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Part of the joy ofCoral Islandis the fact that we not only get to share our story with a host of fun and interesting NPCs, we get to share it with herds of adorable farm animals, too! Having a few furry farm friends around can feed the soul as much as the community, but in order to start raking in the bacon, you’ll have to rake in some hay first.
Luckily, hay is one of the most abundant resources on Coral Island. There are three ways to collect hay for your ranch animals, which makes feeding your furry friends a breeze even when winter hits.
What Is Hay?
To be able to feed your farm animals, you will need to have a steady supply of hay or tall grass handy. By putting hay in your barn or coop’s trough, you ensure that your animals have all-weather access to food. This is vital becausean unfed animal won’t produce any animal products.
While barn and coop animals can graze on tall grass around your farm, they only have access to naturally occurring grass on days when the weather is pleasant.
Animals won’t venture outside when it’s raining, and they certainly won’t risk their hooves and talons by walking around in the snow. This means thaton bad weather days, your animals must eat inside their barn or coopto get feeding and happiness benefits.
Animals who are left out in the coldwon’t get a happiness boostfrom eating outside in the winter, either, so you should always make sure that you arefeeding your animals each morning.
How To Get Hay
Hay can be gathered in a few different ways, making it one of the most abundant resources on Coral Island. Hay can be gathered bycutting down tall grass, purchasing from Jack’s Ranch Shop, and by dehydrating fiber.
Since there are so many ways to collect hay year-round, you also won’t have to worry about running out of ways to feed your animals in the wintertime.
How To Get Hay From Tall Grass
There are two ways to get hay from tall grass. The easiest method is touse your scythe to harvest the tall grassthat grows on your farm and around Coral Island.
Cutting down tall grass gives you fiber as well as a chance to harvest ready-to-eat hay for your animals. Not every tall grass node will drop hay or fiber, but most of the time you will walk away from a grass harvest with a hefty stack of both.
You can find tall grass nodes aplenty on your farm andtall grass will spread naturallyas the season progresses as long as it’s not being eaten or harvested at a faster rate than it can regrow.
The only season in which tall grass will not grow is winter.Tall grass will decay rapidly over the first week of winter, and will not replenish.
If you run out of tall grass on your farm, don’t panic! You can find several patches oftall grass littered around Coral Island’s forests and hillside.
If you don’t manage to harvest any hay from a swipe, you can still use the fiber that you harvest to make hay later on.
How To Dehydrate Fiber
If you’ve been running around Coral Island mowing down tall grass, and you have a stack of fiber in your pocket, you can use a dehydrator to process that fiber into hay.
The dehydrator is a mid-game artisan machine that you willunlock upon reaching level four diving mastery. While the main purpose of the dehydrator is to dehydrate ocean forageables, an added function is to dehydrate fiber and turn it into edible hay.
Eachdehydrator can process ten items at a timeand will process those items overnight. That means that if you put ten pieces of fiber into a dehydrator, you’ll end up with ten pieces of hay the next morning. Since fiber is so easy to come by, using the dehydration method is one of the best ways tomass-produce hay for your farm animalsto munch on.
Since dehydrators are artisan machines, their functionality is not dependent upon the seasons.Hay will naturally decay during the wintertime, so it’s best to set up a dehydrator system by late fall to ensure that you may keep producing hay in the wintertime.
Buy From Shops
If you haven’t unlocked the dehydrator yet, or you’ve run out of hay to harvest, it isn’t the end of the world. While not the most financially efficient method, you can always buy hay from Jack’s Ranch Shop.
Jacksells hay in his shop for 30 coral coins a piece, which is pretty pricey. A stack of 100 hay will cost you 3,000 coral coins, and filling upan entire silo of 300 hay will cost you 9,000 coral coins.
It’s a good idea to start stocking your silos early on so that you don’t run out of hay come winter.
If you need hay desperately and Jack’s shop is closed, you’re able to alsobuy hay remotely using the Sturdy Computer.The Sturdy Computer is an equipment item developed at Ling’s Labthat gives you 24/7 access to several Coral Island shops, including Jack’s Ranch Shop.
Buy And Plant Grass Starters
Much cheaper than buying hay, you canbuy grass starters from Sam’s General Storeand plant your own tall grass on your farm.
Sam sells grass starters for ten coral coins, and you can buya stack of 100 grass starters for 1,000 coral coins,making grass starters one-third of the cost of buying pre-processed hay. The only caveat is that there isn’t a full guarantee that you will harvest hay from these tall grass nodes.
To avoid gambling your chances by planting and immediately harvesting grass starters,use the starters to feed your animalsin the on-seasons rather than plant them for immediate harvest.Animals that eat tall grass will become both full and happy, so feeding them hay in good weather months isn’t necessary.
How To Upgrade Hay
Upgrading hay is vital if you want to get the most bang for your buck when feeding your farm animals. Thequality of animal products you harvest depends on the quality of food you giveyour animals.
If you feed your animals osmium-quality hay, you will ensure that you’re giving yourself the best chance to harvest quality products from them.
To upgrade your hay level, head toLing’s Lab. You canpay Ling in coral coins and kelp essence toupgrade the quality of your hay.
Hayupgrades will also apply to hay processed through the dehydratoror bought in a shop.
How To Store Hay
To store hay, you’ll need tobuy and build a silo from Dinda’s Carpentry shop.Each silo can hold up to 300 pieces of hay.
A full Deluxe Barn or Coop holds eight animals, meaning that you will need to at least be able to give each animal one piece of hay per day to stay fed. That comes out to a rate ofeight pieces of hay per Deluxe Barn per day.
That means that throughout a 28-day season (assuming that you aren’t letting your animals eat any tall grass outside),you’ll need at least 224 pieces of hay to feed your Deluxe Barn for the whole season.
Since one silo holds 300 pieces of hay, a full single silo can easily feed a Deluxe Barn for an entire season. However, you’d stillneed roughly one silo for each additional Deluxe Barn or Coop.
You can also store hay in chests, but the downside to this is that the hay won’t automatically show up in the feed box in your barns and coops. Having a Silo means that thehay you add to it can be remotely accessed through the feed boxof your farm buildings. Otherwise, you’d have to manually count and carry the hay you need to feed your animals to their troughs every morning.
You can alsoinvest in an auto-feederfor your farm buildings. An auto-feeder removes the need to manually feed your animals each day, but it willonly work if you have a stocked silo on your farm.Auto-feeders will not work if you don’t have a silo.
Tips For Surviving The Winter
To ensure that your animals never go hungry in the wintertime, here are a few things you can do:
