Beefalo Taming - Why and How? (2025 Update)

I'm here to familiarize you with the most underrated aspect of this game: Beefalo taming. Stick around for some mind-blowing facts!

UPDATE

2025 update is here baby! All the new beefalo shenanigans are added to the guide.

Intro

Yall probably know beefalo taming is a thing, but never have had a strong enough motivation to actually get your hands dirty and start doing it. As James Bucket said: "this is a survival game, not beefalo taming simulator". It needs a massive incentive to make you waste at least 15 precious days to babysit a beefalo. That's almost a full season! And even after that, you'll need salt licks to keep him/her domesticated. Is it really worth the cost and hustle? (Yes, the answer is yes. 1000 times YES)

Reason #1: Combat

An ornery beefalo is literally the most OP thing in human history, period. It's an infinite weapon that deals 50 base damage, it's a chunky meat shield with 1000 hp that regenerates 8 health every 10 seconds, AND also gains 4x the value of healing food; Meaning a single blue cap will restore 80 hp for a beef, and 12 is enough to fully heal him. But if you're good at dodging (which isn't very hard while riding a beef as it's fast af), you won't even need that much healing since it has a passive life regen.
Taming a beefalo is a one time investment that pays off for the rest of your days. Specially, when you realize (here is the best part) that Warly's spices and volt goat jelly, also works on beefalos!! Just remember, you gotta eat them yourself and then ride the beef. Feeding them to the beef has no effect (They don't even eat the jelly)

But how does it perform against bosses?

Seasonal Bosses: The speed, even with slower saddles, is more than enough to dodge all of them. And since you don't need to hold anything in your hand, moose/goose's honk doesn't do anything and lets you get free hits.
Klaus: With a glossamer saddle, you can COMPLETELY dodge all of his casts and jump attacks, as well as land 4 hits between his normal attacks. Not to mention, finding his sack becomes massively easy due to beefalo's insane speed.
Dragonfly: Enough speed to dodge her hits, simple as that.
Eye of terror/Twins: Again, so much speed lets you dodge their attacks with ease, specially the twins which are crazy fast.
Shadow Pieces: Again, more than enough speed to dodge the tier 3 rook.
Ancient Guardian: I'm just repeating myself at this point... YOU'RE FAST AF, HE WILL NEVER HIT YOU! And if he does every now and then, life regen will take care of it.
Celestial Champion: This is an interesting one... Beefalo has some really good advantages against it, like the speed (per usual) and being able to wear bone mask without it ever losing durability. But, you are still prone to grogginess which will slow you down, and if your grogginess reaches 10, you WILL fall off your beef which is lethal. So you either gotta be extra careful with the sleeping aura of the crystals, or bring some mushy cakes. Other than that, the speed is so friggin' useful in this fight, especially in the last phase; Since celestial champion is a slippery motherfu-
Nightmare werepig: New updates have added ways to "counter" beefalos, so that you can't just mindlessly use them. Which include some mobs knocking you off the beef; This can be devastating, since if they have AoE (which most of them do), it means they also hit your beef and the beef will aggro on them and you can't get back on, unless you have a nightmare saddle or put him to sleep (or watch your beef get slaughtered). But again, beefs are so fast that you don't really get hit that much, and you can also put the beefalo bell far away so that your beef runs out of danger zone if you get knocked off. Nighmare werepig is one of those mobs that can knock you off, but your insane speed on a beef makes it really hard for him to hit you. Still, he has a tremendously bugged AI. So I still recommend you put the bell far away from the area. Also, the cracks in the ground never slow you down while you ride a beef.
Scrappy Werepig: Same sh!t, different smell. He can also knock you off the beefalo, even though the speed is enough to dodge him. So put that bell far away!
Frost Jaw: You don't slip on ice while riding a beef; Have fun dodging as fast as you please!

The bosses that I do not recommend you fight with beefalo: Bee Queen, Ancient Fuelweaver and Toadstool. It is possible to beat them while riding a beef, but it's going to be a massive resource sink. Also, ocean bosses are not gonna be fun with a beef, obviously...

In the recent updates, they've added some new items and mechanics to beefalos. As if they weren't overpowered enough, you can now craft a nightmare saddle which gives a friggin' 60 PERCENT DAMAGE REDUCTION TO YOUR BEEF, as well as 18 planar damage and other lunar and shadow specific buffs... On top of that, the other saddles don't allow you to mount on your beef if it is aggroed on an enemy; Nightmare saddle is the only on that bypasses beef's aggro and let you mount at any time. Which means this saddle, turns your cow into a literal tank, with an infinite dark sword (the saddle doesn't lose durability if you get hit...)

But it's not all about combat!

Reason #2: Speed

Do you traverse a lot in your world? Are there no useful wormholes around? God help you if you play more than 100 days while having a tamed beef, since you will NEVER be able to just play normally without a beef. It saves sooo much time because of its massive speed, it's unbelievable. Specially since it has so many advantages:

Free hand slot: Usually at night, you have to remove walking cane to hold a torch or lantern. But that's a thing of the past with beef, since you can just hold anything while retaining your speed; Because someone else does the running.

Piggy Backpack: Most people aren't too keen on this item because of its drawback (slowing down the player) but it has no effect on beefs. They can move insanely heavy statues, do you really think a mere backpack is gonna stop em? Speak of the devil,

Heavy Items: Statue pieces, celestial pieces, sunken chests, heavy fruits, ANYTHING that makes your characters walk at snail pace, doesn't even make your beef break a sweat. So, yeah.

Cactus hunting: Cacti are a great source of sanity, BUT, they are spread out and also hurt you. What if you could run really fast, and also have an infinite meat shield to block the damage from picking cacti? I let you draw the conclusion.

Stormy Areas: Sandstorm, moon storms and miasma no longer slow you down. But your vision will still be limited.

Reason #3: CAVES

Back in my days, you couldn't take the beef into caves. But then, they added the beefalo bell... Beefalo bell was one of the nicest additions to the game, ever. Since on top of all the advantages it provides, it allows you to bring your beefalo to the caves. There are so many reason why you would want a beefalo in the caves:

Mapping out: Caves are massive. I mean, humongous. It will take a long time to uncover the whole cave map, if you have no decent speed modifiers. Howevah, beefalo's speed modifier allows you to map out the caves and find the ruins and archives faster than you ever could. Speaking of the ruins,

The Ruins: Beefalo makes ruins clearing a whole lot easier. But just remember, never bring beefalo to the ruins unless it's fully tamed. Because untamed beefalo only let's you ride it up to 4 minutes. And you wouldn't wanna get thrown off in the middle of a thousand shadow splumonkeys. A fully tamed beefalo, let's you ride it for 13 minutes. Beefalo is perfect for both fighting and just running through the ruins. Many people use a ham bat because there is so much fighting in the ruins and having infinite uses on a weapon is highly welcome. Compared to ham bat, beefalo is an infinite+1 weapon. Never spoils, and can tank damage for you (except from bishops since they still hit you. More on that later). There are also a ♥♥♥♥♥ load of blue caps which you can use to heal it. So basically, beefalo makes blue caps useful even for characters that cannot benefit from it (Wormwood, Warly, Wigrid). Also if you have no interest in fighting, you can just run past every danger with your beef. It's so fast that the enemies may not even have you in their vision enough to aggro on you. You can even run right through depth dweller webs since they won't be able to catch up to you. And don't forget, you can always keep your light in your hands while on beef. So, the darkness is no longer something that slows you down.

Miscellaneous Reasons

Even if all of these weren't enough, there are still some smaller perks that are just QoL improvements :

Ewecus: I'm sure we all hate ewecus. But what if I told you, that he won't spit his ♥♥♥♥ at you if you're riding a beefalo?? ;)

Bearger: Bearger is a lot more valuable alive than dead. Mainly for chopping down trees. His dash attach is perfect for dropping large amounts of trees in a matter of seconds; But he always catches up to the player and does his shockwave attack, which increases the chance of treeguards spawning. While riding a beefalo with regular or glossammer saddle, he cannot reach you while running, and you can just have him drops trees for a good 5 or 6 seconds. Also, his attacks no longer drop your item out of your hand.

Sinkholes: Sinkholes made by antlion or nightmare werepig, don't slow you down.

Mating Season: A tamed beefalo will not go in heat. And while riding it, beefalos that are in heat will not attack you.

Weak characters: If you main Wes or Wendy, beefalo is a great help for you. Since their 0.75x damage multiplier, does not affect beefalo's damage. And on top of that, Abigail's damage increase make you do more damage with beefalo as well.

Frogs: Again, back in my time, this wasn't the case. Nowadays, frogs cannot steal your items while riding a beef. But keep in mind, pirate monkeys and marotters can still knock items out of you.

If you know any other advantages, please let me know.

Let's Starts Taming Then!

Let's just jeep this short and sweet. Try these at a personal world with "Show Me" mod activated, so that you can see all the stats and watch your progress.

Let's talk about stats first.
Beefalos have a maximum of 1000 health, 375 hunger, 100 obedience and 100% domestication. Once you feed the beef, all stats (except for health) start at zero, and the beefalo will be tamed once domestication reaches 100%. Domestication goes up if the hunger value is above 0, OR you're riding the beef. So you either feed it, or ride it with 0 hunger. Riding it with more than 0 hunger does not accelerate the process, so don't waster your food on that.
But what about obedience?
Obedience is the stat that determines whether you can saddle and ride your beef or not. Every time you feed your beef, obedience goes up by 10 points, regardless of the hunger value. So even petals and lightbulbs with zero hunger value, raise this stat. It's best to always have this stat topped off, since a beefalo with less than 50 obedience wont let you ride it and below 40, it will shake off his saddle which makes the saddle lose durability. So always make sure to feed it a few items (10 at most, since obedience won't go above 100) to make sure you can always hop on. Having the mod enabled, lets you know exactly how many items you need to feed to beef to keep this stat high. Obedience reduces over time, and also when the beef gets hit by enemies. So if you fight a lot, be ready to feed the cow as soon as you get off; Because there is a good chance that obedience is below 40 after all the spanking.

Tamed beefalo has 4 variants: Ornery, Rider, Regular and Pudgy.
Right off the bat, regular and pudgy are useless. So you either want a rider, which is the fastest (twice as much as a regular character), or the ornery, which does the most damage (50).
Usually, you'd want the ornery 'cause it's an absolute unit that can take down everything. But if you're playing Wolfgang or Wigfrid, rider will benefit you most; Since YOU are the absolute unit in this case, and the beef's damage output will be lower. But how do you know what you're getting?
Once you start taming, you can see the beef's face change after a while, based on what you've been doing with him. If you've been feeding him a lot, just stop! You're gonna get the pudgy variant which has a derpy face and is useless. Unless you have a mega-base and would like to have a friendly and cute companion, this one is just not worth anything. If you've been fighting a lot, the face becomes mean and jaded, like this:



This will result in an ornery beefalo in the end; Note that you won't get the 50 damage until it is fully domesticated, even after the face change. Before the domestication is complete, it will do the standard 34 damage.
If you mostly ride your beef without engaging in many fights, you'll get the rider:



These also have hidden stats, but it's way too complicated; Just keep an eye on the beef's face and if it's not to your liking, engage in fights or more riding to change the variant BEFORE the domestication ends; Because after it's over, you're stuck with that variant. Beefalo gets ornery points by the amount of times that he gets hit or hits something, regardless of damage. So just keep harassing bees and spiders, and you'll get it very easily. And if you want the rider, just keep exploring and doing chores and delivering marble statues and stuff like that, since it will gain rider points for every 10 seconds that you're on it, and you'll get the rider. Do these for 20 days and you'll get your tamed cow!

But are there ways to change this 20 day duration? Of course...
You can reduce it, by using a brush every day. Brushing a beefalo once a day, reduces this duration by 5 days. But in my experience, getting the damn brush actually takes more than 5 days! So, it's not even worth it unless you got lucky with klaus loot or unlucky with a hunting trail.
Other than that, there are ways to INCREASE the domestication process.
First of all, don't hit your beef; each hit will add an extra 6 days.
Secondly, don't let it starve while you're not riding it. That will decrease domestication points.
And also, don't feed it above that 375 points. Beefalo will fart if its hunger goes above 300, so that's a good indication to stop feeding it.

And after all of your hard work, the beef will flash and makes a puff noise, which indicates that it has been domesticated; It will happen once you feed it after the domestication stat is at 100%.
After that, the riding time increases to 13 minutes, and beefalo never shakes off his saddle as he now has a minimum obedience (depending on the variant). The lowest is ornery wit 45 minimum obedience, which means you will need to feed it one item before you hop on.

My Early Game Beefalo Taming Process

I always pick Wormwood for this playstyle (and I will explain why Wormwood is an amazing teammate for beefalos).
Day one, instantly start killing butterflies and picking every single food item that I see. With the Bee Kind skill for Wormwood, killing butterflies is easier than ever. So, glossamer saddle is on the list.
I just keep looking until I find a beefalo herd. I immediately feed it all the carrots and berries that I have. You might be asking, so what about yourself? Well, Wormwood can eat anything without losing health. So I just live off of red caps. Riding your beef in the early days is extremely frustrating, since it knocks you off every 20 seconds or so. Therefor, I just feed him until he gains some domestication points and I can ride it for longer. Usually by the time I have enough butterflies, the beef has a decent riding time. Also, I usually have the beefalo bell before starting the domestication; But even if I don't, I just start it right away to get the tamed beef asap. After that, I just keep exploring and do the chores that need tools, like chopping trees and mining rocks and breaking pig houses, while feeding my beef. And also, I keep killing butterflies and once I get enough butterfly wings, I just craft 2 living logs out of my own flesh & blood and make the saddle and keep exploring even more, gathering grass and twigs and fighting mobs like spiders and bees. Fighting bees is really important as Wormwood, since I can craft the bramble husk. With the correct skills selected, bramble husk does AoE damage after every 3rd hit EVEN while I ride the beef. So, I definitely use that for the fights.
Then, I just keep exploring until I find the dragonfly desert and base in there. Because tumbleweeds are really useful, and having a beef means you can hunt them down really easily. I plant all the seeds that I collected along the way to get tomatoes, then I start preparing to fight the dragonfly; Making walls and gathering healing food for my beef. I usually start the fight at day 16 or 17, before the winter. If finding the beef took me more than 3 or 4 days, I should also make a beefalo hat; Since an untamed beef with more than 3 or 4 days until full domestication still goes into heat, and I don't want that to ruin the dragonfly fight!
So on day 16 or 17, I engage dragonfly and this fight ensures that I get an ornery beef, while giving me gems and scaled furnace. And a few days after the fight, the beef is fully tamed and I can use it to kill klaus and seasonal bosses and shred my way through the ruins.

Wormwood: The Best Pair For Beefalo

Wormwood is OP. It's disgusting how this character trivializes so many of the powerful bosses and mobs. Even before the skill tree, bramble husk was insanely useful. Now they've made it attack on its own, AND be able to fuse with brightshade armor???? Klei? Are you okay?????
As I said before, bramble husk activates after every 3rd hit, even on a beefalo; Which is a very nice bonus. But on top of that, it now makes Wormwood a direct counter to every single boss that beefalo can't handle. Specially bee queen, becomes as much of a threat as a random hound wave. Just craft 2 bat bats, a morning star, a bunch of healing salves, about 25 cooked cacti and some beekeeper hats and bramble husks. Then, fight her after the spring rain. If you wanna kill her sooner, just use dark swords instead; But bring more cacti. No panflutes, no cheese methods, just face-tank and heal with bat bat, and watch as her grumble bees fall like flies by your AoE thorn attack.
What about fuelweaver? Well, do I have news for you....
With enough bramble traps, and a blooming Wormwood which resets the traps after unlocking the bramble trap skill, you can fill the area with traps that kill the woven shadows AND the unseen hands, making the fight a complete joke. Just run around the area to reset the traps, keep hitting the boss, and once he summons new minions, repeat the cycle.
But what about the toadstool? He doesn't have any minions.
Sure, but with the moon shroom cloud skill, you can put him to sleep as many times as you want, and take your sweet time chopping the trees. With Wormwood having the power to craft living logs, farming moon shrooms is a piece of cake. This trick can also be used on crab king to stop his minions.
On top of that, Wormwood can farm tomatoes with ease, which is one the best healing items for beefalo. Just farm random seeds until you get at least 4 tomatoes, feed them to a bird and get the seeds, plant them on any ground and by tending to them ONCE, you can get your seeds back. In spring, you can get even more seeds to get more tomatoes and have more healing for your cow.

Look After Your Beef After Domestication

This section used to be long and painful. Now, it's as simple as this:
The domestication value still decreases if left at 0 hunger while you don't ride it; Since you can't just be on the beef all the time, you're gonna need a salt lick. Salt lick prevents the loss of domestication points if the beef is near it.
Find a salt formation, make a gourmet salt lick, and repair it with more salt when it gets damaged (which takes ages, because it has so much durability). That's it. That's ALL you need to keep the domestication from dropping. Before you find a salt formation, regular salt lick works fine; Tho it has less durability and can't be repaired.
I suppose I should also tell you that you need to keep your beef alive, if you don't want a full season worth of blood, tear and sweat go to waste! So be careful when approaching huge herds of mobs, like hounds and frogs and monkeys; Since they are the only actual threats to your beef, as they can stun-lock you. But, again, the new update made it even more stupidly OP to have a beef. The gloomy bell lets you resurrect your beef after it dies, so make that as soon as you can; And always remember, bring that bell with you if you don't want to run halfway across the map after your beef just 'cause you forgot the bell!

The Downsides

Obviously, beefalos are not the solution for every single situation. So I should also point out their downsides:

Attacks with knockback: I've already said this, but be mindful of anything that knocks you back, as they can knock you off the beefalo. The wrathful rabbit king, nightmare and scrappy werepigs, ink blights, ect.

Attacks that ignore beefalo: Gestalts, MacTusk, bishops, charged volt goats, fire, spitters, great depth worm and Charlie still attack you instead of the beefalo. Also, splumonkey's poop attack still drains your sanity. So be careful with them. Luckily, you can use a marble suit with ease. Since it won't slow you down while riding the beef. Also any ranged weapon used by player in pvp, hits you instead of the beefalo.

Overfeeding: Unlike player, beefalo can't just smash healing food forever. Beefalo has a maximum hunger of 375 and feeding anything over that, not only decreases the domestication, but also the obedience; Meaning without a brush, you're just gonna wait until he get hungry again to raise its obedience, or have some food with no hunger value in hand like petals or lightbulbs. This make dragon pie the worst healing food in boss fights, since beefalo can only eat 5 at most. So healing food with low hunger value and high healing is ideal if you wanna tank a little bit. Like cooked tomatoes and blue caps. But the absolute best one is flower salad, healing for 160 but filling for only 12.5 points. Meaning you can feed 30 of them (worth of 4800 hp) without the need to stop.

Mounting while having aggro: (This section is irrelevant if you have a nightmare saddle) You can't get on your beefalo while it's aggroed on something else. So you gotta be specially careful when going to the swamp, since if your beef gets attack by a tentacle and you are not riding it, the only way to save the beef is killing the tentacle quickly because you can't lure it away. Just be careful when going near mobs that can attack your beef even when your not riding it. Like clockwork rooks, and even Abigails.

Armor with special effects: Since no damage is directly being dealt to you, armor pieces with special effects like thulecite crown, bramble husk and bone armor do not activate their perks if you get hit on your beef; Unless you take damage from sources that directly attack you instead of beefalo (For example, scale mail still negates fire damage) Bee queen crown works as usual though.

Harmful food: The 4x multiplier even works for food items that actually reduce hp. Which means, feeding a red cap will damage your beefalo for 80 damage! So be careful of that.

Soul Hop: Although you can use lazy explorer on beefalo, Wortox cannot soul hop while riding.

A Few Final Notes & Farewell

Before I wrap this up, I gotta give a few notes as well.

-If you and your beefalo drown, the beefalo won't suffer any damage.

-While riding your beefalo, you're practically one entity: The player. So the mobs that do extra damage to other mobs but less damage to the player, still deal the "player damage" to your beefalo when you're riding it. And since a you are responsible for aggroing the enemies, they will still come after you even after you get off the beef.

-They can only eat veggies. No seeds, no sugar, nothing but veggies; Which includes butterfly wings for some reason... And no, you can't feel cut reeds to them like grass and twigs.

-Even the food items that have no hunger value, still increase the obedience. So, collect more lightbulbs if you bring your ornery beef to the caves.

-Considering you and your beef will count as one entity called "player" while you're mounted, other beefalos do not aggro on anyone who attacks you while riding the beef. However, a beefalo that isn't being ridden is just a beefalo, and act like all beefalos. It will attack anything that attacks other beefalos, including you. But if won't decrease the domestication, until you hit back your beef.

-You can still heal your beefalo through means other than food, like honey poultice, healing salve, mosquito sack. Although I wouldn't recommend them because they don't heal the beefalo 4x as much like food does. Yet, it's good to have some in case of emergency since they don't spoil. However, you can't heal them with spider glands or souls for some reason.

Anyway. I hope you found this guide useful. Please feel free to add or correct any information in the comments. Thanks for your time!

P.S: I'm still editing and adding information. If you see any mistakes (typo, etc) lemme know please.

[Mardomack]

@Olenhol ᶘᵒᴥᵒᶅ Pudgy lovers and Pudgy haters need to put aside their differences and unite against the common enemy: Default beefalo fans...

[Olenhol ᶘᵒᴥᵒᶅ]

I wont take this pudgy slander sir.

[󠁳⁧⁧ jucaTHOR]

is this actual?
are these informations still the same?

[Mickmane]

Thank you, I get it now. :)

[Mardomack]

@Mickmane The beef bell needs to be attached to a beefalo manually, so that he follows you. But nothing is forcing the player to use a bell for taming; You can attach to bell before the domestication starts, or after it has started. I attached a bell to my already fully-tamed beef once, and it transformed into a wild beef... Maybe it has fixed by now, but it's not worth the risk... Best time to attach a bell is at the very beginning of domestication.

[Mickmane]

Very interesting.

I think I have a better idea now about domestication versus obedience, which always confuses me.

One question:
"Howevah, do not use the beefalo bell on your already tamed beefalos, since it will remove the domestication for some reason. It's okay to use it mid-taming tho. Just not after the process has been completed."

What do you mean by using it on the beefalo?

Thanks! :)

[SHADOVV]

i would recomended this mod https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2622561786
it shows your potential domestication

[Steveington]

Ayy, I've been thinking about making a guide in a similar fashion to this for quite some time it is really cool to see someone actually advocating beefalo taming and I really hope the community picks up on it more (especially beefalo rushing)

[Mardomack]

@Spicybullfrog Opps sorry should have mentioned that. Yes, for the marble pieces, a single untamed beefalo is more than enough. For long term decorations however, it's more practical to have a tamed one around.

[Spicybullfrog]

reason #3 is partially incorrect, since you don't actually need the beefalo to be fully domesticated in order to move marble pieces. If you just want to move marble pieces around, its far more efficient to carry them on an untamed beefalo.