Coop animals eating grass faster than it will grow.

[Hillbilly_Dave]

How do I get the grass to grow faster? Will it only spread so far from the starter spot?

[/POISON\]

No if you leave the grass grow, it will slowly cover all unused farmland on your farm. Another problem is, after leaving the barn/coop the animals move to the closest grasstile available to feed on it.
1.) You can build a bigger grass area for each barn/coop.
2.) Leave your cattle in the barn/coop at some days to give the grass a chance for recovering.
3.) This is the most expensive one: Buy grass starters at the Seedshops

[Hillbilly_Dave]

Yeah I bought grass starters and placed them out and it was doing well now suddenly the growth can't keep up with how much they eat. Do ducks eat more than chickens? I replaced 4 of my chickens with ducks so maybe that's it?

[/POISON\]

I don't think so each animal only eats one grasstile per day.

[mmmmarygray]

You just need a ton of grass. It grows VERY slowly.

[PhilkIced]

You're not supposed to rely entirely and only on grass unless you have way more grass than you have animals imo, try having a small fenced area so that they can come out every day, but can only eat grass when you open the fence, and must eat the hay inside when you close it, that way you can have them eat grass 2 days, hay 1 day, grass 2 days, hay 1 day.

[mmmmarygray]

Originally posted by PhilkIced:

You're not supposed to rely entirely and only on grass unless you have way more grass than you have animals imo, try having a small fenced area so that they can come out every day, but can only eat grass when you open the fence, and must eat the hay inside when you close it, that way you can have them eat grass 2 days, hay 1 day, grass 2 days, hay 1 day.

In addition to this, field rotation is really nice. Have a small field they always can access, and two huge fields that are fenced off. Trade them off per field each day.

[Caerbannog]

I replenish my grass with grass starter, especially when it rains and the animals are indoors.

[Lurlex]

Animals in general need a lot more balancing ... I think that reducing their consumption rate of grass is a good start in that direction. Feeding is a pain the BUTT, and it's difficult to balance for most players (forget fishing -- this is the REAL hard-to-master art in Stardew Valley, getting a full set of coops and barns stuffed with animals well-fed and happy). Make them less of pigs, and you might find more people willing to invest in pigs. ;-)

They also need their produce sell price elevated, even if it just means reducing the time for processing further into mayo and cheese and whatnot. The last patch only took a baby step in the direction of where things really need to go. Otherwise, a lot of players are going to continue only bothering with animals to complete bundles, then sell them all and convert the buildings into keg/preserves warehouses, or demolish them and pave over the land with crops.

Investing time in animals in the game for anything but bundle completion (you really only need exactly one of each animal type to flesh out those bundles) is a money-loss venture. The same amount of time and land real estate invested in crops is always a better bet.

[Proteus]

Originally posted by lonevision:

I replenish my grass with grass starter, especially when it rains and the animals are indoors.

Same here ... at the beginning of a year I plant a lot of grass starters all around the farm (around 20-50), so spread out that they have room to grow and keep the animals inside for the first days, so that the grass has a headstart.

I also take care that a lot ofd the grass starters cover regions tghat aren´t too close to the farm (so that the grass there will gtow undisturbed, even when the animals are allowed to roam the surroundings)

[PhilkIced]

I completely agree with Lurlex and would like to add that having to pet them every day for maximum efficiency is also a pain, crops require work early on, but after you get quality and further iridium sprinklers you can automate the boring part of watering every single day, anymals require work early by feeding and after you get deluxe buildings this is automated, so it would work like crops and I'd be happy, but not only you have to collect low value goods every day as oposed to high value every few days, requiring way more work, you also have to pet them every day.

In the end this is what made me sell my animals, not even the low profit as I have enough money to cope with it now in the late game, but the huge amount of time and work every single day I had to collect all the eggs, milk, wool and truffles and pet every single animal while they clump together and prevent me from clicking on one of them.

Petting animals every day is a pain and in my most honest opinion needs to go.

[Saint Landwalker]

Originally posted by PhilkIced:

I completely agree with Lurlex and would like to add that having to pet them every day for maximum efficiency is also a pain, crops require work early on, but after you get quality and further iridium sprinklers you can automate the boring part of watering every single day, anymals require work early by feeding and after you get deluxe buildings this is automated, so it would work like crops and I'd be happy, but not only you have to collect low value goods every day as oposed to high value every few days, requiring way more work, you also have to pet them every day.

In the end this is what made me sell my animals, not even the low profit as I have enough money to cope with it now in the late game, but the huge amount of time and work every single day I had to collect all the eggs, milk, wool and truffles and pet every single animal while they clump together and prevent me from clicking on one of them.

Petting animals every day is a pain and in my most honest opinion needs to go.

Yes, unfortunately I'm leaning heavily towards "Just sell my damn animals" as well. It's Spring of Year 3. I shouldn't have to be bouncing around manually milking three cows and collecting 4-8 eggs depending on how stuck-up my chickens and ducks are feeling that day, then dumping them all into processing equipment, then re-collecting all of the processed goods. That alone—and that's a total of about 14 animals (3 cows, two ducks, two rabbits, 6 chickens, and a void chicken)—takes me more time per season than my hundreds of crops do. But at least with the crops, I get all of the work out of the way up-front instead of having it be a constant nag, every day.