywhere, but will not do anything unless placed inside a barn or coop." Source: https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Auto-Grabber

Barn OR COOP

If it only works in the barn, or was only intended to harvest Barn animals specifically...
Why would it say OR coop?

Either it was considered to be intended as an Egg harvesting machine- and is bugged.

Or it's a typo and has mislead many people to buy extra unnecessary AutoGrabbers because as far as the official wiki states: its for BOTH.

It doesn't specify "Only works for cotton dropped by rabbits and not eggs" where information is key- this is more helpful than a quiet shrug and a vague "have you tried turning it off and on again?"

[LetTheBodyFall]

@Gaz66d because before 1.4 the autograbber only worked inside barns. It working inside coops was a recent addition. Also this post is from 2018 so the question is pretty outdated.