How to get sheep in Manor Lords

Sheep are a really useful type of livestock for your Manor Lords town. They get you wool (to turn into yarn and eventually cloaks), and can even help out on your farms.

Our Manor Lords sheep guide will explain all the steps to getting sheep in your town (there’s more than you’d expect), and how to use sheep to help your farms and make some cash.

How to add sheep to your town in Manor Lords

Sheep require a surprising amount of infrastructure be in place before you can add them to your town. First, you have to buy them from a livestock trading post, so you’ll need plenty of Regional Wealth (30 each). Then, you’ll need someplace to keep them — a sheep farm, a pasture, or an upgrade to your farm fields. And you’ll need a sheep farm anyway to shear the sheep.

After that, you’ll need a weaver’s workshop to make yarn from the wool that the sheep farm produces. If you want to turn that yarn into something usable, you’ll also need a burgage plot (level 2) with a tailor extension and a dyer’s workshop.

It’s a lot of buildings and jobs just to produce your first ball of yarn. Let’s go through each step in detail.

A word of caution about sheepbreeding

Before we get into the weeds on sheep farming, a quick word of caution: Do not take the sheepbreeding development. Sure, it sounds nice to have a steady supply of lambs that turn into sheep for free, but you have to remember that the game is in early access. Lambs don’t ever become sheep.

Image: Slavic Magic/Hooded Horse via Polygon

At this point in the game’s development, lambs just stay lambs forever, taking up space and multiplying until there’s no room left, and then they start running away. Or just wandering around your town.

Now, this isn’t a game-breaking problem. Loose sheep aren’t destructive and you don’t even have to worry about feeding them. But just don’t go into it expecting that your town will thrive on its sheep-based economy.

Build a livestock trading post

Early on in Manor Lords, you’ll just add livestock one at a time by clicking the order another ox or order a new horse button at a hitching post (or small stable), adding horses at a trading post, or ordering a mule at a pack station.

To add sheep, though, you’ll need a livestock trading post (2 timber) — a dedicated building just for managing the livestock in your town. All livestock is brought to your town by a livestock trader, who acts kind of like a traveling merchant by physically walking animals to your town. A livestock trading post just moves that person’s job to a family in your town.

Image: Slavic Magic/Hooded Horse via Polygon

At a livestock trading post, you’ll assign families and then set your desired number of each type of livestock, along with the import, export, and full trade rules — all similar to a trading post. When that’s set, the families assigned to that building will set to work trying to get the number of each type of livestock in your town to match your desired surplus.

Just like when you order ox (or horses) from a hitching post, though, livestock traders only bring in one animal per month. That means building up a whole herd of sheep willl take some time.

Build a sheep farm and pasture

A sheep farm (1 timber) is where your shepherds will work to shear the sheep and produce wool. It’s also your first pasture space — there’s room for five sheep in its yard.

If you want more than five sheep, you’ll need more space for them. That’s where a pasture (no cost) comes in. This is a flexible plot where your sheep can roam. It doesn’t have to be very large — remember that the front yard of the sheep farm already has space for five.

Build a weaver’s workshop, a dyer’s workshop, and a tailor’s workshop

Image: Slavic Magic/Hooded Horse via Polygon

Sheep farms produce wool (except during the winter — sheep get cold too). To process the wool, you’ll need a weaver’s workshop (4 timber). That turns wool into yarn. Yarn isn’t super useful on its own — but it does supply one of your burgage plots’ requirements for clothes. If you want to turn it into something else, that takes more work.

First, you’ll also need a dyer’s workshop (2 timber). This building takes berries and turns them into dyes.

Image: Slavic Magic/Hooded Horse via Polygon

Next, you’ll need to turn a burgage plot (level 2) into a tailor’s workshop (5 Regional Wealth, 5 planks). Once that’s built, click on its General tab and you can select cloaks as their production focus — these require 1 yarn and 1 dye to produce.

Unlock fertilization

The most useful thing your sheep can do for you is fertilize your fallow farm plots. You’ll need to spend at least two development points to get there — one on a heavy plow for farming, and then one on fertilization.

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With fertilization, you can add a fence to your farm fields by clicking the fence up button and spending 5 planks. Now, whenever that field is set to fallow, it becomes a pasture (just like if you built a pasture directly).

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While the sheep are in that fallow field, they’ll restore that field’s fertility faster and more reliably than just leaving it fallow. This doesn’t make it more fertile than it’s default value, though.

Sheepbreeding is a mixed benefit

The other development you can get is sheepbreeding. We warned about this above, but it’s still an option. Unlocking sheepbreeding just means that sheep in pastures will periodically produce lambs.

Image: Slavic Magic/Hooded Horse via Polygon

Like we mentioned above, lambs don’t ever become sheep (currently). As cute as an eternal lamb is, they kind of just take up space since they seem to produce less wool (if any?).

Image: Slavic Magic/Hooded Horse via Polygon

Your livestock trader can be set to (try to) export those lambs, but you have to keep an eye on the global market supply — you’ll flood the market with lambs until you can’t export them any more.

At this point in Manor Lords’ development, it’s just not worth taking this development perk unless you plan on only having a few sheep at a time.