Hi, and thanks for playing! You only need to keep it in an inventory slot to attract animals.
Thanks for replying! What does it mean if an animal is attracted? Will that animal walk with me closely? Or simply just more animals would appear?
By the way, this game is fantastic and totally my type. I'm in 2 hours by now and still obsessed. I love the simpleness of it. Let me know if you are still working on this, because I do have a lot to talk about :) Thank you for bringing this game to us!
Any animals nearby will walk with you, yes. You can also use this to move animals between edges of maps.
Thank you so much for the comments, it's really appreciated. :D Yes, I am still working on this. I have an update coming soon (1.2.1) with some small additions and bug fixes.
EDIT: I was testing around and figured the Foodmix actually had a bug where animals would not follow properly. This will be fixed in the next patch, which should be available in a short time.