One of the best ways to make money in Stardew Valley is through animals, whether you sell their products or take the time to turn them into Artisanal Goods. Even at a base level, animal products can sell for a lot, but there’s a new way to increase your profits per animal thanks to update 1.6.
Golden Animal Crackers are a rare item added to Stardew Valley in 1.6 that, when given to an animal on your farm, doubles the amount of produce they drop. The only exception to this is pigs, which is fine because Truffles are incredibly lucrative already and giving them this buff would result in pig-only farms and very little need for any side hustles.
How to get Golden Animal Crackers in Stardew Valley
As I said, Golden Animal Crackers aren’t common or easy to get. For starters, you can only get Golden Animal Crackers after you’ve achieved your Farming Mastery, so you’ve got a way to go if you’ve just started a new game.
There are a few different ways to get a Golden Animal Cracker, but none of them are anywhere near guaranteed:
| Way to get | Drop chance |
| Regular fishing treasure chests | 7% |
| Golden fishing treasure chests | 9% |
| Skull Cavern treasure rooms | 2% |
| Golden Mystery Boxes | 0.5% |
| Artifact Spots | 0.9% |
| Shaking trees with seeds | 0.2% |
| Chopping trees | 0.033% (per chop) |
| Breaking containers in the Mines, Skull Cavern or Volcano Dungeon | 0.15% |
| Slaying monsters | 0.15% |
How to use Golden Animal Crackers in Stardew Valley
If you’ve got lucky and have some Golden Animal Crackers, you can feed them to any farm animal by selecting the Cracker within your inventory and interacting with the animal you want to profit from. Doing so will then cause the animal to give you twice as much produce from that point forward.
You can also use Golden Animal Crackers on a Fish Pond. This will not only result in double the drops, but it will also cause the basket on that Fish Pond to turn gold, allowing you to easily distinguish which Ponds already have the buff applied. It’s worth bearing in mind that if you empty the pond using the ‘empty pond’ option, the Golden Animal Cracker will be lost permanently.
You cannot use a Golden Animal Cracker on the same animal or Pond more than once, and opening up either the animal tab in the menu or the Pond window will display a Golden Animal Cracker to let you know the buff is already applied.
