Sheep are the best money maker with the Rancher and Shepherd perks. They regrow wool every day and the gold and iridium quality wool is worth more unrefined than a bolt of cloth. I have had as many as 60 sheep and only made 5-8 cloths a day. That many sheep net you between 35k and 50k gold a day, every day of the year with 42k or so average. Arrange your barns right and barn chores only take 2 or 3 hours. The reason why people find sheep lackluster is because they take Artisan which cuts the earning potential of sheep by around 30%. If you have Artisan cows are better.
Rancher and Shepard are not very good. Crops are where the money's at early game, you kinda need that boost to roll your crop money into big projects like a giant cranberry crop in Fall. 10% is a huge deal. Pigs are probably still the best with Artisan, Truffle Oil is really grossly valuable, and happy pigs will regularly give you 2-3 truffles a day, while you can still make big money from wine and mayo.
I'm not saying sheep are the best money in the game but they are damn good money, far better than they get credit for. Take a look at my totals below. The wool alone is a nice chunk of daily change and you don't have to process it, just collect. A profitable farm can be diverse and still make all the money it ever needs. Take my sheep ranch for instance. Do you think I just let my greenhouse gather dust? No, I only give it one day a week and I get decent money from it too . You also don't need Artisan to profit off of truffles. I used to have 60 sheep but now I keep 45 and added 15 pigs to the mix. I earn less through Winter but the pigs make up for it the rest of the year. I think I'll just let my numbers speak for themselves though (I know its in year 6 but it's been turning that profit for over 4 game years now).
I have several blue chickens and all but the first have been hatched by me. My other chicken is a brown one which only lays brown eggs and that means the white eggs are from the blue chickens. I now have void chickens and have hatched a couple of their eggs too, black chickens yeah! I have a couple of lizards that lay dino eggs. These eggs are only good for selling and mayo. You can't gift them to anyone. I tried to give one to Demetris thinking he's a scientist he'd like it. He called it garbage! I may go down to one so I can have more blue chickens.
They actually lay blue eggs or did it randomly hatch from a white or brown egg? I was certain they didn't lay blue eggs... hmmmm.... new possibilities (possibly)....
they randomly hatch from any chicken egg put in the incubator. If you don't get a blue chicken on the day it hatches reload the game. I had several in one of my game. They do not lay blue eggs.
Interesting. But, considering how cheap chickens are, I find it easier to just keep trying until Marnie sells me a blue one. Throw a couple void chickens in with 10 blue ones and it's an interesting flock.
I usually only hatch brown chickens since I prefer them in the real world. It doesn’t matter too much as long as I don’t have six different stacks of eggs.
Goats! Huh. Yeah. What are they good for? Absolutely Nothing! 'cept the Community Center. Pardon the bad Edwin Star impression but once you've done the Community Center all you need cheese for is cooking or eating and cows make it faster. I sell off my chickens after I get a large egg, because one duck can handle my pancake needs but cheese is solely for pepper poppers and I only need one of those a day.
The blue chickens lay white eggs but since my brown chicken only lays brown eggs I know all the white eggs are from the blue chickens. So far, when I've hatched them they've been blue. Of course you still need to be good friends with Shane, but just ply him with pizza and beer and he's all yours.
The cheese from goats milk gives lots of energy especially when you put it in a cask. 1 cheese will fill your needs up and you need lots of energy for the skull caverns. Plus coffee plus pepper poppers gives you a good boost of speed so I have several pepper poppers.
The reason people go Artisan is because it makes their Greenhouse 40% more productive, which is several times more profitable than Sheep ever dreamed of being. Assuming your barn with 12 sheep and Rancher/Shepherd perks produces all iridium wool all the time (a highball figure that will never actually happen consistently, but we can use as an over-estimate to ensure the poor sheep are getting appropriately represented), you're looking at 680g/sheep/day which comes out to 8,160g/day. My greenhouse, on the other hand... let's say I'm lazy and don't bother doubling down on Hops, and just produce 30x Pomegranate Trees and 104 Ancient Fruit. Pomegranate Wine sells for 588g/ea with Artisan, and produces daily, and Ancient Wine sells for 2310/week, or 330g/day. So, )588*30) + (330*104) = $51,960g/day Bringing in more realistic numbers only makes the imbalance even more apparent, but I believe I've made the point. Yes, Shepherd makes sheep far more profitable. But the cost is the massive losses you make everywhere else on your farm which is by no means recouped by the extra profits brought in from your wee woolies.
I've enjoyed keeping goats in the past, the every other day milking requirement, the gifts for a partner when you've been gifting other singletons in the valley. The energy and health they replenish when you fall in the skull caverns and you still have other buffs from being well fed. Not very money making, but the day off from milking, combined with the auto feeding barn frees up time, and that time is very valuable. Apart from the above, 'absolutely nothing, say it again.'
If you’ll see I said that I wasn’t claiming it to be the best money in the game. I have zero desire to discuss that. Don’t quote me about it anymore.