Wednesday, April 20, 2011

How to Breed Rare Calves in Farmville


The processes of breeding calves has gone through many changes since the time that Farmville first released the dairy barn for cows.  However, now that other breeding crazes such as sheep breeding have been introduced, the chances are very low that Farmville will make additional change to dairies and how to breed calves.  So here are some of the best methods you can use to breed rare calves. 
Calf Breeding Basics:
  1. You can only get one calf a day.  However, if you are able to get a bull for your English Farm, you can get two calves in a day.
  2. You can only have 5 coin bought dairies on each of your farms. 
  3. There are 10 calf links on each calf post from a dairy.
  4. If you happen to get an English calf, you can put it in your nursery barn and grow it up which will give you five English calves to share with your friends.
How to Breed a Specific Rare Calf:
  1. If you just got a new type of cow that you would like to breed, the best way to do this is to have more than one of this type of cow.  The reason you want more of that type of cow, is because Farmville often favors the type of cow that that has the greatest number in your dairy. 
  2. The second thing you need to do is to use a dairy that has only at a capacity of 20 cows.  The reason for this is because your chances of getting a calf are based on a ratio of numbers of cows to cow capacity.  So, if you have 4 cows in a 40 cow capacity dairy, you will have less chances of getting a calf than if you have 4 cows in a 20 cow capacity dairy. 
  3. The next thing you need to do is to place a lot of cows on your farm so they can be used as seeders.  Since calf breeding using seeders can never be 100%, you should assure that you are using seeder cows that are also rare types of cows.  These should be cow types that you would not mind getting the calf from in the event that the type of cow you are trying to breed is not selected.
  4. Once you have your empty 20 capacity dairy, at least two of the rare type of cow, and a lot of ready seeder cows on your farm, then you are ready to begin.  Using the hand moving tool, grab one of the rare types of cows and place it in your empty dairy.  Harvest.  If you do not get a calf, grab your second rare cow and place it in your dairy.  Place each of your target rare cows in the dairy and harvest before you start using the other seeder cows.
  5. If you did not get a calf with this first attempt, go ahead and grab a seeder cow and place it in the dairy with your 2-3+ rare calves and then harvest.  If you still do not get a calf, this time you will have to look inside the dairy and remove the seeder cow.  Keep using the seeders until you get a calf.  Hopefully FV will follow its most prevalent rule in cow selection and that is to select the cows that have the greatest number in your dairy and not the seeder.
Hands Off Approach to Breeding Rare Calves:
If the previous approach sounds like a lot of work, you are right.  It is not something that you will want to do every day. The first approach is nice to do when a new type of cow comes out that you want to breed right away.
  1. So in order to have a hands off approach to breeding rare calves, you need only to fill a dairy with as many rare calves as possible. Remember the capacity ration when doing this.  So if you have 15 rare cows, you should place them in a 20 cow capacity dairy.  This will give you better chances of getting a calf. 
  2. Once you get more rare calves you should expand your dairy and try to fill it to the next level.  The reason for expanding is that you have better chances of getting a calf every day if you have a full 40 capacity dairy than if you had a full 20 capacity dairy.
  3. When you have your dairy full of rare cows, then wait for it to be ready and harvest.  Be sure that this is the first dairy with a bull in it that you harvest for the day since that is the most likely dairy that will produce a calf. 
  4. If you do not get a calf on the first try, you can use your cow seeders to try again.  The good thing is that with fuller dairies, it is unlikely that you will have to try more than two or three times before getting a calf.  Furthermore, since your dairy only has rare cows in it, you are sure to get a rare calf.
So, if you follow these two methods you are sure to get at least one rare calf in a day and maybe more since you have the opportunity to get 4 rare calves every day.  You have two chances of breeding in your dairies on both your home and English farms.  Plus you have two chances of growing up a calf in your nursery and then sharing the calves with your friends.  So have fun with it.  Since you can only get one calf in a day from dairies, you will definitely be happy to get the calf you are trying for.

You may also be interested in:
Farmville Sheep Breeding Patterns
How to get Upcoming Trees from Mystery Seedlings
The Fastest, Easiest way to Level Up in Farmville 
Get Free Farm Cash from Farmville's Special Offers
Farmville Sheep Breeding: How to Get a Ram

7 comments:

  1. For breeding cows I put 39 in the dairy and keep 6 or 8 bulls outside. The animals outside seem to get to 100% faster (that just may be me thought). When my bulls are ready I drop one in each dairy that I would like to see a calf from.

    As it was stated early in your post, you can only get one calf a day per farm.

    My question is that some days I just get a collection item or two, no calves. So, is this method sound? Right now I have 4 dairy's full of chrome cows and I am not getting one calf a day. Any advice? Thanks for the post :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. mtwonshend: ty for your comments. Getting one calf a day is the minimum. However, sometimes you may be frustrated trying over and over and may not get one before your ready cows are used up. When I am trying for calves I may use 20 or more ready cows as seeders until I get a calf. I don't know if you have that many ready bulls on your farm that you are using. Another thing, is that I've never tried using bulls as seeders so I wonder how well that works. You might want to try removing all your cows, and only use the dairy that has the cows in it that you want to get a calf from. Use that dairy over and over with all your ready cows. Have a bull sitting in your dairy already instead of using bulls for seeders. You should have better luck doing it this way. 5-6 tries may not give you anything for the day.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Michael Townshend GMay 24, 2011 at 3:09 PM

    Great help! Thanks theed.

    I am going to go and pull out a bunch of cows to use as seeders and place one bull in the dairy I want to breed (probably will just place one in each dairy and delete the rest if this produces the calves I am looking for (I think that I would be nice to get rid of all the bulls I have and it is easy to get more (see next post)

    Your method is sound and I feel that I will have been able to make some improvements after following your advice.

    When I first do this I will report back here with the results.

    Just a couple questions to round out this discussion for me:
    1. Should I remove the breeding dairy and place a new one with no expansions?
    2. Are the following dairy contents OK per your breeding technique or should I keep it to a minimum (I would like to breed ANY of the cows listed, it does not matter which ones)
    A. 7 Hereford Cows
    B. 12 Highland Cows
    C. 6 Mohawk Cows
    D. 4 Chrome Cows
    E. 1 Black Welsh Cow (rare)
    Other than the black welsh cow, I am not using any other cows that I have only one of (I want to see the calf created by the Black Welsh Cow (not to mention it's rarity, the kind of thing I like to pass on to my neighbors)

    I got hold of a bunch of chrome cows a couple weeks ago and will use them as seeders. However I do not want to change the current dairy content with an over abundance of chrome cows) I think that the stocking ratio of the dairy is similar to that of the stable?

    If I was to replace dairy with the stock dairy from the market I will have only 19 spaces (one for bull), I would have to reduce those that I am breeding, which is OK, but is it necessary? (I understand the thought behind using this 20 cow dairy and the associated percentages, but with this many cows (31 + 1 Bull and 1 Seeder = 33 total. I can add more Chrome cows, but would prefer to keep their numbers equal to the others).
    So, if I keep the current dairy (40max) and using 33 cows in this breeding procedure( cows, bull and seeder), will my chances per at par with using the standard dairy from the marker?

    I guess that is a question that I can answer by breeding a cycle with the current set-uo then trading in the dairy for the standard one with no upgrades. However, I though that your insight would be valuable here and it might help anyone reading this thread.

    Thanks again, theerrd :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Here is some ancillary and some tips that are related to this discussion.

    I am going to post this comment with the link to my profile. While I always welcome new neighbors, I do ask a few basic things for them.
    1. I return All gifts and send them as much as I can. As a neighbor I expect the rest of my neighbors to do the same. Returning gifts is a fundamental aspect of being a responsible player and anyone that can't return gifts is of no help or use to me and I will remove anyone that can't return and send some of their own gifts.
    As a neighbor of mine you will be able to acquire a lot of desirable items and I do not tolerate anyone that only takes without reciprocal game play.

    So feel free to add me, just follow these very basic tasks and expect a long term relationship.


    2. Bulls. I got bulls a number of ways on the EC farm
    A. A month ago I emailed Zynga about the fact that there are no wandering bulls on EC and that it is not fair to withold the ability to breed the cows have on the EC.
    Their response was very surprising. They placed 4 bulls on my EC farm.

    B. Just after this email they introduced the ability to trade for bulls via a link to the left side of the screen and I got more bulls that way.

    C. Once that promotion was over I used the animal converter to produce the rest of my bulls (I have about 15 per farm now).
    http://farm.hackers.am/converter/
    There are others as well.

    English calf's are the ONLY calf's that, when bred, will produce a like kind of cow. So, other than decoration, there is no real reason to collect 100 calf's from this converter (there are some cool calf's available other than the chrome and Mohawk, like the Robot Calf. (some of the calf's from the converter cannot be placed in the nursery for some reason.

    I look forward to some new neighbors.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Michael, thank you. it seems you have a good understanding already of breeding for calves. Here is what I have found with respect to ratio. The closest to full that you have, the better. So if you have under 20 rare cows, you are best to stick with a 20 capactiy. However, you may have better chances of getting a calf quicker with a fuller (40) capacity dairy. However, you are also correct about numbers of each calf. If you want equal chances for each cow, keeping to an equal number of cow for each type is best. I have my home farm set up so that I have 1-3 of each type. If I am trying for a certain type, I have an increased number of that type. As for seeders, use something you would not mind getting. This is why I don't like regular cow seeders. With the example you gave, you will get highland cows most of the time since you have 12 which is much more than the others. You may have more equal chances by using a 20 capacity dairy and equaling out the numbers. Then you can use the other rare cows as additional seeders. Also, you will have better chances this way rather than using a less full 40 capacity dairy. hope that helps.

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  6. Thanks, Theerd. That was a big help. I did have the dairy on my main farm that had close to 20 in a 40 capacity farm, so I have deleted that and filled up the stock dairy.

    I did get a shot at using ~40 seeders (chrome) and I was able to get 2 foals from that, however, I swapped out the dairy described above in the middle of the process (got one of the two from that). I feel that your thoughts regarding the stock dairy are right on and I am going go with that. The only difference is I am gonna make 2 stock dairy's to breed with, I have enough cows that I would like to see calves from. This scenario will include one dairy with the rarest of the cows I have and the other will use the balance.

    Hoping that this new setup improves my dismal results, will know more in 4-6 hours when I can test this out.

    Again, thanks, Theerd :)

    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete