You can purchase animals, even puppies now which grow to dogs and you can teach them tricks. You need to feed your puppy daily but with regards to the other animals on your farm, including cows, sheep, pigs, horses, chickens, elephants and so on you merely need to harvest them sometime to earn yourself some coins.
The way most of us get animals is by being gifted them by neighbors or adopting them when they wander onto our farms or the farms of our neighbors who then post it to their newsfeed allowing us to adopt too.
A FarmVille clue about some animals, stallions are good to acquire through the adoption process because they help you produce foals. Ugly ducklings are also good because they grow into white swans and you can earn a lot collecting the feathers. Adopting is good because it's free and there are a range of varied animals you can't buy but can adopt like a pink cow, a brown cow, a black sheep, a kitten, a gray horse and others can get them too.
If you have lots of neighbors the opportunity to adopt animals increases because they pop up more often on newsfeeds. You can also check out people's profiles in case you have heaps of friends who all post lots of items from other games and comments. You can adopt as often as you like, if the opportunity presents itself.
There is a great FarmVille clue you can use to ensure you get the animal when put up for adoption. But you have to be using Firefox. If a few particular neighbors want to share lost animals you can share the link with those few and no one else. The way you do this is by clicking on SHARE when the message box comes up, but DON'T click on PUBLISH on the next window that pops up. Then right click the image and pick 'copy link location'. Now write a new message and send the link to your specific neighbors.
A good FarmVille clue is also to acknowledge that animals are also good to collect because you can fit them into a small space and now that Zynga have made it easier to harvest by allowing us to harvest in only 1 click it isn't as difficult to harvest them when they are so close together. The barns, coops and stables help too with regards to storage. Horses and cows do take up the most space so swans, goats, geese and cats are good. Sometimes it's good to get a little bit ahead with some valuable pointers and hints.
Source: eZine