During your first week in Cozy Grove, you should have at least one pet bird. These spirit birds start off young and to enable them to grow older you must continue to feed them whenever they ask for food. Feeding your pet birds, and later pet deer, is an important way to get spirit bird essence and spirit deer essence. The younger and less happy your pets are, the less spirit essence they will produce. The older they are, the more happy spirit essence they’ll produce.

To make your pets happy you have to interact with them and read what their likes and dislikes are. Putting them next to objects that increase the fullness of their three hearts will allow them to produce more essence and eggs for you. Essence is used to craft either valuable furniture or valuable cooked goods so you’ll want plenty of it. Here’s how to keep both birds and deer happy and producing essence.

Step One: Figure Out What Their Thought Bubble Means

It can be hard to determine what it is your pets are asking for if you have yet to familiarize yourself with what most objects in the game look like. The spirit pets will almost always ask for cooked food rather than raw materials, so no matter what you have, you’ll have to then combine and craft raw ingredients into something else.

To cook basic goods, all you have to do is ask Flamey to burn something. To cook more complex meals, you must have unlocked the spirit bear Allison Fisher and must craft the food with her. The key to figuring out what basic food your animal friend may be asking for is by the type of bowl in the picture.

  • Burning any type of mushroom makes the finished product some dull colored food on a kebab or food on a stick Burning potatoes, turnips, and other root vegetables makes the finished product look like colored vegetables inside a blue container Burning any type of fruit makes the finished product colored food inside a glass, see-through bowl

Other common items your birds and deer may ask you for are bagels and fancy mixed greens. If you’re unsure it’s likely that, your pets are probably asking for cooked versions and the imps are probably asking for raw versions.

  • Bagels are crafted at Allison Fisher with two bags of toasted nut flour, one spirit bird essence, and five bowls of roasted root vegetables Toasted nut flour is obtained by burning walnuts at Flamey. Walnuts are found from walnut trees or by digging Fancy greens are what you get when you combine ten mixed greens together at Allison Fisher. Fancy greens are slightly darker than normal, raw mixed greens and deluxe greens are a third shade darker

Step Two: Gather Cooking Materials

To find mushrooms and root vegetables (turnips, potatoes) all you have to do is jump in leaf piles and dig any soft, digging spots around your map.

  • Remember that you don’t need to equip the shovel into your hand slot to dig, it’s automatic.

These resources will respawn every so often when you’ve cleared out a few, but gathering resources is limited, and respawning will stop if you’ve cleared out every respawn for the day.

Mixed greens are collected from large, spiky-looking bushes of vines. They are found everywhere and are the easiest to acquire because they drop a lot of mixed greens per bush. To collect fruit, you may find fruit trees randomly around the island ready for harvesting or you will have to start farming your own by buying fruit trees from Mr. Kit.

Step Three: Cook The Food And Wait For Your Mail

If your bird or deer is asking for a complex, baked good that you have to craft at Allison Fisher, you’ll have to wait for it to be mailed to you.

  • Before you craft these cooked food items, it should say in its description how long its delivery will take.

There will also be a short message at the very bottom of your screen informing you, once you’ve crafted it.

These items will usually only take an hour to arrive, so you can stop playing and come back later to feed your animals or continue with other tasks for the time being. After an hour, they should arrive at the mail-bear Patrice Furbac, who will have an exclamation point above their head to let you know there’s mail.

Step Four: Throw The Food On The Ground Or Interact With Your Animal

To actually feed your pets after collecting what’s needed, you can either throw the food on the ground in the same manner that you would use your fishing rod in, or you can interact with them.

  • When clicking your bird or deer, there will be a feeding option that will automatically place the food at its feet for it to eat.

Once your pet has eaten, they will be sparkling happy with a heart above their head. This means they’re ready to be harvested for spirit essence. Interact with the animal again to pet it and release the essence for collection.

If you decide to just throw the food at your pet you risk other animals running toward it and eating it first, which can become a problem because then you’ll have to re-make the food.