FarmVille Sheep Pen Guide at English Countryside

The English Countryside is currently only available to a randomly selected group of users as we are beginning a slow release of this feature. We will announce when this update is live to 100% of users in the near future. 

Welcome to the brave new world of sheep breeding! With the Sheep Pen you can begin to breed ewes and rams to produce some startling new offspring--the likes of which have never been seen before in FarmVille.

The breeding possibilities are nearly limitless, so what are you waiting for? Let's get started!

Getting Your Sheep Pen

Currently you can only get a Sheep Pen if you’re on your English Countryside farm. You’re first introduced to the Sheep Pen with the Et Tu, Brutus? quest, though you can purchase the Sheep Pen at any time from the Market (it is listed in Buildings, for 5,000 coins) if you’re on your English farm. You can only have one Sheep Pen on your farm at any one time.

The Sheep Pen is a multi-level constructible building where each level requires more building parts to complete it:

• Level 1 – 30 parts total: 10 Wooden Boards, 10 Nails and 10 Bricks – includes 1 stall, sheep capacity: 20
• Level 2 – 45 parts total: 15 Wooden Boards, 15 Nails and 15 Bricks – includes 2 stalls, sheep capacity: 30
• Level 3 – 60 parts total: 20 Wooden Boards, 20 Nails and 20 Bricks – includes 3 stalls, sheep capacity: 40
• Like many constructible building parts, you can acquire these items by:
• Asking your neighbors for these parts by posting a help request to your feed (click on the “Ask For Part” button for each type of part).
• Give parts to your neighbors via the Free Gifts page or the “Send Gifts” button.
• Acquire individual parts by spending Farm Cash (click on the “Buy” button for that particular part). Each part is 1 Farm Cash.
• Acquire all needed parts for the building by spending Farm Cash (click on the “Complete Now” button to purchase parts for the rest of the building). The Cost is X Farm Cash, where X is the amount of parts left needed to finish the building.
• Potentially through the use of Special Delivery Boxes.
• Using individual parts already available in your Gift Box.

As you complete each level of the Sheep Pen it becomes bigger and grander visually (sheep not included):

Once you get the first level of the Sheep Pen constructed, you’ll be presented with the Sheep Pen window:

You will see up to three sheep in the Sheep Pen—these are the sheep that you last put into the Pen.

Now it’s time to breed!

Breeding Sheep

Breeding works by pairing together a ram and a ewe. The result will hopefully be a baby lamb, which once fully grown will take on some of the characteristics of its parents, such as colors, patterns, etc. There will more than likely be somewhat of a variation of the colors, depending on the colors the parents possess. Lambs may inherit patterns and other traits from their parents as well.

Right now your Sheep Pen is empty, so first move some sheep into it (note: not all types of ewes or rams can be put into the Sheep Pen, and specialized shapes like the Babydoll Sheep are not reproducible). If you completed the Et Tu, Brutus? quest you would have already received Brutus the Ram, a two-tone purplish ram. You can acquire rams by other means, including purchase through the Market.

For this example, we’ve moved Brutus, a Babydoll Sheep, a Brown Sheep, a Clover Sheep and 3 White Sheep into the Sheep Pen:

Let’s select the sheep we want to breed with—the Brown Sheep should be a good mix. If you click on it you’ll see you have the option to Breed it, or Remove it from the Sheep Pen (click on the X to close this pop-up).

After clicking on Breed, the ewes will turn transparent and the rams will remain in full color, so you’ll know exactly what rams you can breed with.

Selecting Brutus will give me the same options (Breed/Remove) as above, so just select Breed again. Now you’ll see the breeding display:

Breeding a new lamb is a 24 hour process and carries (by default) a 50% success rate, meaning if you’re not successful you have to start all over again. You can improve your chance of success (while decreasing the amount of time it takes to breed) by using Love Potions. You can acquire Love Potions by:

• Buying them via the Buy Potions button in the Sheep Pen window at a cost of 5 Farm Cash for 5 Love Potions.
• Asking your neighbors for Love Potions via the Ask for Potions button in the Sheep Pen window.

Here’s the impact of using Love Potions:

• No Love Potions used: 50% success rate, breed time: 24 hours
• 1 Love Potion used: 60% success rate, breed time: 12 hours
• 2 Love Potions used: 70% success rate, breed time: 6 hours
• 3 Love Potions used: 80% success rate, breed time: 3 hours
• 4 Love Potions used: 90% success rate, breed time: 1 hour
• 5 Love Potions used: 100% success rate, breed time: instant

You can use the up and down arrows to choose how many Love Potions you want to spend. If you don’t have enough, you’ll be prompted to buy more. When you’re satisfied with your chances, click on Breed (or Cancel if you don’t want to try breeding at this time). You may have to wait a few seconds…

So now the ram and ewe are, um, doing their thing:

You’ll see the stall at the upper left is occupied and their places in the Sheep Pen pasture are replaced with helpful signs. If there’s a timer, a clock in the stall will show how much time is left to go. If they’re done (or you used instant breeding), the Ready! button will show up over the stall. Click on it.

With any luck, you’ve bred a new lamb! You can choose to name your lamb (choose anything within the Terms of Service), choose to Give it Away (this will make a post to your feed) or you can keep it. At this moment, you still don’t know how the lamb will turn out—you’ll need to grow it up. Once you click on “Keep Lamb” you’ll get the option to place it on your farm.

Click anywhere on your farm to place it. You can click on the lamb at any time to get a menu of options:

A lamb can be fully grown using 10 Baby Bottles. You can acquire or give Baby Bottles by:

• Asking your neighbors directly by clicking on “Ask for Bottles”
• Purchasing Bottles in the Market for 1 Farm Cash each
• Acquire all the needed Bottles by spending Farm Cash (click on the “Complete Now” button to purchase the remaining Bottles). The Cost is X Farm Cash, where X is the number of Bottles needed to grow the Lamb.
• Gifting the bottles via the Free Gifts page.

Also note you can change the name of the lamb at any time by choosing Change Name (even after the lamb is fully grown). Selecting Feed Bottles will give a Bottle to the lamb. Once you’ve applied 10 Bottles the lamb will now grow up into a full ram or sheep:

And you’ll get this pop-up asking you to celebrate by sharing this exact type of sheep with your friends via feed post:

As noted above, sheep breeding can be a somewhat random process, based on the colors and patterns of the ram and ewe used. Each color a parent possesses has a certain color range to it that can be applied to the lamb in question, so you never really know what you’re getting exactly. In this example of using Brutus and a Brown sheep, these varieties were produced:

So as you progress in breeding different sheep types, the chances of producing more color variations increases dramatically.

Other Sheep Pen Notes

Sheep Pens can also be expanded. Click on the Expansion button in the Sheep Pen window to start the expansion process. Each expansion increases the sheep capacity by 10, while adding an extra breeding stall to the Pen (this will let you breed another lamb simultaneously using a different ram and ewe combination).

If you don’t have any handy ewes or rams to work with, you can buy some specific English Countryside ones in the Market. You can find them in the Animals category.

You’ll notice a button for the Family Tree. It’s not active yet, but soon we’ll be adding a fun breeding mini-game for Sheep Pens so stay tuned!

Source: FarmVille Forums