Stardew Valley is a popular farming simulator that not only allows you to grow crops to make money and raise kids, but also raise animals. Feeding animals requires hay, and each animal eats one hay per day in normal circumstances. Here is how to make hay in Stardew Valley.
Overview
While each animal requires one hay every day, they do not need it if they are let out (by opening the Barn and Coop doors) and are able to eat grass on your farm.
If an animal is not fed, it will not die, but its happiness will drop, as well as not creating produce the day after not being fed. Because of this, it is necessary to feed your animals in order to get a net gain from them.
How to make hay in Stardew Valley
Harvesting hay in Stardew Valley
Before obtaining hay, you will first need to build at least one silo in your farm. The hay is stored in the silo (up to a maximum of 240 per silo). Any hay inside the silo(s) is dispensed from the hay hopper inside Barns and Coops.
Once you have a silo built, you simply need to cut grass or wheat using a Scythe or Golden Scythe.
When cutting grass, there is a 50% of producing 1 hay per grass tile using the regular Scythe or 75% per grass tile when using the Golden Scythe.
However, for both scythes, there is only a 40% chance of harvesting hay from wheat.
A weapon with the Haymaker enchantment will also possess this trait, however it has a 1/3 chance per tile of grass.
The hay is automatically sent to any unfilled silo when harvested using a Scythe or Haymaker-enchanted weapon.
Purchasing hay in Stardew Valley
For when you really need hay, (such as during Winter), or when you’ve reached a late game farm and rolling in cash, you can obtain hay en mass from Marnie’s Ranch for 50g each.
You can also trade 1 Omni Geode for 3 hay from the Desert Trader.
Credit: ConcernedApe 
Credit: ConcernedApe
Other Uses
There are two other uses for hay in Stardew Valley:
- Used in the spool of the Sewing Machine to make a Grass Skirt
- 10 hay are used in the Fodder Bundle on the Bulletin Board.
