FarmVille LE English Countryside Animals: King Horse, Robin Duck, Pastel Green Ewe & More

A whopping five new animals were introduced to FarmVille this evening, with four of these being available to purchase in the store. Technically, all four of these animals are available to purchase for both your English Countryside farmbut only two can be purchased for the Home Farm. Why? Simple: two of these animals are Ewes, which are currently locked to the Sheep-Breeding centric English Countryside.

To be specific, the King Horse and the Robin Duck are available for both of your farms, at a price of 26 Farm Cash for the horse and 16 Farm Cash for the Duck. If you'd rather expand your rainbow of multi-colored sheep, you can purchase the Pastel Green Ewe or the Pastel Purple Ewe for 20 Farm Cash each instead. Interestingly, even if you choose to purchase the sheep, which cost more than the Robin Duck, you'll only receive a laughable 5 experience points for your purchase. Perhaps this is because Zynga knows that users have more incentive to purchase these Ewes either way, but it's still something to keep in mind if you're looking to quickly level up.


Remember, you can also breed your King Horse in your Horse Stable to receive a King Horse Foal to share with your friends (this little fella is so cute, it makes us wish all the more than Horse breeders could keep their foals, but alas...). These animals (foal excluded) will be available in the game's store for the next two weeks.

Which of these animals is your favorite? Have you already accumulated enough colors of sheep that you'll pass on these, or would you love to add these to your collection?

FarmVille: Sheep and Pig Mastery now available

If you've been stocking up on pigs and sheep in FarmVille with the knowledge (or even just hope) that the FarmVille team would launch pig and sheep mastery in the game, your wait is over. Now, if you're wondering how exactly this will work with the literally thousands of possibilities for different kinds of pigs and sheep to be bred in the game, let me calm your fears: this doesn't result in the addition of an equal number of mastery signs; rather, the system is pretty straightforward, once you get past the "rules."

Basically, there are two sets of both sheep and pigs that determine which kind of mastery sign you'll earn. In Sheep Breeding, for an example, if the animal is specifically labeled as a Ram or Ewe, it's considered a "Sheep Pen Ram" or "Sheep Pen Ewe," which makes sense. All Sheep Pen Rams and Sheep Pen Ewes are combined into those two categories and work cumulatively towards a pair of mastery signs. That is, if you have a a purple Ewe on one farm and a pink or yellow Ewe on another farm (or even those with patterns), when harvesting them, they'll all be treated equally, working towards the same mastery sign.

This entire process is replicated when it comes to pigs. If it's a Boar or Sow, it works towards cumulative breeding pig mastery signs. On the other hand, if the animal is a basic pig or basic sheep that can be purchased from the store and doesn't immediately relate to breeding (some examples being a Party Pig, Grape Sheep, Polka Dots Sheep and so on), these do have their own individual signs, giving you plenty of additional signs to work towards.

As you might have guessed, the amount of mastery points required for these cumulative breeding signs are fairly substantial. In the case of pigs, the Pig Pen Boar sign's first star comes at 467 harvests, while the Pig Pen Sow's first star is earned after 588 harvests. For sheep, the Ewe sign's first star is earned at 840 harvests, while the first Ram star is acquired at 560 harvests.

Keep in mind, while pig and sheep mastery is fairly exciting, we still haven't seen the launch of Calf and Foal mastery in the game. That too is "coming soon," and we'll make sure to let you know when it launches in full.

Will you breed more sheep and pigs just to earn these new mastery signs? Will you purchase additional sheep or pigs from the store? Sound off in the comments.