Stardew Valley is a farming simulator where earning income from crops and farm animals is essential to progress through the game. Barns are one of the buildings that you can place on your farm in order to raise cattle, and they can be upgraded. As you invest more and more resources into a barn you can raise more kinds of animals.

Buildings are especially important on the new Beach map, where crops aren't as easy to grow. The barn animals' products can also be turned into even more valuable goods, with a little extra time. This guide details everything you need to know about your shiny new barn, and how to earn the most money from your investment.

Updated January 27, 2024, by Sean Murray: It's not a farm if there ain't no barn in Stardew Valley. You'll want to construct your barn as soon as possible to start reaping the benefits of animal husbandry. That's why we've updated this guide with improved formatting, more breakout tips, and more links to other helpful Stardew Valley topics.

Barn Levels

Every barn takes up a 7x4 space on the farm, so there's no need to worry about extra space as it gets upgraded. To move your barn, speak to Robin at her home outside of town, ask to build new buildings, and then select the 'Move Buildings' option in the bottom right. These are the different barn levels available:

Special Features, Explained

The initial barn comes with a hay hopper, which allows you to access hay from your silos inside the barn, as well as a feeding bench to lay out hay for the animals to eat.

On top of the hay hopper and feeding bench, the big barn allows your animals to get pregnant and have babies. Pregnancy is an option that can be switched on and off for each individual animal, except for ostriches.

You will know that an animal got pregnant because, when entering a barn for the first time that day, a message will pop up to say that they gave birth and ask you to enter a name for the new baby.

The Deluxe Barn comes with the hay hopper, feeding bench, and pregnancy options from the previous models, but it also adds an "auto-feed system" that distributes hay along the feeding bench so long as you have enough stored in your silo.

While it's a huge relief not to have to feed your animals every day by hand, it also means that you need to be extra careful to keep your silo stocked. If you happen not to check on a particular barn or coop one day, you may not notice that you've run out of hay.

The Animals

Animals need to be fed one portion (one hay or a bit of fresh grass) every day, except under special conditions:

• They don't need to be fed the first day they arrive on the farm (whether born, hatched, or purchased)
• They don't need to be fed on any festival day; the game will consider them fed but will consume no hay or grass (the exception to this rule is the Night Market in winter, which you can leave or enter freely)

If an animal isn't fed they will not die, but they will stop producing their products.

The sale price for animal products is increased by 20% if you have the Rancher Profession. Likewise, the processed artisan goods made from animal products will sell for 40% more gold if you have the Artisan Profession.

Cow

• How To Unlock And Obtain: Purchased from Marnie for 1,500g once you've built your first barn
• Produces: Every Day - Milk (or Large Milk, once sufficient friendship and happiness levels are reached)
• Tools Needed: Pail
• Associated Artisan Good(s): Cheese, made by putting Milk into a Cheese Press
• Sell Price At Full Friendship: 1,950g

There are two varieties of cows (white and brown) and the game chooses a color at random (50/50 chance) when you purchase one. The type of cow does not make a difference to the milk they produce.

Ostrich

• How To Unlock And Obtain: Ostriches can't be purchased. They can only be acquired by hatching an Ostrich Egg in an Ostrich Incubator.
• Produces: Every Seven Days - Ostrich Eggs
• Tools Needed: N/A
• Associated Artisan Good(s): Mayonnaise, made by putting an Ostrich Egg into a Mayonnaise Machine (one Ostrich Egg produces 10 jars of Mayonnaise)
• Sell Price At Full Friendship: 20,800g

Goat

• How To Unlock And Obtain: Purchased from Marnie for 4,000g once you've built your first Big Barn
• Produces: Every Other Day - Goat Milk (or Large Goat Milk, once sufficient friendship and happiness levels are reached)
• Tools Needed: Pail
• Associated Artisan Good(s): Goat Cheese, made by putting Goat Milk into a Cheese Press
• Sell Price At Full Friendship: 5,200g

Sheep

• How To Unlock And Obtain: Purchased from Marnie for 8,000g once you've built your first Deluxe Barn
• Produces: Every Third Day - Wool
• Tools Needed: Shears
• Associated Artisan Good(s): Cloth, made by putting Wool into a Loom
• Sell Price At Full Friendship: 10,400g

Wool can be turned into cloth by a Loom. If the wool is high quality, there's a chance that it'll produce two batches of Cloth. Silver quality has a 10% chance, gold quality has a 25% chance, and iridium quality has a 50% chance.

Pig

• How To Unlock And Obtain: Purchased from Marnie for 16,000g once you've built your first Deluxe Barn
• Produces: Truffles
• Tools Needed: N/A
• Associated Artisan Good(s): Truffle Oil, made by putting Truffles into an Oil Maker
• Sell Price At Full Friendship: 20,800g

Unlike other animals, you don't interact with the pig to get their product, and the pig won't produce anything if it is trapped inside the barn. The reason to buy pigs is so that they will snuff out truffles for you.

Pigs will find one truffle every day, assuming these conditions are met:

• they have been fed
• they are outside the barn (so it is not raining, snowing, storming, or Winter)
• there are available spaces to place a truffle (spaces with no paths, flooring, grass, etc.)

Animals Outside

During The Day

If you allow your barn animals to be outside, it will help to improve their mood — animals are like plants, they need sunlight too!

While outside, barn animals will eat fresh grass growing on the farm, assuming they can reach it. This will count as their daily portion, so they won't eat hay from your stash. Just because the grass is technically in a place they could reach does not mean that the animal is guaranteed to find and eat it — if they don't, they will eat hay.

Eating fresh grass gives animals the best mood (being "very happy today!") automatically. Animals who wander outside and have access to crops growing on the farm will not eat your crops.

Animals don't leave the barn, even if the door is open, under certain conditions...

• if it's after 6 p.m.
• if it's Winter
• if it's rainy, stormy, or snowy

At Night

Animals will return to their assigned building around 6 p.m. and go to sleep. If you aren't using an Auto-Grabber, you can close the doors at this time so the animals will not escape in the morning before you can interact with them.

If you close a barn door before all the animals have returned for the night, the ones that are still outside will be trapped. If it rains the next day, the animals will even stay out in the rain. No matter the conditions, if they were trapped outside overnight, their mood will be grumpy the next day.

Barn animals left out may also be attacked by wild animals during the night. There's a 50% chance for a wild animal attack, so long as some animal was left outside and no other events (such as a Bundle event) are set to occur.

The attacked barn animal is removed from the farm, and the other animals from its home barn will have a negative mood, with a message reading that the animals "look stressed and paranoid today. It seems like something bad happened last night."