The point of buying an animal in Stardew Valley is to harvest the products it creates. Cows produce milk, chickens lay eggs, sheep grow wool, and so on. These products eventually pay back the cost of buying the animal, and everything they create after that is pure profit.
However, there's one final way to generate money from an animal, and that's by selling it. Selling a baby animal immediately will lose players a lot of cash, but breeding and selling happy animals is one more way to make a profit on a Stardew Valley farm.
Stardew Valley: How to Sell Fish
Wondering where to sell fish in Stardew Valley? Learn how to maximize profits by selling fish using this comprehensive guide.
How to Sell an Animal in Stardew Valley
The first time players interact with an animal, they'll pet it. Clicking on an animal after that will bring up its status screen. This shows the animal's name (which players can edit at any time), its age, its friendship rating, and its current mood. Feeding and petting an animal every day will quickly bring its friendship rating up, and a happy animal generates better products.
Players have two other options on this screen. First, they can select the barn icon to move the animal to another building that can support them. For instance, chickens can live in any coop, but rabbits can only move to another deluxe coop.
The last option is to sell the animal. The value of an animal depends entirely on its friendship rating. While a new animal is worth very little, one with five hearts is worth even more than the cost of buying one at Marnie's Ranch.
Animal Selling Prices
Even if players never harvest any animal products, they can still make a profit by treating their animals right and then selling them off when they reach five friendship hearts. The profit margins grow even bigger if players allow their animals to reproduce in the big or deluxe barn or use the incubator in the big or deluxe coop.
Here's how much money players can get from each animal, assuming the animal is at five hearts:
Name | Purchase Price | Sale Price |
|---|---|---|
Chickens | 800 | 1,040 |
Ducks | 1,200 | 1,560 |
Rabbits | 8,000 | 10,400 |
Dinosaurs | -- | 1,300 |
Cows | 1,500 | 1,950 |
Goats | 4,000 | 5,200 |
Sheep | 8,000 | 10,400 |
Pigs | 16,000 | 20,800 |
Ostriches | -- | 20,800 |
The Chicken sale price includes rare breeds like blue chickens , void chickens, and golden chickens.
Even if players don't need to make room for a rare find like a dinosaur or an ostrich, they can add a steady stream of profit to their farm by selling an animal or two and letting the population increase with incubators or pregnancy. For instance, players can make an incredible profit by buying two pigs, letting them reproduce and fill their barn, and then selling off happy pigs to make more space while also collecting the truffles they produce.
