HearthenVale

Farms & Animals

Raise them, breed them, ride them

Farmers keep animals as well as fields. Every animal is an individual with its own stats and coat, and every foal, calf and chick inherits from both parents. Two plain parents can carry a colour neither of them shows.

From chickens to horses

Each species unlocks at a Farmer level, once you've reached husbandry level 5 with the one before it. Feed an animal and it produces after a while; collect, and it's hungry again. Tend all does the whole round.

  1. A golden chicken

    Farmer level 1

    Chickens

    Eggs, and now and then feathers for a Tailor's pillows.

    • Eggs
    • Feathers
  2. A pink pig

    Farmer level 6

    Pigs

    Root out truffles. Needs husbandry 5 with chickens.

    • Truffles
  3. A chamois goat

    Farmer level 6

    Goats

    Goat's milk for cheese, and the odd hide for Leatherworkers. Needs husbandry 5 with chickens.

    • Goat's milk
    • Hide
  4. A black spotted cow

    Farmer level 14

    Cows

    Milk for the dairy, and hides now and then. Needs husbandry 5 with pigs or goats.

    • Milk
    • Cheese
  5. A bay horse

    Farmer level 24

    Horses

    Ridden, not milked. A fed horse makes you faster in the wilds and harder to catch. Needs husbandry 5 with cows.

    • Rides faster with a saddle
+6%yield for every husbandry level, earned separately for each species by tending it
4 + level ÷ 3pens at your farm, growing with your Farmer level, plus more from buildings you install on your plot
Stockyardbuys and sells animals; it pays by tier, stats and coat

Breeding

Pair a female and a male. After the gestation, the young arrive with a mix of both parents: one gene from each for every part of the coat, stats near the parents' average, and a tier that often climbs.

Coat

Real genetics

Coats follow Mendelian rules, so parents can carry colours they don't show. The breeding screen shows the odds of every coat before you pair them.

Tier

T1 to T8

Stockyard animals start at T1. A birth is often a tier above its parents' average, more often as your husbandry grows, and a higher tier allows better stats.

Stats

Yield and vigour

Yield is how much an animal produces; vigour shortens its cycle. For horses they're speed and stamina.

Mutations

Rare colours

Now and then a birth carries a colour no stockyard animal has. Once it appears, it breeds on down the line. Better husbandry, better odds.

SpeciesGestationYoung per birth
Chicken1 hour1–3
Pig4 hours1–3
Goat4 hours1–2
Cow8 hours1
Horse12 hours1

Coats to breed for

A few of the colours in the game. Those marked rare only ever appear by mutation.

Chicken · White
Chicken · Black
Chicken · Lavender rare
Pig · Black spotted
Pig · Ginger
Goat · Black pied
Goat · Golden rare
Cow · Red, white-faced
Cow · Cream rare
Horse · Chestnut
Horse · Buckskin
Horse · Grey
Horse · Cremello
Horse · Black pearl rare

Horses follow real colour genetics. Chestnut, bay and black, diluted by the cream gene into palomino, buckskin and smoky black, or with two copies into cremello, perlino and smoky cream. Grey, and the rare pearls, are in the mix too.

Rare mutations no stockyard animal carries: lavender and isabel hens, woolly pigs, golden goats, dun and cream cattle, and pearl horses.

Ride out. A fed horse carries you faster through the wilds and helps you outrun ambushes. Riding trains it, up to level 30, and a Leatherworker's saddle makes it faster still.

From the farm to the market

Fields

Farmers work the crop fields with a Blacksmith's hoe: wheat and vegetables, then flax at level 5 and dye plants at level 8.

The dairy

Goat's cheese from level 6 and the full dairy at 14. Cheese goes into a Cook's feasts.

For other trades

Eggs and flour go to Cooks for pies, feathers to Tailors for pillows, hides to Leatherworkers.