If you’re not a fan of how restrictive farm animals behave in The Sims 4 you might be interested in the Free Range Mod, along with extra animals to use with it!
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When Cottage Living was announced many simmers went hog-wild with excitement that farms were finally becoming a thing in the game. It was a wanted gameplay mechanic for years and with the EP sims now had chickens, cows, and llamas they could care for along with several wild animals to keep it interesting. Horse Ranch added mini goats and mini sheep to round things out.
Players have generally been pretty happy with the animals on offer from these two EPs but one thing about them that could be improved upon is their ability to roam; larger farm animals are linked to their shed and can only stray so many tiles from it. This puts a damper on things if you want to play with a huge farm, rolling pastures, or other large amounts of space. Fortunately the Free Range Mod by Lot51 will open things up and give your cows and llamas much more space to wander.
This mod requires Lot51’s core library, which the page will prompt you to download when you try to download the Free Range Mod.
Using The Free Range Mod
The Free Range Mod comes with 2 buyable objects that you will need to place down for your animals.
Place the Livestock Shelter Marker (looks like a barn and feed silo) in or under the structure you want your animals to treat as their shelter space, such as a barn or covered area. Animals will congregate in this area at night, and if you have the Seasons EP they’ll also take shelter in bad weather.
Animals will also need a Grazing Marker (looks like a stalk of wheat) to indicate where they should feed. Put this in a grassy area for even more realism. Although grass is the primary diet for these animals that doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect them; much like real life, cows will get farty from time to time. If you have the Eco Lifestyle EP this methane will affect your neighborhood’s Eco-footprint!
Both Markers can be found in Activities and Skills→Outdoor Activities.
Buying & Caring For Animals
There are two ways to add animals to your space with the Free Range mod. If you already have shed animals on the lot you can click on them and select Actions→Allow To Roam Free. This action cannot be reversed!
Your other option is to click the ground near your Livestock Shelter Marker between 6am and 8pm to access the Appaloosa Plains Ranch & Stables Market where you’ll find a rotating assortment of animals that you can purchase for your farm.
More space for your farm animals means more space for them to mess up, and your sim will have to keep on top of the various “cow pies,” mud puddles, and trash that will start to accumulate. It grows faster with dirty animals, so their Hygiene is also important to maintain. Click the ground near your Livestock Shelter Marker and select “Clean Livestock Shelter” to have your sim attend to all animal messes they find. For me the option didn’t pop up until the animals started getting dirty, though they began leaving piles all over the farm long before that.
Extra Features With Different Expansion Packs
Although the only EP you need to use the Free Range Mod is Cottage Living, there are extra features for those with more Expansions. We already mentioned gassy cows affecting the Eco-Footprint but there are even more effects this mod adds to the game (and they’re far greater fun than farting cows).
During the full moon and after it rains if you have the season EP, wild mushrooms might show up in the grazing area. These mushrooms can be harvested for ingredients, and if you’re extra-lucky you may even see them grow in a fairy ring formation!
If you have the Get To Work EP there’s a possibility your farm will have some unexpected visitors. We can’t say much because we don’t want the Federal Bureau of Simvestigation getting involved, but let’s just say that these visitors come from way out of town.
Known Issues
In order to give farm animals the freedom to wander their footprint is very small. This means that they tend to clip through walls, so it’s advised that if your Shelter is walled you should put decor or other items around the perimeter to help keep animals from wandering too close. There’s also a slight misalignment with the milk bucket when you collect from your dairy animals. These are both merely visual bugs and won’t affect the playability of the mod.
Expand The Farm With Custom Animals By TheKalino
We’ve talked about modder TheKalino many times in the past. She makes a large variety of animal-focused CC which includes a number of custom farm animals, and has converted many of these farm animals to be used with the Free Range mod. Unfortunately you can’t have the “shed” versions of these specific custom animals in the game along with the free-roaming versions, so if you currently use them you’ll want to remove those files from your Mods folder before trying this version.
TheKalino’s mod doesn’t work the same way when it comes to buying animals as the main Free Range Mod and instead the CC farm animals can be found in Buy Mode under Pets→Miscellaneous. Just drop them in the vicinity of the markers and they’ll find their way. With the inclusion of this extra mod your sims will be able to stock their farms with 16 additional types of creatures on top of the regular cows and llamas from Cottage Living:
- 5 types of cow
- 3 types of alpaca
- 3 types of full size sheep
- 1 full size goat
- 1 brown donkey
- 1 furry pig
- 1 grey goose
- 1 white duck
The alpaca, sheep, donkeys, and pigs produce wool, while cows produce milk. Geese and ducks should behave like chickens and produce eggs but you will need a coop for them (when inside the coop it will use the original animations of chickens roosting).
More on SNOOTYSIMS: See some of TheKalino’s smaller critter creations in our list of the best Small Pet Mods!
Tips
The biggest tip we can offer when using the Free Range mod and the CC farm animals by TheKalino is that your animals need space. They really will roam all over the lot but because of their footprint, much like the shelter walls we mentioned earlier, they will clip into most things they walk near such as fences, trees, furniture, and other animals. Also, just because they’re not attached to a shed doesn’t mean they can all be shoved into a small barn—don’t let it get crowded or you’ll have animals merging into each other all over the place!
Conclusion
Make your sims’ large farms feel more alive with the Free Range mod! Give animals the ability to wander over the entirety of the property they’re on, so they can fully appreciate all that open space. Add TheKalino’s animals to get a massive variety of options; make a giant cow farm, a wool-producing farm full of llamas and alpacas, or start keeping ducks and geese for something a little more compact. You might even find some surprises along the way! What’s your favorite aspect of the mod? Let us know in the comments, don’t step in any cow pies, and happy simming!