• /
• General/
• HM: Awl SE/
• Animals

1. Dog
     
At the start of the game, you are able to choose a floppy eared or a
pointy eared dog and then name him.  He lives in the dog house next
to your house, and needs to be fed once a day.  He can stay outdoors
at all times, in fact you can't bring him inside any of the buildings
except for your own house.  When the weather is  bad he'll just go into
his dog house.  Make sure you train your dog often by hitting the
"triangle" button.  At first he'll only put up with a couple of
repetitions before the heart bubble above his head turns into the stormy
anger bubble.  When he gets better the training sessions take up more
time.  If you feed him and pick him up every day his heart levels will
increase.  He doesn't really seem to get sick and doesn't have a health
bar like the livestock.  If he is well taken care of, he'll protect
your farm from Murray, who steals food that you leave in the food
processing room's freezer.  Otherwise he just tends to stick around
the house and will follow you around a little bit when you're nearby.
You need to whistle once to call the dog to you.  Hit the R2 button
for this.  In the GC version of the game, apparently you hit the same
button to call both the horse and the dog (once for the dog, twice for
the horse), but PS2 gives you two different buttons to call your animals.

2. Horse

You get a horse on the first day of summer in Year One as long as you've
sent some dairy to be sold through Takakura.  He'll come back from
town that day and announce that you have a new animal.  However, if
you order a new animal on the last day of spring (so it will arrive on 
the first day of summer), your horse will be delayed until the following
day.  So keep that in mind when ordering new animals.  The color of the
horse is RANDOM.  So far I've managed to get one of three colors--brown,
reddish-orange and white.  The brown horse gets noticeably dirty after 
awhile but doesn't get clean if you try to wash him at the water trough.  
I like the red one the best.

The horse is the best animal in the game as far as I'm concerned.  While
he does not offer you a direct product like cows and chickens, he is
far less trouble and manages to get you around town without forcing
you to waste your precious stamina.  After you get the horse, do not
walk anywhere.  Ride him to all of your destinations and you'll notice
that you aren't nearly as tired by the end of the day and you can
get a lot more done.  You can whistle for your horse from anywhere
in town (as long as you're outside) by hitting the L2 button.  Even
if he's in the barn, your horse will arrive at your side.  If you
are waiting for him to stop rolling around in the dirt so you can
jump on his back, you can also whistle for him when he's right next
to you and he'll immediately get up.

The horse responds to one action twice per day.  You can talk to him or
cuddle in order to get a heart cloud above his head.  But unlike
the other animals, that's it.  If you talk first, he won't respond
if you cuddle immediately after it...and vice versa.  Like the cows,
he gets mad if you wake him up, so it's safer to just talk to him
every day rather than cuddle in case you don't notice when he's
sleeping.  His eyes close and his head bobs from side to side
when he's asleep...he doesn't lie down like the cows.


3. Cow

Cows are so lucrative but so frustrating at the same time.  You start
the game with a normal cow that has "recently given birth" so things go
pretty well for you in the early seasons.  That first spring you may
get four jugs of milk every time you milk her for a total of eight
jugs per day.  You can milk your cows twice per day, just leave at
least six hours between milkings or they'll get angry and refuse
to give milk.  In the summer they give less milk with a small boost
in milk production in the fall (I usually get three jugs per milking
at that point), and by winter of the first year your cow will dry up 
and give you nothing.  Star cows give the most valuable milk but
they also tend to only give you one or two jugs per milking.

Here's the bad part about cows.  New cows don't give milk AT ALL
until after you've impregnated them and they've given birth.  After
that they only give milk for roughly forty days, or a full year...but
it's very rare that you actually get a full year of milk out of them
before they dry up and you have to impregnate them AGAIN.  And every
female calf you get will not give milk until she is an adult and
has given birth to her own baby.  So needless to say, your cows
will outgrow the barn in no time.  While the official game booklet
tells you to never sell your animals, the game is simply not set
up to allow this.  You have to sell your cows.

My strategy is to have one female of every breed.  I keep those
original cows and sell their calves once they are old enough.  This
is because once your cows are at ten hearts, they will give "S"
quality milk and you want to keep them rather than have to build
up the heart levels of their children and wait for THEM to have
babies.  Only sell your original cows when they get old and sick.

I have also noticed that basically you get one year of milking for
each cow following by roughly one year of no milk from that same
cow.  This is because you should only have one calf in the hutch
at one time which means you have to time the pregnancies of your
cows.  And when you buy a new cow you have to wait nearly two
full seasons before she's old enough to impregnate!  The pregnancy
takes almost one full season, then the cow gives at least four
days of "mother's milk" that must be fed to the calf.  Then you
finally get milk again.

You can either save one barn slot for a bull to father all the
calves or pay the money for another bull.  I personally don't
believe one way saves money over another because by having a bull
in your barn you are paying through feeding this animal every
single day even though he does not provide a constant product
to you and also devoting a full slot of your barn to such an
animal rather than having another cow that could be giving milk
most of the time.  It's all a matter of your own preference.

The calves will most likely take the breed of their mother rather
than their father, so most of the time it doesn't matter what
breed of cow your bull is.  If you pay for another farm's bull
to give the miracle potion it will automatically be whatever
breed of cow you are trying to impregnate.

While I've had readers tell me that they've kept their cows outside
at all times (even through the winter), in my experience this
does affect the quality of milk you get as well as the health of
your cows.  I had a cow giving "A" milk and I left her outside
for most of a summer season and suddenly she was giving me "B"
milk.  When I brought her back inside she went right back to
giving "A" and finally "S" quality milk.  Do not leave your
cows out in the rain, and I strongly suggest you do not leave
them out during the winter months.

You must fertilize your field to obtain fodder.  You can only cut
the grass when it turns a very dark green color.  If you leave
your animals outside and they keep putting their heads down
to the grass only to quickly raise their heads and bellow at
you with the angry storm cloud above them, it's because
your grass isn't long enough for them to actually eat yet and
they are hungry!  Each cow eats two fodders per day.


4. Chicken

Chickens are worth having even though their eggs don't really sell
for all that much unless you get golden eggs out of them.  You can
keep up to 8 chickens.  Start out buying one female and one male,
then you'll never have to buy another chicken.  You'll be up to your
ears in fertilized eggs in no time.  Keep hatching those baby chickens,
selling the males once they are full grown.  Keep one male around to
fertilize more eggs.  You can always sell fertilized eggs, and people
who like eggs will still accept fertilized eggs as gifts.  You can also
still eat them.  You can pick up and cuddle your chickens twice a day
to get a favorable response.  If your chicken is lying down with its
head on the ground it's sleeping.  You can pick it up to get the egg
out from underneath, but don't talk to it or cuddle it!  It will get
angry if you wake it up.  Usually once I move the sleeping chicken
and put it back on the ground it wakes up on its own and then I can
pick it up again to cuddle it.  Sell your golden eggs through Van.

Update: According to Sephiroth Avalionis, you can leave your chickens
in the yard full time if you want.  They won't get sick, and they
are able to find their own food while they are out there.

5. Sheep

I didn't bother with a sheep.  You can only harvest its wool once per 
season, but then you have to still feed and care for it every day.  
Just seemed like too much work for not enough profit.  It takes up 
one slot in your barn, too.  Kind of a waste.

6. Goat

Can only be purchased through Van.  It costs 4000 G.  The folks
at Natsume figured out that forcing their players to kill their
animals probably wasn't such a good idea, so in the PS2 version,
you CAN sell your goat for 1000 G when it finally stops giving
milk.  So you still can't impregnate the goat, but you don't have
to kill it to get rid of it when it becomes useless.  Also,
you can't buy another goat.  You just get the one.

Thanks to Sam Halsall and Sephiroth Avalionis for further info
about the goat!

7. Cat

You can get a cat if you befriend Romana.  She likes flowers just 
like all the women in this game.  Don't give her any gifts when she 
is sitting in her chair because she won't take them.  She gave me a 
cat before she was at a "friend" level with me.  I'd given her a 
total of two gifts.  The cat really doesn't do anything at all.  
It will eat the dog's food in the early morning, and this will drive 
up his heart level, but it also means you have to fill the dog dish 
twice a day so your dog can still eat, too.  I guess I'd only suggest 
trying to get it if you're one of those players who likes to make sure 
he's unlocked all the secrets of the game.

Update: I'm not exactly sure how I got the cat.  I'd given a total of
two flowers to Romana.  During the Summer of Year 3, I had gotten up
extremely early and finished watering, so I went back to sleep.  When
I got back up and left the house between 9 and 10 AM, I got a cut scene
in which Romana offered me a black cat that I got to name.  I wasn't
even trying to get the cat, because when you have it, you have to fill
the food dish twice a day.

8. Ducks

Even though the GC game guides all claim that you have to have
the pond by Year Two in order to get ducks to show up, I managed to
get ducks in Year Four after getting the pond that year.  Just go
to bed really late so you wake up after your wife and you'll get a scene
in the summer season where she tells you that there are ducks outside.
You'll get to choose to keep them or not.  If you keep them, you
get to name the male and female duck and they will be added to your
chicken coop.  I named mine Donald and Daisy.  Just don't have a full
chicken coop so there is room for them to be added.