How can I quickly gain experience using animals?

I'm in need of a lot of XP for enchantment levels. I'm playing in Survival Mode, but don't have a lot of animals around me.
Is there a way to farm animals? And how can I find more animals?

Solution 1:

Getting Experience

There are many ways to gain experience, but no matter what, it's going to take a bit of time. You could try several things, such as:

Killing things - You get experience for killing pretty much anything, with the exception of baby animals, bats, golems, and villagers. Notably, killing the ender dragon gives 12k XP, but it does take a bit of effort to pull that off. Okay, a lot of effort.

Mining and Smelting - You get experience for mining things that drop gems (diamonds, redstone, coal, emeralds), and experience for smelting anything (ores, wood, food, etc.). Also, if you find a monster spawner and mine that, you could get 15-43 XP.

Breeding animals - This kinda goes back to your question about farming animals. You can put animals into "love mode" by feeding the appropriate food to them (meat for dogs, fish for cats, etc.) and they will breed. There is a recharge period, but this is a fairly efficient way of producing XP, and you also get a ton of animals.

Trading and Fishing - Two other ways of gaining XP.

Keep in mind that the number of XP points needed to level up increases exponentially, so it would be easier to gain some levels, enchant, then repeat, rather than gain all your levels at once. Hope this helped.

Solution 2:

• One of the best tactics is to search for a Dungeon or an Abandoned Mineshaft.
  These contain monster spawners that constantly spawn monsters that you can kill over and over again to grind XP.
  Be careful - if you die you will always lose a large chunk of exp, even if you go back to pick up your things. Be sure to bring (at the very least) a full set of iron armour and an iron sword.
  If you are further into the game, diamond armour, a diamond sword, potions of regeneration, healing and strength, and milk (for poison) are all extremely useful items.

• Alternatively, go to the Nether and find a Nether Fortress.
  If you explore it you should come across a Blaze Spawner which acts in the same way as the other mob spawners (but is easier to find).
  Be careful though, blazes are dangerous. Make sure to bring plenty of long lasting Fire Resistance Potions to fight the blazes with.

• If you don't fancy mob grinding, search underground for coal and redstone. They are both fairly common ores that give XP when mined (there are other ores that do this too, but they aren't as common).

• Animal farming is extremely inefficient for XP gain - it will take you a long time to get to level 30 using that method.
  However, if you aren't well equipped enough to fight large numbers of mobs yet, it can be useful for generating some XP.

• Also, smelting large amounts of material in the furnace will give you small XP boosts.