Animal Husbandry Guide

Vintage Story: Animal Husbandry Guide

Updated October 2026: every number checked against the Vintage Story 1.22.7 game files (latest stable).

Animal husbandry in Vintage Story is a slow, generation-based domestication system: there is no instant "tame" button. You confine wild animals, feed them, breed a male and female pair, and gradually tame their offspring over many generations until they stop fearing or attacking you. This guide covers the full breeding loop, per-animal specifics, generation milestones, and the common mistakes that wipe out a herd.

Farmable Animals

Note: of the farm animals only hares eat parsnips; pigs, sheep and goats are set to skip them, and chickens stick to grain and fruit mash. Portions are the amount of feed the female must consume from the trough before she can become pregnant. Litters: hares 1 to 4, pigs 2 to 6, sheep and goats a single lamb or kid.

How Domestication Actually Works (Generations)

Domestication in Vintage Story is not a one-time action - it is the result of breeding across generations. Wild animals are generation 0. An animal's generation is inherited from its mother plus one (the father's generation is ignored). So a baby born to a gen 0 ewe is gen 1, and you only reach high generations by breeding the offspring you keep, over and over.

Generation Milestones

Capturing Your First Breeding Stock

1. Find wild animals: Locate them in appropriate biomes (chickens and hares in temperate woods, wild pigs in forests, etc.)
2. Build a pen first: Fence an enclosure before you start, because gen 0 animals are skittish or hostile
3. Ropes come later: a rope needs generation 2, and every wild animal is generation 0, so the game refuses with Animal is too wild to attach a rope to
4. Trap the small ones: a baited basket trap catches a wild chicken or hare half the times it takes the bait (a chick 80%), and piglets half the time; lambs and kids go into a basket trap 30% of the time or a trap crate 70%. Adult pigs, sheep and goats cannot be trapped at all and often break the trap, so start those herds from their young or fence them in where they graze
5. Feed and breed: Stock a trough so the female can eat, then breed for offspring - the babies are your real domesticated herd

Feed by Animal

• Chickens: Grain (flax, rice, rye, spelt, amaranth or sunflower; there is no wheat in Vintage Story) or fruit mash from a small trough
• Hares: Vegetables from a small trough or tossed on the ground nearby; uniquely they eat parsnips
• Pigs: Grain, vegetables, fruit mash, and peanuts from a large trough
• Sheep and goats: Grass, grain, vegetables, and fruit mash from a large trough; only the large trough also takes dry grass and hay

Breeding Mechanics

Breeding Requirements

The Breeding Loop, Step by Step

1. Stock the trough: Put the correct feed in a trough the female can reach. She eats portions over time.
2. Females reach the threshold: Once the female has consumed her species' required portions (4 for chickens, 2 for hares, 10 for pigs, sheep, and goats) she becomes ready.
3. Mating: A fully mature male within 10 blocks spends one portion of food and mates. The female becomes pregnant (or, for chickens, lays fertilized eggs while a rooster is within 12 blocks). One try in five fails and just costs her a portion, so keep a little more feed than the threshold.
4. Gestation: The female carries the offspring for the gestation period (5 days hares, 25 days pigs, 20 days sheep and goats). Chicken eggs instead need 5 days under a brooding hen.
5. Birth: The baby spawns at the mother's generation plus one. She can conceive again after 2 to 5 days (hares), 6 to 11 days (pigs) or 4 to 11 days (sheep and goats); a hen lays again after up to 3 days.
6. Maturation: The young grow up over the maturation window before they can breed in turn. The game stores this in in-game hours, and there are 24 of them in a day:
   • Chickens: 128 hours as a chick, then 72 more as a poult for a hen (80 for a rooster), about 8.3 days
   • Hares and pigs: 168 hours, 7 days
   • Sheep and goats: 336 hours, 14 days

Two of those are worth stating plainly. Hares mature in 7 days, not 14: they grow up in the same window as pigs, which together with their 2-portion breeding threshold, 5-day gestation and litters of up to 4 makes them by some margin the fastest animal to build a herd from. Chickens take about 8.3 days to a laying hen, in two stages: chick to poult in 128 hours, poult to hen in 72. Nine chicks in ten grow into hens.

Animal Products

Egg Production (Chickens)

• Unfertilized eggs: A well-fed hen lays eggs on her own with no rooster - these are food eggs and will never hatch.
• Fertilized eggs: Need a rooster nearby. To hatch them, place a henbox - incubation begins once 3 eggs accumulate and lasts about 5 days while a hen broods.
• Collection: Eat the unfertilized eggs and leave fertilized ones in the henbox to grow your flock.
• Uses: Food, baking, and hatching new chickens.

Milk Production (Ewes and Goats)

• Who lactates: Only ewes (female sheep) and does (female goats), and only after giving birth. There are no cows in vanilla.
• Lactation window: 21 days after birth, with a full in-game day between each milking. Each milking gives 10 litres.
• Generation matters: a low-generation female may turn aggressive and end the milking, and she stays too stressed to milk for a while: gen 0 does so 95% of the time, gen 1 67%, gen 2 33%, and gen 3 and up never.
• Uses: Drinking and crafting cheese.

Wool (Sheep)

• No shearing in vanilla: Vintage Story 1.22.7 has no way to shear a sheep and no wool item that comes from one. Sheep give meat, hide, fat and milk.
• Shears: the shears tool exists, but it is for cutting leaves, several blocks at a time.
• Wool sheep: need a mod.

Pen Design

Optimal Pen Layout

Minimum Size: 8x8 blocks
Fence Height: 2 blocks
Gate: Double gate for easy access
Trough: 1 per 4 animals
Shelter: Roof for weather protection

Multi-Species Farm

Feeding & Care

Troughs and Feeding

• Match the trough to the animal: chickens and hares use a small trough; pigs, sheep, and goats use a large trough.
• Reach: animals feed from food within roughly 0.6 blocks, so place troughs where the herd can crowd around them.
• Food on the ground works too: every farm animal also eats suitable food dropped on the ground near it, not only hares.
• Keep it full: females only become fertile after eating their portion threshold, so a trough that runs dry stalls all breeding.

Body Weight - the Real Hunger System

Vintage Story does not show a satiety percentage bar. With the Harsh winters world setting on (it is on in Standard), each animal also has a body weight between 50% and 100%, shown when you look at it as Good, Decent or Low. Wild animals spawn at 66% to 86%. Weight works like this:

• Feeding fills it fast: for 7 days after a meal an animal gains about 5% of its weight per in-game hour, so one meal brings a thin animal back to full within a day.
• It only drops in the cold: an animal that has not eaten for 4 in-game months loses about 0.1% per hour, roughly 2.4% a day, while the temperature where it stands is 0 °C or lower, down to the 50% floor.
• Harvest yield scales with weight: meat and fat drops are multiplied by it; hides and feathers are not.
• Breeding runs on portions, not weight: a female breeds once she has eaten her portions, so an empty trough stalls breeding whatever the weight.

Practically, keep troughs stocked so animals stay near full weight, and feed an animal you want to cull in the days before.

Slaughtering & Processing

Killing and Harvesting

1. Fatten first: harvest yields scale with body weight, so feed the animal well before slaughter.
2. Pick surplus stock: cull excess males and animals you do not want to breed; keep your highest-generation females.
3. Use a cleaver for clean kills: a cleaver blow kills outright one time in three at gen 1, two in three at gen 2 and always from gen 3; otherwise it deals 1 damage, and against a wild animal it never kills outright. A knife also works for harvesting.
4. Harvest: collect meat, fat, and hide (feathers from chickens).

Meat Yields

Ranges are for an adult at full weight. Meat and fat scale with body weight; hides and feathers do not. An animal killed by another creature instead of a player yields 40%, and a crushed one 50%.

Advanced Husbandry

Breeding Up Generations

In vanilla Vintage Story, "improving" your herd means raising its generation, because all the convenient behaviors - petting, roping, reliable milking, pickup, and tameness - unlock at the generation milestones above. Note that generation is inherited from the mother only, so:

• Keep your highest-generation females: they determine the generation of every baby they bear.
• Always breed your best females, not just any pair: mating a gen 8 ewe gives a gen 9 lamb regardless of the ram.
• Plan ahead: reaching gen 10 (full tameness, no fleeing) takes ten successive successful births down one maternal line.
• Genetics is a mod feature: heritable productivity traits and inbreeding penalties come from mods such as Genelib or Detailed Animals, not the base game.

Sustainable Farming

Maintain population without overharvesting:

• Breeding Pairs: keep at least one mature male and several females per species.
• Harvest Excess: cull surplus males and low-generation stock, never your breeding females.
• Fatten before culling: let animals reach full weight so harvests are not stunted.
• Population Cap: do not overcrowd - keep pens lit and roomy.

Common Mistakes

• Expecting an instant tame: there is no tame button - domestication is breeding across generations, so plan a multi-day project.
• Trying to farm cows: cows do not exist in vanilla; use ewes or goats for milk.
• No rooster, then wondering why eggs never hatch: only fertilized eggs (rooster nearby) hatch, and only inside a henbox.
• Milking a gen 0 or gen 1 doe: low-generation females turn aggressive on most milking attempts, so breed up to gen 3 or higher for reliable milk.
• Letting troughs run dry: females must eat their full portion count to breed, so an empty trough silently stops reproduction.
• Dark pens: an animal under light level 8 with nobody within 8 blocks despawns in about 5 minutes, so light closed barns.
• Holding animals too long: an animal carried in a reed chest or trap survives 2 in-game days, about an hour and a half of real time, so move livestock promptly.

For the full vanilla numbers and any patch changes, see the official Vintage Story Animal Husbandry wiki.

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