How to feed chickens in Stardew Valley is something I sturggled with when I first started playing the game. As with anything, it’s fairly simple once you know how. So check below for our ultimate guide on how to feed those pesky poultry pets!
The great news is, if you do raise and treat your chickens well they’ll give you one egg per day. Just ensure you keep them happy, healthy and well fed.
You can also raise an assortment of other farm livestock such as pigs, goats, rabbits and sheep. They’ll give you plenty of products including food, milk and fur.
How To Feed Chickens Stardew Valley
Make sure you have the minimum requirements required for keeping and feeding chickens in Stardew Valley. You’ll need to build your first chicken coop. Thanks to the help of the village Carpenter, Robin, you’ll have it built and ready for your Chickens to move into in no time at all.
You can buy a chicken coop from Robin’s carpenter shop, which costs 4000 gold and requires 300 wood and 100 stone.
You can obtain the wood fairly easily, just go swing your axe at some trees. Likewise for stone, get your pickaxe out and chop some stone up.
I’ll take three days for the chicken coop to be ready. Once it’s complete you’ll need 800 gold to buy the chick. Once you have the cash and the coop is finished head on over to Marnie’s Ranch.
Marnie’s Ranch is located in the northeast area of Cindersap Forest, near the southwest entrance to Pelican Town. The Ranch is occupied by Marnie, along with her niece Jas, and nephew Shane.
The shop is open from 9:00am to 4:00pm each day, except on Mondays, Tuesdays, Fall and Winter. The Ranch house is accessible from 9:00am to 6:00pm every day, even when the shop is closed. To get to Marnie’s Ranch, just head south from your farm.
Once you arrive hand over your 800 gold to buy yourself a chick. Once you’ve picked a name for your new fluff ball it’ll transfer over to you right away. This chick will grow into an egg laying machine and you’ll get one egg per day per chicken.
Once the transaction is complete and you own your chick you’ll find it pecking and generally roaming about around their house. A good tip we found online was to also buy a patch of grass from Pierre’s Shop. Place it next to your coop, with a fence around it. This helps to keep your chickens in one location.
The chickens can also graze on the grass if they get hungry.
How to Feed Your Chickens
In order to feed your chickens you’ll need to buy some hay!
If you’re not properly prepared to care for your chicken, it will start to lose weight and become unhappy! You’ll see messages such as “[Chicken Name] is looking a little thin”.
Keeping it fed should be your main concern. What your chicken can eat will depend on the climate. So make sure to have a few options available. For example, when it’s Sunny outside you’ll be able to let your chicken graze on the grass we spoke about earlier.
If it’s raining you’ll need to feed it from your hay stockpile. So make sure you keep an eye on how much hay you have available in your inventory.
How to Feed Chickens Stardew Valley Feeding Guide
Dry Sunny Days:
Feed your chickens on the grass outside. Remember, you can get grass from the general store that’s owned / ran by Pierre. It’ll cost you 500 gold. Grass also gives your chickens a mood boost when they feed on it.
Wet Gloomy Days:
When it’s wet outside your chickens will stay inside. I mean, who wants to get wet! Not me and certainly not your chickens. So, you need to feed them hay. Either get it from your storage silos or you can buy hay from Marnie for 50 gold.
Stock Pile Hay:
If you invest your time and resources into building a storage silo you can store grass clippings as hay. You’ll need a few things to acheive this:
- Sythce
- 5 Copper Bars
- 100 Gold
- 100 Stone
- 10 Clay
It’s a worthy investment as it’ll give you a whopping 250 units of hay. The Silo will automatically fill up your hay, so it’s definitely nifty to own.
So, if you’ve bought some hay or got some from your stockpile it’s simple to feed your chickens. Simply go in and walk over to the wooden area where it looks like animals would feed from on the upper right corner of the room.
Place the hay there and your chickens will be equipped to live. They’ll go over and feed on it whenever they get hungry. Your job is to just make sure theres enough feed for them.
You can place up to 4 hay bales at a time.
If you’re buying the hay it can get very expensive doing it this way. So the best way to feed them is using the silo method combined with letting them graze on the patches of grass when it’s sunny.
How To Feed Chickens Stardew Valley In Winter
As they say in Game Of Thrones, winter is coming! It’s not as scary as GOT though, but you do have to be wary because all of your lucious green grass on your farm will perish and die as autumn comes to a close.
You need to grab a scythe and go to your grass meadows and cut all of the grass, as much grass as you have on your farm on the last possible day. Right before the start of autumn. Once you cut the grass you can store it as hay, store as much as you can and you won’t have to buy it from Marnie. Hence, saving you vital in game funds.
TIP: If your Chickens could do with a mood boost, make sure they eat as much as they can before you cut it down. As eating grass does grant a bit of a boost in mood when your chickens feed on grass.
Types Of Chickens
There are 4 different colors of Chickens you can have in Stardew Valley All of the chickens regardless of their colour will produce the same ammount of eggs, apart from the Void Chicken.
There are:
- White Chickens.
- Brown Chickens.
- Blue Chickens.
- Void Chickens.
Void chickens
A Void Chicken can be obtained by placing a Void Egg in an Incubator. The first Void Egg is obtained through a random event ocurring right after the player goes to sleep.
You can also buy a Void Egg from Krobus in The Sewers. A Void Egg requires 4 days to incubate, including the day it is placed in the incubator. A Void Chicken matures 6 days after hatching, or 3 days if you have the Coopmaster Profession.
Chicken Feeding Tips:
- If you grow a large enough patch of grass near your chicken coop it will grow faster than the chickens can eat it. This is a great way to ensure they are almost self sustaining through the sunny days.
- Once it’s been eaten from twice the patch of grass will disappear.
- To breed chickens you need a level 2 coop.
- Right click on a chicken every day to show affection.
- Your chickens will not die if you don’t feed them, they’ll become unhappy which lowers their relationship with you.
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