The in-game icon for Sheep.
Sheep are a type of Animal in Farming Simulator 19. Sheep Husbandry turns free materials - Water and Grass (or Hay) - into the high-value material Wool. On the other hand, it requires multiple pieces of special equipment, takes a long time to get going, and requires close attention to avoid production setbacks.
Sheep are fairly expensive animals, costing $1,500 apiece (not including transportation costs). The smallest Sheep Pasture available in the base game costs $65,000, and can hold up to 80 sheep. Sheep breed at a mediocre rate, and will take some time to fill up the Pasture. It is typically better to buy more than a handful of sheep to start the process.
The primary product of Sheep is Wool. Producing this material is very simple, requiring only Water (which is free) and either Grass or Hay (which are both potentially free). Sheep produce an amount of Wool per day that starts off very low but increases over time. The more Sheep there are in the Pasture, the faster the rate of production increases. Over a long period of time, Wool production can potentially increase to extreme levels if handled properly, but may instantly reset if handled improperly.
Wool accumulates in automatically-created Pallets next to the sheep shed. Each pallet can hold up to 1,000 liters of wool. The marked output area can only fit up to 4 such pallets, which means that pallets need to be removed frequently to be sold at the Spinnery. Failure to remove a pallet before it is full can result in loss of wool or a reset in production rates. Additionally, the price of wool is highly volatile (especially since the base maps feature only one Spinnery), which means that Wool may occasionally need to be stockpiled for a while until prices rise again.
While producing Wool, Sheep also breed at a rate of one sheep per 960 hours divided by the number of sheep of the same color in the same pasture. Keeping animals at a exactly 100% productivity is extremely difficult, so a single sheep should be expected to reproduce every 1,000 hours under realistically-ideal conditions. Sheep stop breeding if there is no room in the Pasture for more sheep, or if they run out of food or water. Each sheep sells for $1,000 (not including transportation costs).
The base game provides 4 different types of sheep, each with a different color. All types of sheep function identically, though keeping only one color of sheep in each pasture helps maximize the breeding rate.
List of Sheep[]
Farming Simulator 19 offers 4 different types of Sheep. These can all be bought at the Animal Dealer. There is no functional difference between any of the different types of sheep, only physical appearance.
| Name | Price |
|---|---|
| Sheep (black) | 1,500 |
| Sheep (black & white) | 1,500 |
| Sheep (brown) | 1,500 |
| Sheep (white) | 1,500 |
Sheep Pasture[]
- Main article: Sheep Pasture (Farming Simulator 19)
Before purchasing any Sheep, you must purchase at least one Sheep Pasture from the Store. This is a Placeable that can be placed on any sufficiently-large open space (no obstacles).
The base game provides two different models of Pastures. The only real difference between them is their capacity (the number of sheep they can hold), and their physical size.
Once the Sheep Pasture is placed on the map, you can begin to fill it with Sheep and their required materials.
Purchasing Sheep[]
To purchase sheep, visit the Animal Dealer and interact with its sale point 
Open Animal DialogueDefault Buttons: 
R
??
??. This will only work if you own at least one Animal Pen, otherwise the menu will not open.
After pressing the button, if you have more than one Animal Pen, you'll be asked which pen you'd like to populate. You must select an existing Sheep Pasture in order to purchase Sheep. If you do not own such a Pasture, you will only be able to purchase other animals.
Production and Consumption[]
Sheep can be provided with Water and any combination of Grass and/or Hay. Sheep will happily eat either of these two foods, or a mix of both - neither is preferable, and there is no special benefit to providing both.
If only water or only food is provided, the sheep will still consume it, but produce nothing. This is a pure waste of material. Sheep will not die if they have no food or water at all.
If provided with water and food, Sheep will begin to produce Wool. The rate of production starts at 0 Wool per day, but will gradually increase over time. The more sheep live in the pasture, the faster this rate will increase. Technically speaking, there is no hard upper limit to the rate of Wool production, though there is a soft limit that may or may not be possible to break.
Consumption and production is processed at 15-minute intervals (in-game). For sheep, Production is measured using 15-minute intervals, whereas Consumption is measured over 24 hours.
Wool Production[]
The only material produced by Sheep is Wool, a high-value material that can only be sold at the Spinnery. This material is only produced if the Sheep have access to both Water and food - either Grass or Hay work just the same.
Wool production is initially set to 0 liters of Wool per 15 minutes. However, this rate will immediately begin to grow with every 15 minutes of in-game time. The rate of growth depends on the number of Sheep in the pasture, as well as the current Productivity rate. Sheep Productivity is much simpler than with most other Animals, since the base value is always either 0% (missing either water or food) or 90% (water and food present). You can add up to 10% to this value by keeping the pasture's feeding area clean.
Production begins to accelerate almost immediately, though it may go unnoticed for a few hours if there are very few sheep in the pasture. Every 15 minutes, the rate of production increases by about +0.01 liters of Wool multiplied by the number of sheep in the pasture.
- EXAMPLE: You've purchased a new Sheep Pasture and have placed 100 Sheep inside. Since this pasture is new, the production rate starts at 0 Wool per 15 minutes. With 100 sheep, every 15 minutes the production rate increases by +1 liters. After only one hour you will be producing 4 Wool per 15 minutes. After two hours you will be producing 8 wool per 15 minutes. By the end of the first 24 hours you should be producing 96 Wool every 15 minutes.
There is no known hard limit to Wool production rates. However, as explained below, the game does have a way of curbing the Wool production rate, to prevent it from going wild. Nevertheless, this can be circumvented through diligent monitoring of the amount of Wool waiting to be picked up.
Wool Accumulation[]
As Wool is produced, it is placed into Pallets that appear next to the sheep's shed. A Pallet will be created automatically for the first liter of Wool produced, and more Pallets will be created whenever they are needed.
Each Pallet can contain up to 1,000 liters of Wool. If the game finds a partially-filled pallet within the marked area, it will attempt to fill that Pallet up. If all pallets within the marked area are full, the game attempts to create a new, empty pallet next to them. If there is no room for more pallets, no new pallets nor any Wool will be produced, and you will receive a log message in the top right corner of the screen indicating this problem. To resume Wool production you will need to remove at least one Pallet from the marked area to make room for a new one.
The marked area can potentially contain up to 4 Wool Pallets; However the rotation of the Sheep Pasture when it was placed, as well as any changes to the height of the terrain, can disrupt pallet creation and reduce this limit. Make sure to place your Sheep Pasture facing one of the cardinal directions (or as close to it as possible) and keep the area completely flat. Avoid using the Landscaping tool to change the height near the Sheep Pasture.
Pallets removed from the marked area can be picked up with a Pallet Fork or similar tool, and stacked on the ground nearby or loaded into a Car or Bale Trailer to await transportation. As long as the pallets are not left on the marked area, they should not interfere with the creation of new Pallets.
Production Rate Limit[]
To prevent production rates from reaching unreasonably-high levels, every 15 minutes the game will reset the Production Rate to the last amount of Wool it managed to place into a Pallet. Normally this allows the Production Rate to keep growing, so long as there is enough room for all produced wool inside the pallet it is attempting to fill. However if the game finds a nearly-full pallet on the loading platform and fills it with as much Wool as it can take, the Production Rate will be reset to whatever amount of Wool was needed to fill that pallet.
EXAMPLE: Let's say that production has reached a rate of 20 liters per 15 minutes. During the next production tick the game checks the Pallet loading area and finds a Pallet containing exactly 979 liters of Wool. There's enough room in that pallet, so the game simply adds 20 liters of Wool to that pallet and the Production Rate remains unharmed. However during the next tick the Pallet contains 999 liters of Wool, and the game can only fit 1 more liter to that Pallet. It will fill that Pallet to 1,000 liters, and reset the Production Rate to 1 liter per 15 minutes.
Using this method, production rates are more or less stabilized according to how many Sheep there are in the Pasture. The more sheep there are, the faster Production Rate will recover after each such reset, filling the next Pallet quickly despite the setback. With only a few Sheep in the pasture, each reset will kill any excessive Production Rate, returning it to a more "reasonable" level for at least some time.
This system has an important drawback that can be exploited: If each Pallet is removed from the loading area before it can reach 1,000 liters, the Production Rate will never reset; it will just keep growing and growing. Eventually, given enough time and effort, you can reach a Production Rate of 1,000 liters of Wool per 15 minutes - filling an entire new Pallet every quarter-hour. This requires plenty of attention, and can take weeks of in-game time to achieve. If at any point you allow a single Pallet to fill to 1,000 liters, Production Rates can drop massively, setting back the entire process.
In short, if at all possible, try to keep the pallets off the loading area before they fill up, and you will quickly see a sharp rise in Wool production each day. Otherwise, Wool production rates will fluctuate randomly from day to day, roughly corresponding to the number of sheep in the pasture.
Consumption[]
While any Water is available in the Sheep Pasture, each Sheep will consume 20 Liters of Water per day.
While any food (Grass or Hay) is available in the Sheep Pasture, each Sheep will consume 50 Liters of Food per day.
Note that both water and food must be present for Wool production and breeding, but consumption will occur even if only one is present - thus wasting the material without any benefit.
Breeding[]
As long as there is at least one Sheep in a Pasture, that sheep will multiply over time. New sheep will appear automatically and be added to the other sheep in the pasture. You can breed sheep to increase your Wool production, or sell them for an immediate profit.
The rate of sheep reproduction depends on how many sheep of the same type are in the same Pasture, and the current Productivity rating for that Pasture.
Hours to Breed = (100 / Productivity) * (960 / Number of Same-Type Sheep)
At 100% productivity, sheep reproduce at a rate of one Sheep per 960 hours divided by the number of sheep of the same color in the pen.
Example: Assuming 100% productivity, if you have 10 Sheep (brown) in a single pen, they will create one new Sheep (brown) every 960/10 = 96 hours. If you also have 5 Sheep (white) in the same pen, those sheep will separately produce a new Sheep (white) every 960/5 = 192 hours.
Productivity for Sheep varies between 90% and 100% based only on the current Cleanliness value of the Pasture. It can never drop below 90%, as this would imply that the sheep are not being fed or given water - either of which will completely stop their breeding. Since it is virtually impossible to keep productivity at 100% constantly, expect a breeding time of between 1000-960 hours per sheep, divided by the number of sheep of the same type.
Same Color[]
Note that the calculation above involves sheep of the same color. This has an important effect that makes it slightly better to keep multiple sheep of the same color in each pen, rather than mixing sheep of different colors.
For example, if you have 4 sheep of the same type, they will produce one new sheep every X/4 hours (where X is their current breeding rate depending on Productivity); whereas if you have 4 sheep of different types they'll simply produce 4 new sheep after X hours.
This is important, because in the first case the 5th sheep will arrive after X/4 hours and increase the breeding rate, so the 6th sheep will arrive after X/5 hours, the 7th sheep will arrive after X/6 hours, and so on. In the second case, all 4 new sheep arrive together after X hours, suddenly boosting the breeding rate. This means that sheep breed faster when they are all of the same color!
Here is a timeline of what happens in the game, assuming constant 100% productivity (all numbers are approximate):
| Hours Passed | Sheep of Different Colors | Sheep of Same Color | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Num. of Sheep | Hours to Next Breeding | Num. of Sheep | Hours to Next Breeding | |
| 0 | 4 | 960 | 4 | 240 |
| 240 | 4 | 720 | 5 | 192 |
| 432 | 4 | 528 | 6 | 160 |
| 592 | 4 | 368 | 7 | 137 |
| 728 | 4 | 232 | 8 | 120 |
| 848 | 4 | 112 | 9 | 107 |
| 955 | 4 | 5 | 10 | 96 |
| 960 | 8 | 480 | 10 | (91) |
As you can see, after 960 hours the sheep of the same color have reached 10, whereas sheep of different colors have only doubled their numbers to 8.
As the breeding speed increases for the sheep of the same type, Wool production also increases more rapidly. Thus, the sheep of the same type will have produced more wool by the 960th hour than the sheep of different types! Similarly, they will also have consumed more materials.
Selling Sheep[]
As the Enclosure reaches its capacity of Sheep, you will want to sell some of those sheep for profit. Each sheep sells for $1,000, not including transportation costs.
To sell a sheep, visit the Pasture's marked area for animal loading/unloading, and press the "Animal Dialog" button Open Animal DialogDefault Buttons: R ?? ??. This will open a menu that allows you to sell sheep directly. You will have to pay a Transport Fee of $100 per sheep.
Alternatively, place an Animal Transport on the marked area before opening the Animal Dialog to instead move sheep into the transport. You can then take the transport to the Animal Dealer and open the Animal Dialog there to sell those sheep with no Transport Fees. This would increase your profits substantially.
For optimal results, you would only sell one sheep at a time, then wait for the Sheep Pasture to fill up before selling the next sheep. However this is inefficient and requires a lot of effort (and possibly Fuel). It makes more sense to load up your Animal Transport with as many sheep as it can carry, take those to be sold, and wait for the pasture to fill up with sheep again.
Remember that sheep will stop breeding if you run out of room in your Sheep Pasture. Make sure to constantly check the number of sheep in each Pasture.