Conformity formula ?

Ok, conformity breeders, I get how to breed good stats... for the most part. 

High number plus high number plus specialty the same as the other horse equals at least decent stats 

( I got the mini's for the most part figured out anyway) 

Conformity I'm lost, utterly lost.

All of my stalk is ah... I don't have hardly anything with good conformity across the board. 

One would think breeding a Good to a poor, would  make something in the middle. of that.

Breeding a good to a good, should at least get you a good.... 

Breeding a 59 to a 60 should get you something in the middle.  should. 

I don't get it. If I breed say a 60 to a 70.... I should get something in the middle, or more close to dad right?  or the other way around depending on who has the better conformity. 

So what are your guy's breeding startagies to get better conformity? I got stats figured out.

Stats are easy to figure out. Conformation is much more random, you can breeed 60 with 60 and get for example 54 or 64. Once I bred 65.54 with 69.36 and got 70.75, another time I bred horses with similar conformation and got the foal with confo much lower than the weakest parent.

Ah conformation.... The bane and wonder if it! I have been trying to figure it out for the past 18 months and still haven't mastered it; but am currently working on it with my Breeze and Windstorm. They've had 4 foals, all have been 70+ conformation, and I bred one Foal with .79 less than her dam. She's locked aside until her parents retire and I will compare her to her last two siblings before I decide who to keep, sell, or geld.

Last edited on 2018-09-01 at 11:45:07 by 💜 Feathered Gold 💜

I think it's along the lines of: average of parents +/- some random factor, but because that random factor is per conformation area it's very unlikely that every area is improved upon. I'm currently on my third generation (Found-1st-2nd-3rd) of selectively breeding for conformation using an algorithm to pair up horses and, while the conformation profiles have smoothed out, the herd's average conformation has only improved by about 3%. It's incredibly frustrating.

If someone wants to compile a ton of stats, I can do some analysis to work out the specifics.

Edit: I like numbers so I started playing with this.

A very preliminary survey (only 36 foals from 12 sets of parents) suggests:
- Dependent on the parent's average scores.
- The difference in the parent's scores affects how far from the average the foal can lie.


Last edited on 2018-09-01 at 18:41:04 by Almárë

Thanks all very fusterating and confusing information and breeding for conformity shall be thine bane to my existence Xd

@almare

Well now at least I know why breeding a 70 something to a 50 something is granting me utter crud xd

The only way i have been able to get some reasonable conformity with equines is to set up my herds on a spreadsheet listing awful to perfect matching opposites.  Though i occasionally do deviate from this, heart over head, & usually founder. have recently bought previously matched pairs from experienced breeders though waiting to find out if will work out for the better.

I added a few more horses to my spreadsheet and made some graphs. Note that all these points are for individual sections of conformation (i.e.: head or neck) not the average for the horse.

Parent Average Score vs Foal Score
https://imgur.com/YluwUe2

The orange line represents perfect correlation (foal score = parents average). It shows that while there is definitely a correlation between parent average and foal score, there is a huge variation around that average. It also shows that as the parent average increases, the variation seems to decrease. However, all these data points are from my own lines which are matched for conformation so this could well be some artificial artifact.


Difference in Parent Scores vs. Foal Scores Difference From Parent Average
https://imgur.com/TYwV3NV

This shows pretty strongly that the bigger the difference in the parent's scores, the greater possible variation in the foal's score.

Nothing surprising really, but it's nice to know I'm on the right (slow, frustrating) track.