What are the best sizes when it come to building pastures in Banished?

There are a lot of fun city-building video games out there, old and new, some better than others. Today, the game in question is Banished, released in 2014 by Shining Rock Software. This game is all about building your own society from scratch, developing their agriculture and economy, expanding the borders of your village, which will slowly turn into a town and then into a city. The task is not as easy as it may appear, since you will have to juggle a lot of knives at the same time. 

So let me make it easier for you and give you some tips on pasture building, and more specifically, how big you want your pastures to be.

Why is pasture size important?

Yes, why is it important? Can’t I just build it as big as possible and be done with it? After all, the bigger the better, is it not?

Well, no, you can’t. And no, it isn’t. At least not in this case.

The pasture size is important because it will determine the success of your venture, or at least a big part of your agriculture. Make your pastures too small and they will hardly bring any food and other resources. Make them too big and you’ll wait forever for any meat to appear in your storage barns. 

While it is true that bigger pastures fit more animals, which ultimately means more animal products, building pastures that are too big has its own disadvantages that can hurt your city in the most painful ways and in the worst possible timing. 

That’s why it’s so important to choose the size of your pasture wisely based on which type of animal it’s for, how early in the game you’re building it, and how badly you need the resources that you intend this pasture to give you. So what are the top 5 best pasture sizes? Let’s find out!

5. 10x10 Pasture

Tiny pastures for tiny animals.

This is a small, easy-to-build pasture, with both these qualities proving very useful when you have little time, few resources, and an urgent need for animal products. You’ll need 36 logs to build a pasture like that, a very non-demanding number. All things considered, this pasture is your go-to option at the very beginning of the game, or when you have the livestock that you urgently need to put in a pasture to get the products associated with it.

That said, it’s important to notice that a pasture of this size is best to be used only for poultry, i.e. chickens, ducks, or leghorns. It makes little sense to use it for cows or bison or even pigs - it won’t fit many of them. As a result, you may not even have enough animals in your first 10x10 pasture to use later to split the animals and let half of them go into another pasture. Really, you’ll do better with 20 chickens than you will with 5 bison. 

What is great about this pasture size

• It’s quick and easy to build.
• Ideal for the very first years of a new game, when resources are still scarce.
• Ideal for when you urgently need to increase incoming resources.
• Recommended only for poultry (chickens, leghorns, or ducks); other types of livestock will bring little use in such a small enclosure.
• It will start bringing food soon after it’s built since the number of animals in it will reach the allowed maximum quickly.

4. 10x15 Pasture

Bigger pastures, but still the same tiny animals.

It’s like the 10x10 pasture, really, but even a minor change can make a lot of difference when it comes to Banished. With only 46 logs required, it’s also quite easy to build and it won’t take a toll on your reserve of building materials. Also useful in tough situations of shortage or at the beginning of a game, this pasture will ultimately bring you more resources than a 10x10 would.

I would still not use it for any type of livestock other than poultry, so if you have chickens, leghorns, or ducks available, make the best of these animals and use the chance to build a 15x15 pasture.

What is great about this pasture size

• Quick and easy to build; it will take only slightly more time to build this pasture than a 10x10 one.
• Proves useful for poultry, whereas not recommended for bigger animals.
• Will start bringing in animal products soon after it’s built.
• This pasture can definitely be used for splitting the livestock and using half of it for another, new pasture.
• In the long run, it will provide you with more animal products than a 10x10 pasture would.

3. 15x15 Pasture

Bigger animals need more space to live and breed comfortably.

While the 15x15 pasture is only 5 square meters bigger than the 10x15 one, it makes a significant enough difference for you to be able to place bigger animals in it (which proves my point about minor changes making a big difference in the game).

Yes, finally, you can start placing pigs, sheep, deer, and llamas in your pastures (if you’re playing without mods, you won’t have any of these animals but sheep). All four will give you meat, but llamas and sheep will provide you with wool as well. The pastures won’t start giving you meat until the number of animals reaches the maximum allowed in a pasture, but they will give you wool even if you have 10 llamas in a pasture that allows there to be 20.

What is great about this pasture size

• It’s a natural progression from smaller pastures to bigger ones, inevitable as you progress in your game.
• Big enough to shelter animals bigger than poultry: pigs, sheep, and llamas will all do good there and provide you with a sufficient amount of animal goods.
• With bigger animals in your pastures, you will begin to get wool from sheep and llamas. Wool can be used for creating clothing or for trade.
• Although bigger than the two pastures mentioned previously, it can still shelter ducks, leghorns, and chickens. You’ll have a ton of them, so make sure to assign 2 herdsmen at least to look after your birds!

2. 20x20 Pasture

Give your cows, bison, and horses plenty of space to roam with these huge pastures!

This is my personal favorite pasture size regardless of what type of livestock I plan to place there. Yes, that’s right, it works great for the biggest animals in the game, such as cows, horses, and bison. Your 20x20 pastures will be able to fit so many cows and bison that it will be plenty for a steady income of meat and milk and for splitting the livestock between pastures.

Needless to say, it’ll fit even more of smaller animals than any previously mentioned pasture would, so I recommend using 2 herdsmen for any type of livestock smaller than a pig.

What is great about this pasture size

• It brings bigger animals and therefore completes the list of all your livestock types. Isn’t that a satisfying feeling?
• It will bring you large amounts of animal products all year long. Meat, leather, milk, wool - you name it.
• It will be able to spare more animals for a newly build pasture with the same animal type than a smaller pasture would. 
• Although it’s more demanding in materials needed to build the pasture, it will also clear a bigger area needed to build it. In other words, by building the pasture, you’ll gather more logs than you’ll spend on building it. It’s a win-win!

1. 25x25 Pasture

Make space for the biggest pastures to give your animals the freedom of movement.

The biggest of all the pastures recommended in this article, this enclosure will take a while to be built, so perhaps it’s better to make it a priority and throw all your laborers and as many builders as possible at it. If you have previously cleared the area where you want your pasture to be, it’ll save you some time on building it. Otherwise, you’ll have to muster all your patience while waiting for the laborers to remove all the resources from the ground.

Like the pasture mentioned above, the 25x25 one is ideal for large livestock, but you can use it for smaller animals as well. Nore that it’s best to assign at least 2 herdsmen to care for your pigs, deer, sheep, or llamas, and as many as 3 herdsmen to look after chickens or other poultry. Any fewer workers than that won’t be able to keep up with the income of eggs, meat, or wool produced by smaller animals in such a big pasture. Remember, someone has to actually take all those products to storage barns before your citizens can use them.

What is great about this pasture size

• It will bring you massive amounts of meat, wool, leather, and eggs, which makes it a very useful addition to your agriculture system.
• The most ideal pasture for bison, the largest type of livestock available in Banished. With a pasture like this, you’ll have more bison meat than ever before!
• Just imagine how full of resources your stock piles will be after you’ve cleared an area for such a large enclosure. You will basically use the same logs you’ve just collected to build the pasture. It’s almost as if you were building it for free!
• Splitting the livestock in a 25x25 pasture will allow you to put so many animals in a newly built pasture that I’m sure they’ll hit the maximum very soon. You’ll never have to buy animals from merchants again.

Remember that there are other factors that will determine the success of your pastures:

• Equip all your workers with the best, most long-lasting tools you can.
• Try to keep a few residential houses and storage barns as close to your pastures as possible to reduce the time your workers spend taking the animal products to the storage and going home to eat and rest.
• Keep your citizens happy! Unhappy citizens are more likely to idle, which will reduce the income of food.

Build, expand, breed your animals, and become an overseer of the greatest civilization!

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