Project Zomboid finally gets its Build 42, which adds farm animals as one of the main new features.
You can now set up a farm with pigs, cows, chickens, and more! These animals are absolutely key for helping you survive the zombie apocalypse, being a fantastic source of resources. Especially edible meat!
In this guide, we’ll tell you everything you need to know to be able to maintain your farm animals in Project Zomboid Build 42.
How To Farm Animals Guide | Project Zomboid Build 42
Getting Animals
The first thing to know about farm animals in Project Zomboid Build 42 is how to get the animals themselves. Farm animals spawn somewhat randomly around the map, but are most common in farm areas.
Once you manage to find them, you need to transport them somehow. For smaller animals, like chickens, you can just walk up to them and pick them up. They’ll get added to your inventory so you can bring them to your farm with ease!
For larger animals, like cows and pigs, you’ll need to attach a Rope to them. Lead them to a Designated Zone and they will stay there. We’ll talk about these Designated Zones in the next section of this guide!
If you have a car with a livestock trailer, you can also bring animals to it by leading them with the Rope. This can make transporting them easier and safer. You won’t have to worry that much about zombies when you can run them over with the car, after all.
Designating Zones
When you have some animals, it’s time to set up a farm using Designated Zones. You can define them by clicking on the Designated Zones on the top left side of the screen. It’s the button with the charming sheep.
This menu lets you Add, Rename, or Remove any Designated Zones. Obviously, the first thing to do is to Add one, so click on Add first.
Then, click and drag your mouse over the tiles you wish to mark as a Designated Zone. Accept once the prompt asks you to confirm if you’re satisfied with your choice.
Any animals you lead to a Designated Zone will stay within it as long as they are satisfied. You don’t need to put down any fencing to keep them in, though fencing can help protect them from zombies and any other hostiles!
However, your animals might leave the Designated Zone if they are unsatisfied or stressed. Shooting a gun, for example, can scare them and make them get out of the zone. Not keeping them well-fed might also result in them straying from the area.
As a last tip, it’s a good idea to have roofed sections within your Designated Zones. Your animals will automatically use them to take shelter from the weather when possible, such as when it’s raining.
If you don’t know where to set up your farm, you might want to check out our guide on the 6 best base locations in Build 42. It might give you some ideas!
Animal Information View | Important Stats
If you right-click on any animal you have, you can select Animal Info. This will bring up the interface shown above, letting you know every important detail there is to know about them. This includes basics like their type, breed, gender, age, if they’re in mating season, and more.
One of the most important stats here is their Attitude. This lets you know if your animal is satisfied with its living conditions, which is key to keeping them healthy and is also required to prevent them from straying out of Designated Zones.
Another important stat is Udder. This just lets you know if an animal is ready for milking, so it’s mostly useful when you have Cows and Goats. Female animals will be ready to milk after they’ve had babies, which happens naturally as long as you have both males and females in the same Designated Zone.
If an animal is ready for milking, you’ll see a Milk Animal button right next to the Udder status. Simply click on it while you have any empty container in your inventory and you’ll get their milk! You can then use the milk to make Butter at a Butter Churn after building one.
Lastly, there’s also Player Acceptance. This mostly seems to help you keep your animals calm. They will get stressed and run away or attack you if their Player Acceptance is low, for example. You can increase this stat by petting your animals periodically and ensuring they have decent living conditions.
Keeping Animals Fed and Hydrated
Now, one of the most important things to keep your farm animals healthy in Project Zomboid Build 42 is to make sure they have food and water. It’s fairly obvious, isn’t it? For this, you’ll need to build Feeding Troughs, which are in the Farming section of the Build menu.
You should have at least two, one for food and one for water. Also, make sure to place them within your Designated Zone!
To fill a Feeding Through with water, click on it to open the drop-down menu. Then select Feeding Through > Add Water From Item and select any eligible water source you have in your inventory. We recommend using Buckets since they have some of the largest carrying capacity! A Feeding Through can store up to 50000 mL of water.
As for food, you mainly want to use Animal Feedbags. You can get them from Barns. Alternatively, you can use things like cut Grass when you’re in a pinch. To add food to the Feeding Trough, click on it and use the inventory system to drag and drop things into the trough. It’s similar to using shelves and other containers.
Butchering Animals
To butcher animals, you’ll first need a proper knife. Almost any knife counts, as long as it’s not a Butter Knife! You might also need a Fleshing Tool and an Empty Bowl, depending on what you want to do with the animal.
Additionally, you might want to use the following buildings which are found in the Farming section of the Build menu:
- Softening Beam – Used to remove flesh and fur from Leather.
- Tannin Barrel – Allows you to tan defleshed Leather.
- Medium Leather Drying Rack – Used to dry the Leather from medium-sized animals, such as pigs and deer.
- Large Leather Drying Rack – Used to dry the Leather from large-size animals, such as cows.
- Butcher Hook – This is an optional building, but it’s highly recommended. It makes butchering animals faster and also increases the amount of resources they yield.
With that all done, you need to kill the animal you want to butcher. Then right-click on it and select the Butcher option from the drop-down menu. Just note that butchering animals inside your inventory seems to be pretty buggy right now, to say the least. It’s best to leave animals on the ground when butchering.
Alternatively, you can drag the animal’s corpse to the Butcher Hook if you built one. Interact with and click on Add Corpse to hook the animal you killed. This will let you more precisely butcher it.
As for its yields, you’ll get the following things from butchering animals:
- Leather – Crude Leather which you can use to make Tan Leather for crafting.
- Blood – A crafting material. You can also drink it… it’s apparently nutritious!
- Head – Used to make Brain Tan with Empty Bowls. Brain Tan is required to make Tan Leather.
- Meat – Can be cooked and eaten. The type depends on the animal.
Shearing Sheep
If you have sheep on your animal farm in Project Zomboid Build 42, you can inspect their detailed stats as we covered earlier in this guide. You’ll notice that they have a unique Wool stat, which increases over time. Obviously, this tells you how much Wool you can get from the sheep.
To get the Wool, you first need to get Shears. They can be commonly found as loot in Barns and Tool Stores, for example. Then, right-click on the sheep and select Shear > Shears. Your character will then get to work and shear the sheep, obtaining Wool as a crafting material in the process.
You can either keep the Wool to use as is or process it into Spin Thread and Spin Yarn at a Spinning Wheel. It’s up to you to decide what you want or need at any given moment!
Dealing with Chickens
Last but not least, it’s time to go over how to keep chickens as farm animals in Project Zomboid Build 42. The main thing you need for them is to build a Chicken Hutch, which is in the Farming section of the Build menu.
Once you have built the Chicken Hutch, you can simply grab any chickens and add them to the Chicken Hutch by pressing right-click and selecting Hutch > Put Chicken in Hutch. The chicken will then use this hutch to rest during the night and lay eggs when needed.
Having roosters in the Chicken Hutch will get you Fertilized Eggs instead of regular Eggs. Fertilized Eggs aren’t edible, but they can hatch into chicks after 14 in-game days.
Note that you can close the doors to the Chicken Hutch as well. Chickens aren’t meant to stay locked up inside all day, though, so they’ll still be able to leave. However, they won’t be able to re-enter if the doors remain locked.
The main reason to close the Chicken Hutch is to prevent your chickens from being attacked by predators overnight. As of this writing, this mainly means foxes, which attack the Chicken Hutch randomly as an event.
That aside, you can check the Chicken Hutch’s status by clicking on it. You’ll see all the eggs you can grab on the left side of the window.
Also, pay attention to the Dirtiness near the bottom of the window. If it gets too high, you can click the Clean button as long as you have Water and a Dish Towel or Mop in your inventory.
That’s the end of our guide on farm animals in Project Zomboid Build 42! We hope this helps you run your farm, just be wary of zombies…
