Ranching

Overview

Ranching is one of the five professions in Starsand Island. It focuses on raising livestock, collecting animal products, and breeding new offspring. The ranching mentor is Pastelle, who operates the Green Pasture Ranch in the Green Meadow area northwest of the starting farm. Players can purchase animals from Pastelle, house them in hutches and barns on their property, and care for them daily to produce valuable goods.

Compared to the other professions, ranching requires the most infrastructure investment. You will need to build animal housing, stock feed, and maintain clean living areas before your animals can thrive. For this reason, many experienced players recommend pursuing ranching after establishing a solid foundation in other professions like crafting and farming.

Progression Tiers

Like all professions, ranching has five progression tiers: Apprentice, Junior, Intermediate, Senior, and Expert. Each tier is unlocked by completing trial quests from Pastelle and then getting certified by Solara at the Community Center. Advancing through the tiers unlocks access to new animal types, better ranching equipment, and additional Workpedia skills that can be purchased with Starsand Points.

At the Beginner level, players start with rabbits. As you progress through Junior, Intermediate, Senior, and Expert tiers, the full roster of 13 different animal types becomes available. Higher-tier animals produce more valuable goods and some can even serve as rideable mounts.

Animal Costs and Roles

Each rancher tier unlocks new animals for purchase from Pastelle. Higher-tier animals cost more but produce more valuable goods. Some animals also perform useful passive tasks on your property.

Rabbits clear weeds around your property passively, while chickens eat bugs and ducks handle snails. These cleanup roles make early-tier animals useful even after you unlock higher-tier livestock. Breeding can produce offspring with traits like "Strong" or "Precocial" for faster growth and reduced cooldowns, or "Workaholic" and "Twins" for enhanced production output.

All Animals

The following table lists every animal available in the ranching profession, organized by the tier at which they become purchasable from Pastelle.

Animal Care

Every animal requires daily attention to stay happy and productive. Feeding is the most basic requirement. You can craft animal feed at the Feeder crafting station using crops like Pasture Grass and Wheat. Each animal type has its own preferred feed, and using the correct type increases happiness and product quality.

Some animals also provide utility on your farm beyond their products. Rabbits help with weeding by clearing unwanted plants from your crop plots. Chickens offer pest control by eating insects that would otherwise damage crops. Ducks clear snails from your fields. Bumblebees act as natural fertilizers, boosting nearby crop growth rates. These abilities activate passively when the animals roam freely on your farm during the day.

Keeping your animals clean is another important aspect of ranching. Dirty animals produce lower-quality goods and lose happiness over time. You can clean animals manually or build facilities that help maintain hygiene automatically as you progress through the ranching tiers.

Breeding

The Breeding House becomes available at the Intermediate Rancher tier and costs 3,500 coins to purchase from Pastelle. Breeding requires one male and one female of the same species, plus an empty slot in a hutch or barn for the offspring. Baby animals take several in-game days to mature into adults.

At higher tiers, players unlock the Selective Breeding House, which provides more control over the breeding process. This advanced facility allows you to influence which traits are passed down to offspring.

Each animal carries DNA traits that affect its size, productivity, and happiness. Baby animals inherit traits from both parents through a randomized selection process. By carefully choosing breeding pairs with desirable traits, you can gradually improve the quality of your livestock over multiple generations. This selective breeding loop is one of the deeper systems in the ranching profession and ties directly into the game's broader genetics mechanics.

For a detailed breakdown of the genetics system, see the Breeding and Genetics article.

Mounts

Several Senior and Expert tier animals double as rideable mounts. Horses are particularly notable because they support two riders, making them ideal for multiplayer sessions. Spotted Deer, Alpacas, and Ostriches serve as one-person mounts with different movement speeds and animations.

For more information about all transportation options, see the Mounts and Vehicles articles.

Early Game Tips

1. Rabbits are your first animals and an excellent source of Wool, which is used in many early crafting recipes. Focus on building a hutch and buying two rabbits as soon as possible.

2. Baby rabbits, chicks, and ducklings can sometimes be found by chopping trees and bushes around the island. This is a free way to get starter animals before you can afford to buy them.

3. Stock up on Pasture Grass seeds early. Pasture Grass grows in all seasons, takes only 12 hours to harvest, and is a basic feed ingredient for multiple animal types.

4. Do not rush into buying expensive animals before you have the infrastructure to support them. Build hutches and barns first, ensure a steady feed supply, and then expand your herd gradually.

Patch 0.5.1945 (May 17, 2026) Livestock Hotfix

Patch 0.5.1945, released on May 17, 2026 as a hotfix two days after the larger 0.5.1822 update, addressed a livestock regression. Animals had stopped consuming feed, which blocked production, breeding, and growth. The hotfix restored the normal feed loop, so livestock once again eat from their troughs and progress through their growth, breeding, and product cycles as designed.