A Moo-tastic Guide to Cows & Milk

Keeping cows as a pet is one of the new amoosing new features of The Sims 4 Cottage Living. In this guide we’ll go through all the ins and outs of keeping your cows happy, how to get them to produce all kinds of milk and how to change their appearance in funky colors. Don’t worry, with this guide it’s udderly effortless! 

Presented by EA GameChangers. 

Where to Buy your First Cow

Place the new animal shed onto your lot and select to buy an animal. Each shed can house either one cow or one llama, so keep that in mind. Sheds take up quite some space (10×9 squares), but this includes the free roaming area for your cow.

After you’ve placed a shed, click on it and select the purchase animal interaction. You can now choose between a Brown Cow or a Spotted Cow. Cows are unable to breed offspring.

Keeping your Cattle Content

As explained above, you will need an animal shed to keep a cow. Every so often they will produce milk, which your Sim can loot to drink by itself or use in recipes. You can change the flavour of the milk by giving the cow a treat. Happier cows will make better quality produce, so make sure to look after them correctly. By cleaning their shed, their fur and giving them attention frequently you’ll keep the cow content and healthy. Kids can also help out by taking care of the cow. 

Feeding the Cow

It’s also very important to keep your cow well fed. Luckily this is a fairly easy task. Just click on the shed and choose the option the Refill Feed, this will fill up the feeder on the side of the shed. The cow will make sure she eats regularly when the feeder has food in it. You can upgrade the shed with the Livestock Auto Feeder feature to keep the feeder full at all times. 

Tip: You can also feed the cow personally, just click on the cow itself and choose the feeding interaction.

How to Become Friends with your Cow

Befriending a cow is an easy task, but it will take some time to improve the relationship between your Sim and the cow. Each positive interaction your Sim does with the cow will increase their friendship level. Sims with the Animal Enthusiast Trait will have an easier time befriending cows and they’ll unlock more interactions other Sims will not have.

By using friendly interactions with the cow you’ll see their relationship grow. It will also keep the cow happier as you’re most likely taking care of the cow’s needs while interacting with them. To keep track of your cow and their stats, you can hover your cursor over them. This will give you information about their friendship level with your Sim, their age, happiness, hygiene, hunger & attention needs, but also what flavour their next milk production will be.

Upgrade the Shed

To make your life – and that of your cow – a bit easier you can upgrade their animal shed to take better care of them. You can add two different upgrades on the shed: ComfortCare Life Extender and the Livestock Auto Feeder. 

• ComfortCare Life Extender
  The ComfortCare system is like aromatherapy, art therapy, and music therapy, except it’s none of those things. But it does keep livestock relaxed, leading to increased lifespan!
• Livestock Auto Feeder
  This battery-powered device keeps the shed’s feed supply topped off, always and forever. Sims need never refill it. Ever!

You’ll only need Livestock Upgrade Parts in order to perform the upgrades. You can get these as a reward for doing errands for your neighbors.

Gather Milk for Recipes or to Enter Competitions

Cows will produce new milk daily. Come back each day to gather a few bottles of milk. Drink the milk straight from the bottle or you can use it in recipes, or -if you’re really feeling confident- even to compete with in the Finchwick Fair. Keep in mind that happier cows will produce better quality milk, so take proper care of them for the best results.

Different Kinds of Milk

You can gather a lot of different flavours of milk from your cow. Each flavour will have a different outcome when consumed, even when used in a recipe.

	Normal Milk This is the standard milk that cows provide. You can feed a cow a Friendly Treat to remove the side effects from other treats, and ensure that the next time they’re milked that they will provide standard milk. You can use the milk for standard recipes without any unwanted side effects.
	Chocolate Milk Feed a Cow a Chocolatey Treat and they’ll provide chocolate milk. Sims who drink this will get a happy moodlet from it.
	Strawberry Milk Drinking strawberry milk will surface a Sim’s innermost desires. This makes adult Sim flirty and kids become playful after drinking strawberry milk. Feed the cow a flirty treat to get strawberry milk.
	Enriched Milk Tip the cow or give them a fishy treat to get enriched milk. Drinking enriched milk will provide faster skill gain for a period of time and makes a Sim focused for 4 hours.
	Pumpkin Spice Milk Pumpkin treats will result in delicious pumpkin spice milk. This will make a Sim inspired and they can level up their gardening skills faster.
	Fire Milk Give a cow a spicy treat to get a fire milk flavour. Make a Sim confident and your Sim spits fire sometimes.
	Plant-based Milk Use this milk in recipes for lactose intolerant Sim. Give a cow a veggie treat to get plant-based milk.
	Obsidian Milk Giving the cow a midnight treat will result in obsidian milk. Drinking this milk will make your Sim angry for 2 hours.
	Golden Honey Milk Drinking this milk will give your Sim a golden glow and a dazed moodlet for a few hours. Give a cow a golden treat to get this milk flavour.
	Rainbow Milk Feed a cow a rainbow treat and they’ll provide rainbow milk. Drinking rainbow milk is like embarking on a playful adventure.

Change the Appearance & Milk of your Cow with Treats

Everybody deserves a treat once in a while! You can make your cow happier, change the kind of milk they produce or even turn them into a Rainbow Cow by giving them the right kind of animal treats. There are a lot of different treats you can give your cow with each a different outcome. 

There’s a couple of ways to obtain the treats. You can simply just buy them at the Garden Shop in Finchwick or get them as a reward for doing errands for your neighbors. You can also choose to make them yourself. Start by clicking on the shed and choose Actions… then pick the Create Animal Treats at Fridge interaction. Your Sim will use any fridge on the lot to create the treats, but will not be able to if you don’t have one. Sims will have to unlock the recipes themselves, even when they are part of the same household.

	Friendly Treat Increases relationship with the animal and this will remove the side effects from other treats.
	Animal Party Treat Socializing with an animal has a stronger impact on their happiness.
	Fishy Protein Treat You can harvest one extra milk bottle on the next harvest.
	Healthy Treat Increase the animals lifespan.
	Chocolatey Treat This will let your Cow produce chocolate milk.
	Flirty Treat This will make your Cow produce strawberry milk.
	Fruity Treat You Cow will now produce enriched milk.
	Golden Treat Your Cow will prove your Sim with golden honey milk.
	Midnight Treat The Cow will produce obsidian milk.
	Pumpkin Treat Your Cow will now produce pumpkin spice milk.
	Rainbow Treat Change the color of your Cow to rainbow colors and the Cow will produce rainbow milk. This unlocks a new and very useful interaction: Ask Cow for lottery numbers.
	Spicy Treat The Cow will produce fire milk.
	Veggie Treat This will turn the milk into a plant-based milk which is safe to drink for lactose intolerant Sims.

Dress Up Your Cow

Give them a nice sweater or make them extra fancy with a cap and top. Go to the Creature Keeper in the Bramblewood to buy animal clothing. The available animal clothings will change each day. You can also collect animal clothing by doing errands for neighbors or buy them at the garden shop. 

Tip: While they certainly look warm and cozy in their woolen jumper, cows will not be affected by weather conditions if you have The Sims 4 Seasons installed.

Compete with your Cow or Milk in the Finchwick Fair

Do you think you have the greatest cow of all time? Take them to the Finchwick Fair and earn prizes! What makes a cow worthy of competing in this competition? Make sure your cow is happy, well fed and clean before participating to increase your chances of winning.

Naming your Cow

When you click on your cow you have the option to name her. We’ve made a list for you with inspiration for cow names.

Life Expectancy of the Cow. 

Cows can only die of old age. They will live around 30-40 days when the lifespan settings are set to normal. You can prolong their lives by:

• Giving them healthy treats.
• Complete the Country Caretaker aspiration for a reward trait.
• Upgrade the shed with the ComfortCare Life Extender.
• Turn off the Animal Aging setting in the Pack Settings menu.

Trade your Cow

If you can’t take care of the cow anymore or you want to get rid of them before they pass of old age you can choose to trade it. Use their shed to trade them away – an option you can find under Actions… – and choose what you want to receive in return. You will be able to trade it for simoleons, animal treats or ingredients & produce or in the worst case scenario… meat.