So, what are ‘beefalo’?

 
Beefalo are neutral mobs in the Constant where you can find in the Savannah biome and usually spawn in multiple groups ranging from large to small. They have 1000 health (DST) and 500 health (DS). They’re only dangerous creatures whilst in heat-i mean in winter and spring or when you attack them. (The beefalo in winter and spring have red butts.) 
 
Always remember that when the beefalo have red butts, stay a couple tiles away from them. If you get too close to them, the beefalo will attack you. Anyway, beefalo are important to build your base by because of a few reasons i’ll be showing in a second. 
 
 

What qualities do they have?

 
Beefalo are great, and there are six reasons as to why. 
 

Reason 1: Walking meat sack

 
Beefalo drop four meats each time they die. This can be a huge lifesaver for when you’re in winter, or just don’t have much food left. 
 

Reason 2: Wool!

 
Beefalo wool is basically a necessity. Beefalo wool is used for making winter clothes, like the winter hat and the puffy vest and the beefalo hat. “Living in every other place where beefalo aren’t there, you don’t get too far…beefalo are required for winter clothes…” is what i’m getting at. 
 
“But couldn’t you just get a Tam o’ Shanter? You could get a Tam o’ Shanter faster than shaving a stupid beefalo, and it’s better too!” is what they said. Tam o’ Shanter is awesome, yes, but it doesn’t give you much warmth. In case you didn’t know, the Tam o’ Shanter gives around 120 warmth, where as the beefalo hat on the other hand gives out the maximum warmth one clothing piece can give, which is 240 warmth. The Tam o’ Shanter may give a shocking amount of sanity at 6.7 per minute, (almost equivalent to putting a Glommer on your head) but if you need to keep warm, the beefalo hat has your back. Combining the beefalo hat with the hibearnation vest and you’ve got an outstanding 480 warmth! Beat that Tam o’ Shanter! 
 

Reason 3: Walking death

 
Ever find yourself in a sticky situation? What is it, hounds again? Deerclops maybe? No problem. No problem whatsoever. The answer? Beefalo. If you find one group of beefalo, you’ll find more beefalo. If you ever encounter yourself in one of these situations or more, walk into a group of beefalo until the enemy aproaches. I’ll get more into beefalo behavior later, though if one beefalo is attacked too close to a herd or other beefalo, those other beefalo will try to attack the thing that attacked their friend. This can lead to chaos and lag. If the deerclops comes stomping in and trys to attack you but attacks another beefalo instead, it will be destroyed by the beef since they have zero tolerance for that. 
 

Reason 4: The almighty beefalo horn

 
If you’re ever gonna want to make the beefalo hat, then you’ll need to grab a beefalo horn. Beefalo have around a 33% chance to drop one upon death and it has two uses. You can craft a nice hat out of it, and it can be played and have up to five grown beefalo following you for a few minutes. 
 

Reason 5:

 
 
 
Yep. You’re probably thinking, “Poop?” and i’ll explain why. One word: Fertilizer. Now you’re thinking, “Ohh, poop!” looks like you understand poop. 
 
No, but seriously. Manure can be used for fertilizer, which makes crops grow faster (except in winter) but that’s not its only purpose in life. It can be used as fuel (with a gas cloud once added to the fire) and an abundance of crafting recipes, more than i could name. Of course, pigs drop these too, along with other creatures but beefalo are less dangerous and safer than pigs and the other creatures. 
 

Reason 6: Yee-haw! Ride em, survivor! (taming and riding)

 
Wha? What do you mean taming and riding? Yes, you can tame and ride your beefalo and i’ll go into much further detail in a second. I’m not gonna cover it in this section because it’s already painfully long and it deserves a new chapter on its own. 
 
 

“Killing?! I want to do some killing!!”

 
You’re probably like: 
 
“C’mon, i want to know how to tame and ride a beefalo!” hold on a minute. I need to cover this topic quick before it becomes old. 
 
If you ever decide to kill a beefalo, there is an important process you have to go through first before killing a single one. 
 
First, lemme describe their beefalo behavior. Like i stated prior, when one beefalo is attacked near other beefalo, they will all attack…unless you lead one far away from the beefalo cliques. Feed the victim one twig or grass to have them start to chase after you. Don’t worry, they mean you no harm. They think that you are their friend. After a little bit, they’ll start to slow down to a slow walk. try and get them as far away from the group without it slowing down since it takes forever to get them far away when they’e walking. When you believe that you are far enough away (around a screen or two away from the herds) you can get out your weapon (preferably Abigail with 600 health, since you don’t have to do any damage when she’s attacking) you can start to kill it. A wild beefalo does thirty-four damage upon hitting you, so you can understand why a herd of beefalo chasing after you, trying to kill you with thirty-four hp on hit, is not something you want to be apart of. Use any kind of tactic you want, kiting is the best one but i’m not good at kiting things so i usually just take the hits and kill it as fast as i can. 
 
But please remember! Beefalo are greater alive than dead. They can be used for so much, so please don’t kill every single beefalo you find since they’re incredibly useful, as i previously stated. 
 
“Well, what if I want to get its wool? You said that the wool was really important.” 
 
If you play as Wilson you’d assume that the razor would only be used for cutting your nasty beard. I mean, the little description says that it shaves your beard, right? Well it can be used for shaving beefalo too. It is not always a good option at all (i’ll get into why that is in the next section) but it gets you three pieces of wool for every beefalo that you shave. Shaving a beefalo, however, is something to do only at night. If you ever want to shave a beefalo during daytime, text will appear basically saying “I can’t do that” and nothing will happen until you shave it at night. They regrow their wool every 2-3 days or so, but the razor should not be used unless you have extra beefalo that you don’t want to tame. 
 
 

Domestication! Part One (“Finally!”)

 
“Finally! This is what we’ve been waiting for!” 
 
Yes, yes, im gonna go over it. It’s probably gonna be long so no complaining, this is what you wanted. 
I’m also kind of mentally preparing myself because my poor fingers are gonna be explaining a lot. I also double-checked my information that I wasn’t totally sure about, so you don’t have to worry about any of it being false. But, then again I did that with all the other sections. Ok, here we go. 
 

Tendencies (traits)

 
The first thing you need to know about are the different tendencies a beefalo can learn. I often forget the terms ‘tendency’ and ‘tendencies’ so I like to call them traits, you can call them that too. There are four tendencies your beefalo friend can earn (technically three?) while being domesticated. Once fully domesticated (even before fully domesticated) all traits are identifiable by the way their face looks. I’ll show you what the tendencies looks like when fully domesticated. Remember that tendencies only affect the beefalo once it is fully domesticated. 
 
There is Default: 
 
The Default tendency has the same stats as a normal beefalo. The run speed of the beefalo is the average seven and has a minimum obedience of 80%. There are no upsides to this tendency, though there are no real downsides either. Hard to obtain this tendency, since you have to “balance” this tendency with other tendencies. 
 
There is Ornery: 
 
The Ornery tendency is obtained when the beefalo has been hit and has done damage to mobs enough times. This tendency gives the most damage out of the other tendencies, at 50 damage. It’s the best one to obtain if you’re in combat often. The run speed of this tendency is still the average seven and has a minimum obedience of 45%, though this can be risen. 
 
There is my personal favorite, Rider: 
 
The Rider tendency (is imo the cutest tendency) and is obtained when riding the beefalo for a certain period of time. It has the highest run speed of eight but a low attack of 25 damage, but with the best obedience of 95% (wow). It is the easiest one to obtain and the tendency I have on my domesticated beefalo in two of my servers. (I’ll show a pic of my main server’s domesticated beefalo at the end, as a treat ig.) 
 
Then there is Pudgy: 
 
The Pudgy tendency is the worst one that you can get with little to no benefits. It is obtained by keeping the beefalo overfed by feeding it above 50% of its hunger. Every beefalo’s hunger max is 375. It will fart when fed at the 300 mark, and it will vomit if fed about 375. This will inevitably give you the Pudgy tendency. It has the slowest speed of 6.5 and its obedience is 60% (still better than Ornery’s obedience.) It’s only perk is that it gives a sanity boost of 6.25 per minute, so exactly equivalent to a Glommer. It’s useless other than its sanity boost, though there are better methods of gaining sanity and it’s the slowest one. You would also have to feed it a TON of food, so it’s not advised at all. 
 

Domestication

 
But now I’ll get into what all of these, what seems like nonsensical, things i’m referring to. Domestication is…complicated. Very. I will try to make this as easy to understand as possible. I also might be explaining it weirdly, so sorry about that too. I’m not the best at explaining things (especially something like this) since i can get off-track easily so i’ll try to just cut to the chase. 
 
Each time you contribute to a certain tendency, a small, positive ‘tick’ towards domestication and that tendency. That same ‘tick’ occurs when the beefalo’s hunger is above zero. You gain 48 points of domestication for a normal day. Each day in DST and DS is eight minutes long. So, for every 48 ‘ticks’ in the right direction, you gain 5% domestication points per day. If you keep your beefalo’s hunger maintained very often, meaning keeping its hunger from getting to zero, you will get a fully domesticated beefalo and all of its perks in twenty days without using a brush. If using a brush, that will lower the process down to 15 days. Though, you can only use the brush once per day. 
 
!IMPORTANT! I recommend you get the mod, “ShowMe (server)” by Star when domesticating a beefalo. I tried it out and it seems okay, and it shows the percentage of how tamed it is, its obedience and its hunger. If the hunger bar disappears, it means that your beefalo has zero hunger and is hungry. 
 
 

Obedience!

 
“When you were talking about the different traits a beefalo can possess (which is only one trait per beefalo), what did you mean when you were talking about its ‘obedience’?” 
 
I was holding that off until this section. Obedience in a beefalo is when and how much time it will give you to saddle and ride it. 
 
“So I made a normal saddle for my beefalo and saw that there were other saddles that could be crafted. I tried to saddle my beefalo, and it attacked me! Am I doing something wrong, should I have made a different saddle?” 
 
The saddle isn’t the problem, that beefalo of yours is. Domestication and its tendency has nothing to do with it, it’s just that your beefalo doesn’t have enough obedience to let you saddle it, let alone ride it. 
 
“Ohh, well then how do I increase its obedience?” 
 
Simple! You can do two things. You can feed it anything vegetable and fruit (including grass and twigs) and it will gain 10% of obedience. 10% = lets you saddle it. 40% (and higher) keeps the saddle on its back. 50% obedience lets you ride it. Keep in mind: feed your beefalo some cheap “food” before saddling, mounting, and riding your beefalo. Preferably twigs since they give you a little bit more bang for your buck. 
 
 

Domestication! Part Two

 
“Umm…why is there a need for a part two? Didn’t you cover all you needed to cover in part one?” 
 
Well, no. It wouldn’t make much sense if i covered everything in one part, since you would be missing some information you would need before knowing what im about to tell you. If you didn’t get the monstrosity that was that sentence, you’d basically need to be familiar with “Obedience!” and what it means before going into this second chapter. If you skipped ahead of one or more of the sections (how dare you) go back and reread it since you won’t understand. Same thing if you didn’t completely understand the “Obedience!” section. 
 
“Hey! I managed to saddle my beefalo, and even ride it! It was super fast, but then after a few seconds it kicked me off!” 
 
Yep. That’s normal, don’t worry. The amount of time you get to ride your beefalo has nothing to do with obedience, which is why i didnt put it in there. You can now also guess as to why i didn’t put it in part one since i just covered saddling and riding in the last section. 
 
No, it has to do with domestication. (Which is kind of confusing, isn’t it?) Also, before I mention what i’m about to mention, do you remember when i said that even though you gain more wool from shaving your beefalo, it is not advised? I said it because even whilst riding a fully tamed beefalo, it will cut some precious seconds from your riding time which is still a big deal. Do not shave your beefalo when you’re taming! Only shave beefalo when you’re 100% not taming them. 
 
Anyway. Beware!: If you’re in “aggro” season (as some people call the time when you’re beefalo have red butts) and/or when your beefalo is shaven, it will cut your time. 
 
Though, if you’re riding a non-shaven beefalo that is not “aggro”, it will be the average 15 seconds of riding time (and mounting time). You’re not gonna believe the next part though. If you’re riding a fully domesticated beefalo, your riding and mounting time will be an outstanding 800 seconds! Yes, two days worth of riding! 
 
 

“How do I keep it domesticated?” and “How much should I feed it?”

 
For the first question, this does not require any big explanations other than just keeping it fed. Give it a few grass and twigs and you’ll be ok. Like i stated previously, feed it twigs mostly since that gives more hunger points. Remember to ride it every day as well, even if you don’t care much for the Rider tendency. 
 
Also, remember what I said about the “ShowMe (server)” mod by Star. It’s configurable and it shows the levels of domestication, hunger and obedience it has. A side note as well on the mod, if the hunger bar disappears then it means that the beefalo has zero hunger. Always try to keep it above zero! 
 
For the second question though, the maximum you can feed it is four dragonpies per day. Now just by reading that you’d think that I was a complete psycho. I mean, who just casually has dozens of dragonpies just lying about? Who writes this stuff?! Yeah idk. That’s the one thing I just can’t answer lol. Though i guess you can feed it around four to five fist full of jams as a substitute. 
 
 

Q&A

 
Alright. You’re almost to the end of the guide! Congratulations! This section is here to answer any possible questions you may have after reading this guide. If you have any question that is not in this section that i think belongs here will be added here. If you have a question that is not in here and wants to be added/not to be added by me, just say so 🙂 This will prevent others asking and then waiting for my response and also prevents people from digging through comments, trying to find an answer. 
 

“Is there a more cost-effective way to speed the domestication process up more? I’d like to get the brush, though it seems like a lot of work to get.”

 
Yes, there is actually. The saltlick is a much more “cheaper” option to craft compared to a brush. It requires two boards and four nitre, which is arguably a lot safer than hunting down a deadly sheep, known as the ewecus (pronounced “yoo-cus”). 
 

“When you get a fully domesticated beefalo with a trait, can that trait still change or is it locked in place?”

 
I’ve asked this question once and I’ve seen other asking it too, so i’m gonna answer it. I don’t really see others clarifying this in guides discussing the domestication process too, so i think it’s just a lack of understanding if it’s true or not. The answer is no, you cannot change the tendency that you’re fully tamed beefalo has. The only ways that you can “change” it, is by killing the beefalo or losing the beefalo due to lack of maintenance. 
 

“Can you domesticate and fully tame multiple beefalo?”

 
Yes, you can. You can fully tame as many beefalo as you want, but good luck with that. xD 
 

“Can i still attack mobs and other players while riding a beefalo?”

 
You can use the key ‘f’ to attack the closest mob to you, and you can press ctrl+f to attack the closest player to you, regardless of whether you are on the beefalo or not. 
 

“What happens if i attack my beefalo during domestication?”

 
DO NOT attack your beefalo during domestication, accidentally or not. It will add around five extra days of domestication. Even if you are angry at your beefalo, hitting your beefalo with anything (even with weapons that do no damage) will still upset your poor beefalo. 
 

“If i attack another beefalo while my tamed beefalo is beside me, will it still attack me?”

 
Yes. If you want to kill another beefalo but your beefalo is always beside you, hook it up with the beefalo dresser (introduced with the “Year of the Beefalo” update, along with the beefalo bell.) and walk away from it. Then, unhook it afterwards. 
 

“If my beefalo is getting attack while I am on it, will other beefalo come to help us?”

 
Sad to say, no. The other beefalo for some reason couldn’t care less about you and your poor beefalo unless they are attacked. 
 

“Should i bond my fully tamed beefalo/the beefalo i am domesticating/the beefalo im about to domesticate to the Beefalo bell?”

 
Yes! It is incredibly useful for keeping your best buddy close to you. 
 

“So, just to clarify, are beefalo the best mobs in the game, and should i base by them/keep them close to my base?”

 
Y E S. I mean, this guide is all about beefalo and why they’re awesome, so yeah! Keep them close to not only your base, but your heart. 
 
 

The end! Thank you!

 
Congratulations, you are an expert in Beefalo! Thank you for reading my guide, I hope this helped. I guess you could have just read wikipedia on this, though from what i understand, they don’t update their information a lot so it’s usually outdated. Even though this probably is kind of messy, I tried to make it as simple as possible for you guys. And as promised, I will try to show a picture of my fully domesticated beefalo on my main server. 
 
This is Berry!: 
 
 
Here’s another photo: 
 
I’m sorry for the poor quality lol, I don’t know how to crop screenshots on a laptop and I forgot to zoom in. I’ll take better screenshots, just not right now lol. 
 
Also sorry for the messy base, I’m working on it. And she moved over there, and i didnt want to move her back, soooooo… 
 
I hope you enjoyed my guide 🙂 if you did, please like it, maybe favorite it if you want to do that, and comment something. Try and give feedback, it is appreciated! I’m not a perfect human being by any means so my tiny pea brain could have messed some information up while typing it down, but i assure you that I’m 99% sure that my information is correct. 
 
Have a good day 😀 and remember: Beware of the red butt 
 

I hope you enjoy the Guide we share about Don’t Starve Together – Beefalo! Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them; if you think we forget to add or we should add more information, please let us know via commenting below! See you soon!