Thanks that is really good advice. Thanks. Hence all my neighbors' hungry animals. They're just keeping them until they need them, and feeding them when they want to receive the collectables from them. When I first started playing, I thought I had to harvest all the tress in my orchard at least once a day. And I've been getting all obsessive about making sure all my animals get fed before I go to bed at night!

Crops usually start to wither at twice the time they take to grow, so if peanuts take 4 days they will wither at 8 days, tomatoes take 15 minutes and will wither starting at 30 minutes.  Trees and animals don't have any such rules, you can tend them or not, but the more you tend items the more collectabels you get for use in missions and to turn in for items some of which are very useful, and some not lol.  We need fully grown animals to sell for lots of missions so keeping a bunch around is very helpful.   You can prevent your chicks getting eaten by growing no more then 9 at a time, the coyotes will eat 10% of your growing chicks each time and under 9 they will not eat any.  Of course adult chickens must be in the chicken coops in order to be safe if you have over 9 of them.  I am not sure what you mean about feeding animal up to 3 times after they become adults,  I keep adult animals around so I have them to tend for missions or to sell for missions,  usually between 300-500 of each are in my livestock pens and big barn, you may not be that far yet to have these buildings.