Increasing Affection

Your dog, horse, cows, chicken, and sheep all have heart markers. You can see how many hearts each animal has by going into your Assets screen. The more hearts it has, the better chance it has in placing during an animal festival. When it comes to the poultry and livestock, more hearts means better quality items (and more profit earned).

Each heart listed underneath the name of your animal is based on the number of friendship points you currently have with that animal. One heart means the animal has between 1 and 100 points, two hearts means the animal has between 101 and 200 FP, and so on. The maximum number of friendship points you can have is 1000 per animal.

Each one of your cows, chickens, and sheep will also have a blue-colored Stress Bar listed in the Assets screen. The more stressed an animal is, the closer it is to getting sick. If an animal becomes sick (100 stress points) and dies, you'll not only lose the income from that animal but you will decrease your friendship with all main characters by 2000 friendship points! It is important to keep your animals healthy.

Increasing affection points and decreasing stress can be done by brushing and talking with your animals each day, as well as leaving them outside on sunny weather days. If you do happen to leave your animals outside on Rainy, Drizzly, or Snowy days, then they will lose affection and gain stress for every hour they are left outside.

Name	Benefit	Animals
Talking	+1 FP ±0 Stress	Cows Sheep
Picking Up	+1 FP ±0 Stress	Dog Chickens
Brushing	+3 FP -5 Stress	Horse Cows Sheep
Ring the Bell	+1 FP ±0 Stress	Horse Dog Cows Sheep
Riding	+1 FP ±0 Stress	Horse
Milking	+1 FP ±0 Stress	Cows
Sheering	+3 FP ±0 Stress	Sheep
Leaving Outside Sunny or Clear weather	+1 FP and -10 Stress every 5 hours	All animals
Leaving Outside Cloudy weather	+1 FP and -10 Stress every 10 hours	All animals
Leaving Outside Rainy, Drizzly, or Snowy weather	-1 FP and +1 Stress every 1 hour	All animals
Leaving Outside Hurricane or Snowstorm	-10 FP +30 Stress	All animals

If you choose to leave your animals outside, do not forget that they will still need to eat! Cows and sheep will eat once every 4 hours, so they need a lot of mature pasture grass growing in your field. You will still need to put Pet Food in the feed bins inside the Pet Stable for your horse and dog (just once a day though), but your chickens do not need to be fed at all.

Another problem with leaving your animals outside is the appearance of the Wild Dog. The scary beast will randomly appear on your farm between 8:00 pm and midnight. If the wild dog gets too close to your animal and manages to bark at it, the animal will immediately gain 10 Stress points! Protect your animals by building a fence around them with either Lumber or Material Stone. If your own dog has a lot of friendship points, then it can chase the wild dog around and prevent it from startling your animals.