IMY SILO IS EMTY ALL THE TIME! HOW DO YOU GET ENOUGH HAY TO MY ANIMALS. HAVE SOLD A LOT OF THEM BECAUSE OFF WINTER

Odin

Moderator
Staff member
It depends how many animals you have, but you may very well need more than one silo. In late fall, make sure you fill up your silos as much as you can. And you can always buy additional hay from Marnie if you don't make it through winter.
 

Aine

Planter
I usually ahve much more silos than animals so I dont have to worry about it. I usually build 2 barns and 2 coops, thats 40 animals. In the winter, I would need 1120 hay for the whole winter, so 5 silos. You can also do the trick were you have one silo, put a chest next to it, go to a newly build coop or barn and take all the hay from the hay hopper and put it in the chest. Then you will have only one silo, and tons os hay stored in the chest next to it, all you need to do is reestock when the silo is empty.
 

__Fishy__

Planter
So there are 2 things you need. 1) You need more silos. One silo can only hold 240 hay and each animal you own consumes 1 piece of hay EACH every day if there is no grass. This leads me to point 2) Plant more grass. Grass starter can be bought at Pierre's or you can buy the recipe for 1000:g: and make it using 10 fiber. A tip you can use is to place a fence or lighting rod on the piece of grass so the animals don't eat it and it can spread.You can also place grass starter on the last day of Winter for exponential growth in Spring

Either that or you can sell some of your animals :P
 

Lorekeeper

Farmhand
Grass can be a little bit of a pain to keep up with in winter, but to try to get a decent amount:

-Like others have suggested, planting grass starters on the first day of spring is your best bet. While it’s good to have some outside of your coop and barn to give your animals some food, grow some elsewhere further away that you can let spread and cut it back once you need more hay.

-Multiple silos are helpful, but if you want to know my opinion, I’d personally rather have an extra chest for excess hay. While harder to take out once you have the auto feeders that come with the Deluxe Coop and Barn, it’s entirely possible to take every bit of hay out of your silo if there’s space in the trough, and stash it away in a chest for future use. The extra silos are more reliable, but for that, you sacrifice extra room and storage space for convenience.

-In a pinch, you can buy from Marnie, but I think it’s 50g apiece, so I’d be careful if you have to go down that route.
 
You could just flat out buy hay from Marnie. It only costs 1,400g per animal for hay for the whole of Winter.

If you have pigs, each animal will basically pay for its own hay with a single truffle, and for any other animal, they'll pay for themselves within 3 to 5 days, if you process their eggs/milk/wool into mayo/cheese/cloth
 

27dschild

Planter
There is SOME people who don’t have crazy amounts of money early cuz they haven’t played a million times
 

Boo1972

Farmer
There is SOME people who don’t have crazy amounts of money early cuz they haven’t played a million times
I’m on my second farm and I still don’t have crazy amounts of money. But at least your animals won’t die from starvation. They might hate you, but they’ll live.
 

Rotan

Sodbuster
I sped read through all the posts so if I missed someone suggesting it Im sorry.

Plant wheat, lots of wheat and get a mill. If you use the faster speed grow, you can cut every 4 days and sometimes you get hay. Put all the wheat in the mill you'll actually make a lil money and your getting hay :). You can do all summer and fall. The same speed grow will do both seasons as long as hays planted on it 28th-1st.

I always use at least 1/4 of my farms planting area for wheat.
 
First off, you can store hay in a chest, so you only need one Silo, although it does mean a bit more micromanaging.

Second off, Tall Grass will regrow itself if you don't cut it all down. So the key here is to mow consistently throughout the year, and clean up on Fall 28 since it's all gonna die anyway.

Third off, the hay isn't as expensive as you might think. It's 50g/day/animal. Which sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. Let's say all you have are chickens and cows. Chickens lay eggs pretty much daily, which is turned into Mayo that's worth a heck of a lot more than 50g. Cows produce milk that is turned into Cheese which is, again, worth far more than 50g. So you should never be net sum negative on income from animals, even in a worst-case scenario of having to purchase from Marnie.
 

Wingheart

Sodbuster
Also, it's much more efficient to let the animals eat grass, not hay, when they can - so spring/summer/fall leave the doors open and make sure the animals have grass access. Even with teh Golden Scythe, you only get hay about 80% of the time you cut a piece of grass, and one piece of grass fills an animal the same amount as one piece of hay.
 
There is SOME people who don’t have crazy amounts of money early cuz they haven’t played a million times
You don't need "crazy amounts of money", because you don't to buy a stack for the whole of winter all at the same time. Just plan ahead and make time in your schedule for two or three trips to Marnie.

One single mayo will buy enough hay to feed a chicken for several days, so if you get to Fall 27 and you have no hay, sell that one mayo, and on Sunday Fall 28 you buy hay for a few days. Then, by the time it gets to Wednesday Winter 3, and Marnie is open again, you have made and sold three more mayo and now have enough money to buy hay for that chicken for two weeks or more; sell a few more mayo after that, and on your third trip, you'll have enough money for hay for the whole winter. Large eggs making gold mayo make hay even more affordable.

With ducks it's even easier; a single duck mayo will buy enough hay for the first week of Winter, and the rest of the first week's duck mayo will buy enough hay for the rest of Winter. Even if you are unlucky and get duck feathers, they are still worth enough to cover your hay costs

It's much the same with barn animals too. Even at regular quality, and even without value boosts from professions, all animal products, once turned into artisan goods, are worth a lot more than the cost of buying hay.
 

Lew Zealand

Helper
Step right up, Ma'am! You're the exact person for whom we created:

Lazy Hay™

What's Lazy Hay™, you say? Why, Lazy Hay™ is the perfect solution to all* your animal husbandry problems, so you can get going with your vegetable or boyfriend husbandry, assuming you can spot any differences between the two.

Sounds too good to be true? Well, you may be ri-- No! No, it's really easy:

0. Don't buy the Gold Clock. I just saved you 10M gold, you can thank me now.




What? You want more? Fine...

1. Leave half your farmland empty (ahh, the Lazy™ secret)
2. Start with 1 Silo, but upgrade to 2 and then 3 as they fill (to cover 1 full Barn and 1 full Coop)
3. Buy or make grass starter on Spring 1 or as early as possible. I use 20 or so, you could use 50 on the original farm if you want Quick Results.
4. On or soon after Spring 1, plant those starters spaced out nicely wherever there isn't volunteer grass (see Step 0).
5. Fence your animals away from the grass for a while until it grows mostly confluent, use last year's Hay to feed them or visit Marnie for various reasons as well as Hay. It works for Lewis.
6. After a few days as the grass gets to its densest, start scything away just to thin it out, not clear it. You'll get used to the arc of thinning/clearance and only need to do it on occasion (Lazy™). I usually do it on the way back from Fishing or Mining or Leah.
6a. You can let your animals out now, they'll put a dent in it but less than Sam's head does to a Joja Cola can.
7. Be Lazy™ about it, if you're focusing too much on it you'll find that you end up with too much Hay and not enough Haley. It's a great time filler when you have an hour or 2 to kill waiting for your sweet, sweet Iridium bars or sweet, sweet Emily to visit.
8. Clear your land of Hay on Fall 28 if you're still a little short. This is the day to get all sweaty and anyway you had your fun with Penny and Abigail in the Maze last night and it's payback time.


* Lazy Hay™ will not pet, milk, or collect truffles, eggs, feathers or wool from your spouse. Or animals.
 

Journi

Planter
I always get animals and then sell them, I'm a minimalist in stardew, and if I don't need it, I'll get rid of it.

I will always go to Pierre's shop and buy a lot of grass starters and use it, it helps a lot, also don't forget to put some in areas that animals can't get too.
 

Lew Zealand

Helper
What does this have to do with what follows? The Gold Clock does not prevent the appearance or spread of grass. Same for trees. It's the "twigs" and "rocks" that it stops.
Really? I had no idea. This makes the Gold Clock the single best thing in the game and it's a bargain at 10M gold. I give everyone here full license to buy the Gold Clock then but I'm just gonna wait a bit. For me it'll only be a real bargain with an Auto-Petter upgrade for my animals.
 
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