FarmVille Ducklings: Everything you need to know

After many promises and a little bit of impatient waiting (ok, a lot of impatient waiting), FarmVille farmers are now being treated to the release of ducklings in the game. As promised by Zynga at the release of the Duck Pond, these ducklings will be available to receive when harvesting your Duck Pond, in a similar manner to finding Mystery Eggs when harvesting your Chicken Coop. The special thing here is that these ducklings will grow up, and they'll grow into adult forums of all new kinds of ducks.

To put this all into perspective, when you harvest your Duck Pond, you have a chance of finding a duckling. As of right now, it appears that only brown and yellow ducklings have been released into circulation, and you won't be able to see the rest of the duckling feature until you actually receive a Duckling on your farm. Once you do, though, you'll need to go about raising your duckling, to see what kind of mature duck it will grow into.

You'll need the help of your friends to grow these ducklings, so meet us behind the break to see how you can help your friends (and help yourself) earn some of these exclusive new ducks. Just as when finding a Mystery Egg in your Chicken Coop, you'll only find a duckling at random, and aren't guaranteed to receive one each and every time you harvest from your Duck Pond. Once you do receive a duckling however, you'll be able to post a news item to your feed, sharing a duckling with your friends. You also keep one for yourself.

As of this writing, in order to grow the duckling, you must keep it out of your Duck Pond. That is, place it outside the Duck Pond, on the regular ground, until you have a chance to help it grow. You'll then be told that you need to ask seven neighbors (that is, seven different players) to help you take care of your duckling. You'll need to click on the "Ask for Help" button inside the duckling window that appears for each duckling, which will allow you to send individual gift requests to your friends, asking them for help in growing your duckling. You'll have six days to get the help you need, and once you gain all the help you require, you'll actually be able to choose which kind of duck you want that particular duckling to turn into as an adult.

There are different kinds of adult ducks, based on the kind of duckling you started out with. That is, brown ducklings can grow into a different variety of adult ducks than yellow ducklings can. While those are the only two varieties of ducklings available as of right now, it's presumable that if and when more ducklings are added to the game, new adult versions would be added as well.

Once you finish growing your duckling into an adult, you'll be able to share another prize with your friends, and specifically the neighbors that helped you grow your duckling into an adult in the first place. A general news post shares a duckling with your neighbors, while an individual wall post can be made on the particular helpers' walls, giving them a reward that is apparently specific to the type of duck you chose.

There is already a very active forum thread on the official FarmVille forums, discussing the feature and the kinds of rewards you can win, and we'll be sure to update you when more news about this feature launches. Remember, you're not guaranteed to receive a duckling upon harvesting your Duck Pond, but don't lose faith - we're sure you'll get one in time!

FarmVille Duckling Prizes: Everything you need to know

While we've already given you a complete run-down on how to receive the new ducklings that have been released in FarmVille this evening, we've also compiled the complete list of prizes that you can receive from each kind of duckling. As we told you before, you have a chance of finding either a brown or a yellow duckling when harvesting your Duck Pond, and depending on which kind of duckling you receive, the adult ducks that it can grow into will be different.

In both cases, you'll be able to choose the kind of duck you want your duckling to grow into (there are seven options to choose from, and brown and yellow ducklings do share a few prizes), but there's a catch - depending on how long it takes you to grow your duckling into an adult, you'll have either more or less of these seven ducks to choose from when finished. That is, the longer it takes you to raise your ducklings (that longer it takes you to ask seven friends for help), the less adult ducks you can choose from, and vice versa.

Finish raising the duck in less than 24 hours, and you'll receive a choice of all seven ducks for that duckling. Raise the duckling in a time between 5 and 6 days, however, and you'll only have a single duck to choose from.

To see the complete list of prize ducks available for each color of duckling, meet us behind the break.
If you are growing a Yellow Duckling into an adult, you'll have the following ducks to choose from (note: most of these have been previewed in a FarmVille Sneak Peek here in the past, so they will likely look familiar):

Indian Runner Duck
Cayuga Duck
Goldeneye Duck
Red-Billed Duck
Scoter Duck
Peking Duck
Ugly Duckling

If you are growing a Brown Duckling into an adult, you'll have these ducks available as prizes (note that some of these are like-prizes from growing the Yellow Duckling):

Black Swan
Wood Duck
Muscovy Duck
Indian Runner Duck
Cayuga Duck
Goldeneye Duck
Red-Billed Duck

As there are different time limits required for each of these duck prizes, your best bet would be to grow each duckling you find as quickly as you possibly can, so as to ensure that you'll have the full selection of seven ducks to choose from when it comes time to transform that duckling into an adult. This will also ensure that you have to do as little work as possible in collecting one of each kind of new duck available, as you won't have to worry about duplicating ducks due to your running out of time.