Pets and farm animals

[MindfulOcean]

1. Where do you buy pets from? I haven't seen any for sale anywhere, and I'm in Fall of my first year.

2. When should you start buying animals?

3. How do you get food for your animals? I see that you can plant grass. Is that a good idea? Do they eat it themselves, or do you have to put it somewhere?

4. Do you need to manually ring the bell to get animals other than the foal to go back inside?

Honestly, I almost feel like skipping animals altogether. I keep having to weed unused chunks of my farm because the horse you get at the start of the game keeps galloping off and I don't want to waste time waiting for it to come back to an easily accessible portion of the map. Brushing it is a pain too because it won't sit still.

[Tizferatu]

1. You have to give gifts to the harvest goddess 30 times to unlock the pet merchant who will only show up on the 15th of each month if it's sunny and not a festival.

2. Whenever you think you can reliably feed them.

3. You can cut the grass to get fodder and store it in the silo behind that barn. You can buy chicken feed (which rabbits also eat) from the chicken selling place. I think you might also be able to put corn into the chicken feed silo but I haven't had the chance to try that yet. Note that unlike other SoS/HM games, grass does not regrow when you cut it down. However it does spread over time, so just make sure not to cut down too much at once.

3.b If you let them out, they'll eat from the ground (don't know if they actually consume the planted grass or not in this one). I believe chickens/rabbits do not actually consume the grass but still get fed. However it's better to hand-feed animals in this game IIRC as it increases hearts.

If it's rainy don't let them out. If you don't want to hand feed and they're to be kept inside for the day, just chuck the food onto the feeding spots in the barns.

4. No clue, I tend to wait until I have a fairly large stockpile of food to.

For the horse, remember you can find it on the map and whistle for it (c button) which will cause him to stop and come to you (if he's close enough to you). Real easy to do that when it's running by you in the morning.