Manure is the fertilizer that keeps a base alive in Don’t Starve Together. You need it for farm soil nutrients, for restarting transplanted berry bushes and grass tufts, and for a handful of recipes that have nothing to do with food at all. It stacks to 20, never spoils, and every reliable source in the world is renewable, so the only real question is how fast you want to gather it.
Quick answer: Head to a Savanna herd and pick up the Manure piles Beefalo drop as they roam. For bulk, feed a Pig 4 Monster Meat and let the Werepig eat a dropped stack of food.
Beefalo herds: the steady manure supply
Beefalo are the default answer. They live in Savanna biomes, the dry, open grassland that reads as a yellow-orange patch on your map, and every adult and baby in the herd randomly drops manure while it wanders. Nothing needs to be fed, killed, or built first.
Open your map before you set out. The Savanna’s colour makes it easy to pick out against forest and rockyland, and once you have found one herd you can note the spot and come back to it for the rest of the run.
Walk the herd and click each pile to pick it up. Hovering shows the “Pick up Manure” prompt, so you can tell a fresh pile apart from the scenery. Keep your cursor honest here, because the attack prompt sits on the Beefalo themselves.
Beefalo are passive until provoked. Hit one by accident and the whole herd turns on you, which ends the collecting trip immediately.
The herd keeps producing while you are away, so a Savanna within walking distance of camp works as a permanent supply. Penning the herd tightens up the collection radius, though Beefalo can break out of a pen once they go into Heat.
Pigs: feed them to force manure
Beefalo drops are passive and slow. Pigs are the on-demand option, because they convert food into manure the moment they eat it.
Normal pigs
Give a Pig a flower petal, a vegetable, or a fruit and it drops one manure. Meat does not work for this — it tames the pig into a follower instead. A normal pig will also only accept one non-meat item every 15 seconds, so a full stack of light bulbs takes a very long time this way.
Werepigs (the bulk method)
A Werepig ignores the 15-second rule. It eats an entire pile of food item by item and drops manure for each one, which turns a single stack of cave light bulbs into a matching stack of manure in under a minute.
The moment the food runs out, the Werepig comes for you. Either be ready to fight it or outrun it — it can be kited away without much trouble if you are not geared for a fight.
Every other manure source in the game
| Source | How you get it | Yield |
|---|---|---|
| Beefalo | Periodically while roaming | Renewable, herd-wide |
| Koalefant / Winter Koalefant | Periodically while roaming | One animal at a time |
| Ewecus | Periodically | Occasional |
| Pig | Fed petals, fruit or veg | 1 per feed, 15s cooldown |
| Werepig | Eats a dropped stack | 1 per item eaten |
| Splumonkey | Thrown at you, then picked up | Varies; drops all held on death |
| Pig Torch | Hammered | 1 |
| Splumonkey Pod | Hammered | 2 |
Koalefants drop manure on the same timer as Beefalo, but only one spawns at a time, so it is a poor return for the walking involved unless you have already penned one. Splumonkeys are a side effect of fighting them: they hunt down fruit and vegetables on the ground to arm themselves, then throw manure at attackers, which costs you sanity and health but leaves a pickup on the floor.
Crafting manure as Wilson
Wilson can skip the animals entirely. With the Transmute Icky III skill unlocked in his skill tree, he can turn 6 Rot into one Manure, which gives spoiled food a second life and means a crowded ice box is quietly a fertilizer stockpile. No other character has this recipe.
What manure is worth once you have it
Used on Farm Soil Turf, one manure restores 8 Manure nutrients. Guano does the same job at 16 per use, so it is the stronger fertilizer if you have bats nearby — but guano cannot be substituted into manure’s crafting recipes. Manure also revives transplanted grass tufts and berry bushes, although a single rot is just as effective for that specific job.
It burns too, releasing a harmless gas cloud that exists purely as a joke. Logs are easier to gather, so treat this as an emergency option rather than a plan.
| Fire source | Burn time |
|---|---|
| Campfire | 45 seconds |
| Fire Pit | 90 seconds |
| Obsidian Fire Pit | 135 seconds |
Wormwood gets one extra perk: eating manure restores 2 health. Everyone else just carries it.
Recipes that need manure
| Recipe | Manure | Other materials |
|---|---|---|
| Horticulture, Abridged (Wickerbottom) | 5 | 5 Seeds, 2 Papyrus |
| Bucket-o-poop | 3 | 2 Bone Shards, 4 Logs |
| Mushroom Planter | 5 | 8 Rot, 2 Living Log |
| Fertilizzzer (Wurt) | 1 | 1 Mosquito Sack, 2 Nitre |
| Savanna Turf ×4 | 1 | Cut Grass, Terra Firma Tamper |
| Festive Tree Planter | 2 | Boards, Winter’s Feast only |
Walter’s Poop Pellets are made at a Science Machine from manure as well, giving his slingshot a cheap, renewable ammo type.
For most worlds the routine settles into the same shape. Mark the nearest Savanna, sweep the herd whenever you pass through, and keep a werepig run in reserve for the day you plow a fresh set of farm soil and need 40-odd piles at once. Since nothing in the chain is finite — Beefalo keep producing, pigs keep respawning, and Wilson can transmute leftovers — running out of fertilizer is a logistics problem, never a supply one.
