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.

Latest Announcement by Farmville: Plain Sheep and Pigs are Not a Glitch

In an announcement on the Farmville forum, the Farmvile Community Manager stated that the recent high occurrence of plain sheep is not a glitch and that this is what Farmville players should expect now from breeding sheep and pigs.  Though it was speculated that the high number of plain white sheep may be a glitch, the community manager specified that the 80-100% certainty of pattern adoption which was the norm when sheep breeding was launched was actually a glitch. 

The announcement went on to assure that if you are disappointed in the low rate of patterns being passed on in breeding, you can request a refund of farm cash for the purchase of rams or ewes and that Farmville would remove these sheep from your farms.

Though the option of refunding farm cash for bum sheep is a generous offer by Farmville, without the prospect of ever having sheep that produce, the idea of sheep breeding has lost its appeal.  Many of the responses to this announcement were that of disgust and disappointment.  Many players pledged they would return their rams and never waste farm cash on a sheep or pig again.  Players also expressed disgust with Zynga in general for how they handled the whole sheep breeding issue and vowed that Zynga would never get any of their money again. 

So, though I was waiting patiently for Zynga to work out the bugs with sheep and pig breeding so that it would once again be exciting, I regret to bring you this news since it appears that this will not happen.  So if you are someone who has no problem collecting bottles, you may enjoy trying over and over and over again until you finally get a patterned sheep or pig to breed the pattern.  However, if you are like me and probably like many other players who can never get enough bottles, then breeding sheep and pigs may just be too much work for so little possibility of a favorable outcome.  So, though I continue to hope Zynga will bring the excitement back to sheep and pig breeding, it appears that they are adamant about their decision and do not seem to care about what the players really want.

Link to Forum Announcement

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The Farmville Addiction Test

If you go directly to tend to your farms first thing in the morning, spend money on farm cash, or play Farmville all day, there is a good chance that you are addicted to Farmville.  If you suspect that you are addicted and want to know whether you really are, I challenge you to take this test.

Farmville Addiction Test:
The test is simple.  All you need to do is "stop playing Farmville for one whole week."  So, do you think you can do it? If you want to try, the only rule is that you cannot make any other changes to your life during this week.  If you are used to getting onto Facebook everyday, you must continue to do this.  If you have daily access to the Internet, you cannot take this test while on vacation or when you are without Internet access.  Additionally, you cannot delete or block the Farmville application nor can you change any settings on Facebook to make it easier for you to avoid the temptation of playing.  The reason for this is that you must be able to hear about and read updates on new things in Farmville without being tempted to jump back into the game.

Test Results:
The test results are also very simple.  If you have trouble getting through the week and end up playing first thing after the week ends, you are still most likely addicted but to a lesser degree since you were able to get through the whole week without touching the application.  If you break down at any time during this week, even if it is just to accept or send gift requests, then you are most certainly a Farmville Addict.  Though many people know they are addicted and have no intentions of quitting, this may not seem like a problem.  However, if you start to feel like your Farmville addiction is negatively effecting your health, finances or relationships, then you should definitely consider removing the addiction.  Fortunately, many people play Farmville without being addicted, so removing the addiction does not have to mean removing the game.  However, if you are a true addict, I guarantee that you will feel better about playing if you know that you can take it or leave it.

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Farmville Strategy: How to Get English Cows From Your Nursery

As you may have already heard, you are able to place an English calf in your Nursery and have it grow into an English Cow.  Though you can do this and get an English cow from time to time, there is a method you can use to get many English cows every day. Here are the steps:

1. The first thing you should be aware of is that your nursery may give you things other than what you have in your nursery if you have had it for a while and harvested it with many types of babies.  So if you try this method and get something other than an English cow, this may mean that you need to build a new nursery.  So if you have to rebuild, make sure you keep your nursery at 20 capacity and no more and do not harvest it with anything but English calves.
2. The next step is to place one English calf in your nursery and the rest of your calves outside of your nursery.  Once your nursery is ready, harvest.  If you get an English cow, great.  If not, remove the calf and place it on your farm.  Then pick up a ready English calf with the hand moving feature and place it in your nursery.  Your nursery will be ready once again.  Harvest.  If you still get nothing.  Do the same steps again but this time, place the ready calf in and then place another calf to give you a total of two, then harvest.  Keep alternating the number of calves that you put in from one to two or three.  This gives you better chances of getting a Cow. 
3. Once you get an English cow, you can continue to try for cows until you run out of English calves; it is up to you.  Just know that with each English cow, you will loose an English calf that will grow up.

So, now that you understand this, you may have the problem of not having enough English calves.  This is an issue that I ran into so here are some things you can do to get more calves.

1. Find a handful of neighbor who have English cows and calves and who are interested in doing a calf swap with you.  So whenever you get an English calf either from your dairy or nursery, you will agree to send that friend the link.  Then whenever they get English calves from their nursery or dairy, they will do the same. 
2. I believe that nursery calves have 5 links all together and dairy calves have 10 links.  So a good number may be 3-5 friends. 
3. How to share links: The best way to share a link is to send it through chat if you see them on line. This may not always be possible so you can also send the link in a message or make it viewable only to the neighbors you share calves with.  If you have additional links after you share with your select neighbors, you can use a link shortener such as bit.ly to shorten your link and re-post to Facebook.
4. If your friends have English calves to share but are interested in receiving something different, then send them eggs or whatever they are looking for in exchange.  Keep doing this until you have a good number of calves or for as long as you are interested in making English cows.

By using these methods you should always have enough calves to use in order to grow up multiple English Cows.  Plus, once you get a lot of English cows you should have no problem getting them to breed in your dairies.  Farmville doesn't release new types of cows and horses to grow up in your nursery too often. However, when they do, remember that you can use this same technique to produce plenty of the new type of cow or horse.  So have fun with this one until the next new release. :) 

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