New Farmville Sheep Breeding Patterns

I am sure that many of you who enjoyed breeding sheep prior to Farmville's sterilization of illegal sheep are aware that breeding has become much more difficult.  Though Zynga has made several announcements with respect to changes, none has given Farmville players much hope when it comes to future breeding.  However, if you are having trouble getting anything but plain and white sheep, here are some tips in order to have better results.  

In Farmville's latest official statement indicated the following changes in Sheep Breeding:

1. It is no lo longer realistic to expect 80-100% pattern adoption when breeding.

2. Breeding a design with a non design sheep will give you a small chance of getting an offspring with that pattern.

3. Breeding a design with the same design will give you a greater chance of getting the design to breed.

Keeping these factors in mind, here are some of the observations that I made in my attempts to breed different designs:

Mixing Designs and Colors:

If you breed one design with a different design or one sheep with two colors that are completely different from the sheep you are breeding it with, you are most likely to get a plain color of sheep.  The color of sheep that that you will get has a high probability of being the base color of the first sheep that you select when breeding. 
Example:
base color black + base color purple = plain black

However, since getting plain sheep is getting quite old, the best thing to do is to avoid mixing designs and colors. Know also that you are more likely to get a plain sheep which is the base color of the first sheep picked if you breed a design sheep with a plain sheep or if the breed two sheep with the same base color.  Here are some combinations that will give you better results.

Same Design and Same Secondary color:

I found the best results when breeding two sheep that have the same secondary color and the same design.  If you are not sure about the secondary color, here is an example:
purple-secondary black-secondary black-secondary

So basically, the secondary color is the color of dots, stars, or belt or the outside color in the Camo sheep.  So when you breed Camo sheep, be sure to have two Camo sheep with the same secondary color.  If breeding the sheep above in the example, you want to breed it with another camo sheep with black as its secondary color but which has a different base color.  Here are the possible results:

1. Same Color and Design: When breeding same design/same secondary color, your greatest possibility will be getting a sheep that has the same colors as the second sheep that you selected.  So if you chose the green/black Camo Ewe first and then you chose a red/black Camo Ram, you have a good possibility of getting a red/black Camo sheep.  Though it's not always great to get the same exact color and design of sheep, this could be useful for sharing sheep with your neighbors.


2. Plain Sheep: The second most likely result from breeding the same design and secondary color is that you will get a plain color of sheep which will have the same base color as the second sheep chosen when breeding.  So if we are using the same example above, it would be green/black Camo + red/black Camo = Plain Red sheep.

3. Base Color Jumps to Secondary Color: Finally, the least likely result of pairing same design and same secondary color sheep is that you will get the base color of one sheep to come out as a secondary color in the resulting sheep.  Since this will give you more color options, this is the best result, but definitely the hardest to achieve.

Lamb Colors

Since you are not likely to know what your sheep is until you feed it, here is a clue to knowing ahead of time.  Knowing this will also help you decide if you want to keep a sheep or give it away.  If you already know it is the same type of sheep that you already have, you may prefer putting it up for adoption.  So, be aware that the color of the lamb will be the base color of the sheep once it grows up.  Though this does not tell you whether or the sheep will be plain or will have a design, you will still have a better idea of what to expect.

Finally, you should also be aware of a not so wonderful glitch that Zynga is currently investigating.  When breeding two Flashing sheep, you are most likely to get a plain white sheep.  The only time that I got something else was when breeding the rainbow Ram with a flashing sheep.  In this instance, I got only plain colors of sheep but no flashing colors.  So if you are eager to breed flashing sheep, you may want to avoid the frustration and wait until Zynga works out this problem.  

Though we would like to have more options when it comes to breeding, this is what we have presently.  Know also that you can apply the same breeding patterns to pigs since there is presently no difference between sheep and pig breeding.  Though this should eliminate some of the confusion when it comes to breeding, hopefully Zynga will make sheep and pig breeding easier in the future.