FarmVille Wildlife Habitat: Everything you need to know

A fairly large new feature has launched in FarmVille this evening in the form of a Wildlife Habitat. Using these new buildings (which you can own multiples of), you'll be able to store 20 "wild" animals each. Sure, animal storage is great, but you won't be able to unlock this new storage without working for it. You'll be given the base to your first Wildlife Habitat for free the next time you log into the game, and from there, will be required to collect 30 building ingredients to finish it off:

    10 Fence Posts
    10 Shrubs
    10 Grazing Grass


You'll have a few methods available for finding these items. You can purchase them for Farm Cash, send them as free gifts with the hope that friends will send them back, or send requests to your friends to have them help you out from the start. As for Special Delivery Boxes, I personally opened up over 60 boxes, and didn't receive one ingredient, so you might save those for the time being.

Once the Wildlife Habitat is finished, you will be given a Porcupine for free, and will have a building that can store animals like Minks, Beavers, Dall Sheep, Frogs and more. There are currently 12 pages (six animals each page) of animals available to store in Wildlife Habitats (again, you can own more than one, since that's more than the current limit of 20 animals per habitat), and you'll be able to see all of the animals by looking inside your Wildlife Habitat. Animals that you have inside will show up in their bright colors, while animals that aren't inside but technically can be stored are in a shadowed form.

Aside from storage, the main purpose of the Wildlife Habitat is in offering you a chance to earn free Mystery Babies each time you harvest it. The Wildlife Habitat technically replaces the Animal Trough on your land, so this breeding feature will now make use of all of your excess Animal Feed (thereby making it relevant again). Note: Though you're losing the Animal Trough, you are given a free Reindeer and six units of Animal Feed as a consolation from Zynga for the mandatory removal.

Each time your Wildlife Habitat is ready to harvest, you'll be able to click on it to harvest all animals inside. The more animals you have inside, the greater chance you have of making a baby. You only need one of each animal to breed, rather than pairs, but only some of the possibly stored animals can be bred at this time (we've been told that more breeding options will become available in the future). If you're lucky enough to receive a Mystery Baby, you'll be able to place it on your land similar to placing a Mystery Seedling or baby Piglet or Lamb. You'll then use Animal Feed to help it grow. The color of the baby's pouch signals the Baby's rarity, with pink meaning you've received a rare animal, and blue (apparently the color is now green) signifying a common animal.


Simply feed enough Animal Feed to each baby, and it will grow into an adult animal that can be placed inside the Wildlife Habitat to master and continue the cycle. We've been told that this Wildlife Habitat is just the first of six new animal breeding buildings that are coming soon, so make sure to stock up on plenty of these before we're hit with another building and feature!

Check out the rest of our FarmVille Cheats & Tips right here.

What do you think of the new Wildlife Habitat? Are you sad to see the Animal Feed Trough leave the game? Will you try to master and breed each of these wild animals?

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.