In Real Life, most breeds of domestic sheep need to be sheared at least once a year (usually in the spring), though some breeds with fast-growing wool need more than that. In video games, this is one of the Acceptable Breaks from Reality — a real sheep takes about six weeks, or a month and a half, to regrow its wool, but waiting that long would bore a lot of players. So in most games that have wool as a crafting resource, things are sped up and sheep are magically able to regrow their wool in a matter of minutes or hours, allowing players to have a renewable resource of the stuff. For comic effect (or convenience), the sheep will always stay completely bald until it's time for the wool to grow back, at which point it will instantly grow a full-length, luxuriously fluffy coat, ready for shearing. No half-fleeced stages necessary!
Sub-trope of Rapid Hair Growth. Sister trope to Constantly Lactating Cow. Compare Perplexing Pearl Production, another example of animals creating valuable products in an unrealistic way.
Examples:
Anime & Manga- Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense.: Maple gains the ability to create a protective wool “fluff” that renders her even more resistant to attacks, and she looks adorable.
Video Games
- Don't Starve: Beefalo regrow their wool in three in-game days, or 24 minutes real time.
- Fae Farm: Cottontails produce cotton and wollyhorns need to be sheared every day.
- FarmVille: Sheep gave wool every 30 minutes.
- Happy Street: The single sheep living on the mountain can be sheared once every hour.
- Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons: In most games of the series, sheep take three days to regrow their wool, provided they're happy and healthy. Alpaca and llamas can be sheared once a week.
- Hay Day: After being sheared and fed, sheep instantly get their wool back, but take a further 6 hours for it to grow long enough to be sheared.
- Minecraft: Sheep take about 2 minutes to regrow wool after shearing, provided there is grass around to eat.
- The Robin Hood time management games from Alawar Entertainment have rope as one of the needed resources to be collected during most levels. Sheep, when present, can be shorn roughly once every sixty seconds; the game conveniently skips past the need to actually transform the wool into rope.
- RuneScape: Sheep regrow their wool within a couple minutes after being sheared.
- In the Rune Factory series, Woolies aren't sheared, but leave balls of wool once a day (of varying sizes and quality, depending on the condition of the Wooly).
- The Sims 4: Llamas can be sheared every in-game day to get wool, while real llamas are usually sheared every year or two.
- Spiritfarer: Sheep can be sheared once an in-game day, every twenty minutes of real time, as long as you keep food in their stalls.
- Paprika the Alpaca from Them's Fightin' Herds uses her wool for her launcher attack and "Free T-shirt" command normal, but it regrows instantly as soon as the attack ends.
- Stardew Valley: Sheep can be sheared for wool as often as every day with certain abilities.
- Viva Piñata: Goobaas (sheep) regrow their wool whenever they eat a certain flower in the original game and Pocket Paradise.
- In the Warcraft III custom map "Northrend Bound", sheep produce wool with the click of a button when they're at full mana.
Websites
- Ask Fluffle Puff: While not a sheep, Fluffle Puff is a pony covered in thick, soft, pink fluff, which she can regrow super fast due to Rule of Funny. At the end of "Chrysmas Special", Chrysalis is staring at her to watch her hair regrow, only for it to regrow instantly offscreen when she blinks.
- SCP Foundation: Otis
is an anomalous sheep in the care of Wilson's Wildlife Solutions. His abilities include making everyone around him fall asleep when he gets scared and taking less than a week to grow his coat back when he's sheared.
