Those large, ever-expanding grass patches on your farm could be the answer to keeping your barnyard animals happy through the difficult winter season… Read on to find out how!
Hay
Hay 
is an absolutely essential crop that players must use to feed their livestock, which keeps them healthy and allows them to continue producing their respective byproducts. The easiest way to get hay is to harvest the naturally occurring grass around the farm using a scythe – but not until you’ve built a silo.
NOTE: Players MUST have a silo built on their farm in order to collect hay from grass. If a player uses a scythe on grass but does not yet have a silo, no hay will be harvested.
Players can obtain hay by harvesting grass or wheat using a Scythe or Golden Scythe. A scythe has a 50% chance of producing 1 Hay each time a tile of grass is cleared, while a Golden Scythe has a 75% chance.
Both scythes have a 40% chance when harvesting wheat from the player’s garden. Use the haymaker enchantment on your scythe to get 1/3 chance of harvesting hay when cutting down weeds.
The Silo
You can’t discuss methods for harvesting hay without first mentioning the silo – a built structure that can be placed on your farm through Robin’s shop. Players will need to visit Robin and bring the required resources and funding to build the silo, which will take 2 days to build.
| Building Name | Build Price | Required Materials | Building Size | Where to Purchase | Build Duration |
| Silo | 100g | 100x Stone  10x Clay  5x Copper Bar  | 3 x 3 | Robin’s Shop | 2 in-game days |
It’s good practice for players to start working toward building a silo right away (rather than waiting until winter) because you can then stockpile hay through the rest of the year until winter does come. The silo should be one of, if not the first item players work toward constructing on their farm.
A silo can hold 240 pieces of hay. Depending on the number of animals and farm buildings on your farm, you may find that you need more than one silo to carry your livestock through the winter. Some players may find it useful to build one silo per barn or coop, to ensure there’s plenty of hay to go around!
NOTE: Hay that is harvested from grass around the farm will go directly to the silo. This is not the case for hay harvested from wheat in the garden – this hay will go into the player’s inventory.
To deposit harvested hay into the silo manually, stand beside the silo and right-click the active stack of hay in your inventory.
A loophole players may use to gather more hay than their silo can hold is to grow and harvest wheat in their garden, then store it in a chest. This way, you can build up more than the 240 hay that a single silo holds!
The only way to remove hay from a feeding bench is by exploding a bomb. This allows players to pull out Hay from the hopper, which isn’t possible through any other methods, currently.
Harvesting
If you run out of grass around your farm, grass starter and wheat can be purchased at Pierre’s shop. Pierre’s shop is open at the town square from 9:00am-5:00pm most days, but only until 4:00pm on Wednesdays.
Plant grass starts around your farm and give it time to spread, or plant the wheat in your garden and water the seeds daily. Both must be harvested with a scythe.
Inside your farm buildings (coops, barns, deluxe coops and deluxe barns), players will see a hay hopper.
Once a silo has been built, and hay has been collected, players can obtain hay into their inventory that is equal to the number of animals in that farm building, OR the number of open spaces left on the building’s feeding bench.
This means you will never pull more hay out of the hopper than can be placed on the feeding bench for your animals to eat.
Other Places to Find Hay
In a pinch, players can buy hay at Marnie’s Ranch in Cindersap Forest. Marnie is open for business most days from 9:00am-4:00pm. Marnie charges 50g each – a hefty price but can get you out of a pickle if your animals need to be fed.
Another way players may come upon hay in Stardew Valley is by obtaining friendship level 3 with Marnie. The following day, she will send 30 hay in a letter as a friendly gesture.
The Desert Trader is another source to find hay when you’ve run out. The trader will accept 1 omni geode for 3 pieces of hay.
Bundles & Quests
In the community center, players will need 10 hay to complete the fodder bundle at the bulletin board. Hay is not actively used in any quests.
Gifting
It’s not recommended to hand out hay as a gift – since just about everyone in Pelican Town hates receiving it! You’re better off saving it for your cows and chickens, take it from us.
Tailoring
At the spool of the sewing machine, players can create a grass skirt using hay.
Hay can also be used to dye clothing items at the dye pots in Emily and Haley’s house, 2 Willow Lane. Hay creates a yellow dye.
Happy Harvesting!
