Sheep are a very useful kind of livestock for your Landlords village. They provide wool (to make yarn and eventually cloaks) and can even help on your farms.
Us Landlords sheep guide explains all the steps to get sheep in your town (there’s more than you might expect), and how you can use sheep to help your farms and make some money.
How to add sheep to your town in Manor Lords
Sheep require a surprising amount of infrastructure before you can add them to your city. First you have to buy them from a livestock trading post, so you need enough regional wealth (30 each). Then you need a place to keep them: a sheep farm, a pasture or an upgrade of your farm fields. And to shear the sheep you need a sheep farm anyway.
Then you 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 useful, you’ll also need a burglary plot (level 2) with a tailor’s extension and a dyeing 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 sheep breeding
Before we get into the weeds about sheep farming, a quick word of warning: Do Do not take the development of sheep breeding. 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 never become sheep.
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At this point in the game’s development, lambs remain lambs forever, taking up space and multiplying until there is no more room, and then they start running away. Or just wander around your city.
This isn’t a game-breaking problem. Loose sheep are not destructive and you don’t even have to worry about feeding them. But don’t go into it expecting your city to thrive thanks to its sheep-based economy.
Build a livestock trading post
Arrived early Landlordsadd cattle one by one by clicking the button order another ox or order a new horse button at a coupling post (or small stable), add horses to a trading postor order a mule from a packing station.
However, to add sheep you will need one livestock trading post (2 wood) — a special building dedicated to managing the livestock in your city. All livestock is brought to your town by a cattle dealer, who acts like a traveling merchant by physically bringing the animals to your town. A cattle trading post simply moves that person’s job to a family in your town.
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With a livestock trading post, you assign families and then set the desired number of each type of livestock, along with the import, export, and full trading rules – all similar to a trading post. Once that’s set up, the families assigned to that building will work to get the number of each type of livestock in your city to match your desired surplus.
But just like when you order cattle (or horses) at a hitching post, livestock dealers only bring in one animal per month. This means that building an entire flock of sheep will take some time.
Build a sheep farm and pasture
a sheep farm (1 wood) is where your shepherds will work to shear the sheep and produce wool. It is also your first pasture. There is room for five sheep in the garden.
If you want more than five sheep, you will need more space for them. That’s where one Meadow (no costs) is included. This is a flexible plot where your sheep can roam freely. It doesn’t have to be very big. Remember that there is already room for five people in the front yard of the sheep farm.
Build a weaver’s workshop, a dyer’s workshop and a tailor’s workshop
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Sheep farms produce wool (except in winter; sheep also get cold). To process the wool you need: weaver’s workshop (4 wood). That turns wool into yarn. Yarn isn’t very useful on its own, but it does meet one of the clothing needs of your burglary plots. If you want to turn it into something else, it will take more work.
First of all, you also have one dyeing studio (2 wood). This building takes berries and turns them into dyes.
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Next you need to convert a burglary plot (level 2) into one tailor’s workshop (5 regional resources, 5 planks). Once that is built, click on the 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 vacant lots. You have to spend at least two development points to get there: one for one heavy plow for agriculture, and one for fertilization.
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With fertilization you can add a fence to your fields by clicking the button fence up button and issuing 5 planks. Now, when that field is set to fallowit becomes a meadow (just like when you build a meadow directly).
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While the sheep are in that fallow field, they will restore the fertility of that field more quickly and reliably than simply leaving it fallow. However, this does not make it more fruitful than the default value.
Sheep breeding is a mixed benefit
The other development you can get is sheep breeding. We warned about this above, but it is still an option. Releasing sheep breeding only means that sheep in pastures will periodically produce lambs.
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As we mentioned above, lambs never (currently) become sheep. As cute as an eternal lamb is, they just take up space because they seem to produce less wool (if any?).
Image: Slavic magic/hooded horse via polygon
Your livestock dealer can be set up to (try to) export those lambs, but you have to keep an eye on things global market supply – you flood the market with lambs until you can no longer export them.
At this point in Mansion’ development, it’s just not worth taking this development benefit unless you plan on having only a few sheep at a time.