How to Build Fences in Stardew Valley

Players have a vast amount of control over how they put their farm to use in Stardew Valley. The farm region can become an orchard, a garden, a ranch, a forest, a fishery, or some combination of all of the above.

However, it can be difficult to keep the animal part of a Stardew Valley farm away from the crops and trees. While farm animals are well-behaved enough to never eat crops, the grass they do eat has a tendency to grow across the map if left untended, and grass slows the player down. Also, players must interact with every animal once per day to get their friendship rating up. Fences can contain both grass and animals, making both these jobs easier.

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How to Set Up a Fence

A good fence should enclose a large area around the animal door of a barn or coop. Inside this fence, grass can grow freely and players can leave the door open without having to worry about finding their animals to pet them, milk them, or shear them. Coop animals are shorter than the grass, making them hard to spot, but players can hold down the interaction button while running through the grass to pet them all.

A small enclosure is best for keeping track of the animals, but a full barn or coop will quickly eat their way through the grass. Replacing this grass can get expensive, so it helps to build a larger enclosure that gives the grass enough space to regrow faster than the animals can eat it. Animals will always eat the grass closest to the animal door of their barn or coop, so players should try to center the enclosure around it. Eventually, the grass should reach a stable point where it regenerates as fast as the animals eat it.

Building a fence is simple. Each fence post takes up one square on the farm, and they connect to each other as players build them in vertical or horizontal lines. Players can build fences along a diagonal, and they will stop movement, but they won’t appear to connect.

Fences block players and horses just as well as they block farm animals and grass, so players should be sure to add at least one gate to every fence. Gates occupy their own spaces, so players must plan out where to build them or remove a fence post and replace it with a gate. Also, gates only work if they connect to a fence, and a diagonal fence doesn’t count.

Players can also make use of farm buildings and natural barriers like ponds when planning their enclosures. If the player can’t move through a square for any reason, neither can an animal.

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How to Repair Decaying Fences

One reason why many players avoid fences is because maintaining a basic wooden fence can be more effort than it’s worth. Every fence will eventually fall apart, but the best fence type lasts ten times as long as the worst type. Players who wait to use the hardwood fence will find that it’s much more useful when it comes to saving time and effort.

To repair an old fence, players should craft new fence posts and use them on a visibly decaying fence. This will consume the fence posts but repair the old ones. Players can also destroy an old fence by hitting it with an axe or a pickaxe. If the fence is less than 24 hours old, players will get the fence post back. However, an older fence will drop nothing.

The durability of each fence type is as follows:

Name	Ingredients	Durability	How to Get
Wood Fence	2 Wood	~56 days or 2 months	Available from the start
Stone Fence	2 Stone	~120 days or just over 1 year	Farming 2
Iron Fence (10)	1 Iron Bar	~250 days or 2 years and 1 month	Farming 4
Hardwood Fence	1 Hardwood	~560 days or 5 years	Farming 6
Gate	10 Wood	400 days or 3 years and 2 months	Available from the start

It’s important to note that fences can fail up to two days before or two days after the listed time elapses. However, they’ll start to show damage before this happens. Players can take advantage of this to fix the fences before they break.

Something else to consider is that one of a spouse’s random morning jobs is to repair the farm’s fences. If a player’s farm has hardwood fences and a happy spouse, they may never have to worry about decaying fences.