Breeding/Treating

Okay, so I'm pretty new to all the changes in the recode and stuff so I was wondering, is it better to treat horses with peppermints/hay cubes or to treat them with category specific items, in my case red apples? I've made the mistake of setting my horses in the correct discipline, so I can't do the conversion trick anymore (can't afford lol).

On a side note, I've never been too good at genetics, so how do you guys breed for color? In my foundation vanners, I've got quite a few nicely colored horses (randomizers applied). Which pairings would yield the best colored foals?

Thanks a ton guys ♥

If you can't do the discipline swap, always do the category specific items, because while the hay cubes/peppermints do give you a higher number of stats, they may or may not be in the stats you need, making them pretty much pointless. I'm doing an experiment with two divisions of akhal tekes on whether or not horses will gain more with either:

1. Fed hay cubes, only put through the riding school, and training and eventually switched into the 'correct' specialty, or,
2. Fed specific foods (carrots/turnips in my case), put through shows when they're at the top of their bracket, riding school otherwise and trained.

They only just hit three a few days ago though, so it'll be some time before I can tell. I also only started this when they hit 3 years old, whereas I could have started the one group at 0y and they'd most likely be ahead in stats right now.

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On the color - I have vanners too, and if you're breeding solely on color than it comes down to what you want to breed for. For me, based on what seems to be the rarest along with the colors/markings I prefer I go:

Color: At (Brown) > Cr (Creams) > D (Dun) > Bay/Black/Chestnut > Grey
Markings: Rb (Rabicano) > Rn (Roan) > Solids > (T/Sb) Tobiano/Sabino

I don't -normally- match my foundations up for color, but rather for conformation with color in mind. I don't breed for conformation, but it's nice to give that second generation a little boost where I can get it. I pretty much do this by listing all the horses names with all their confo numbers next to it for an entire gender. For example, my mare Hel would be: Hel - 45 63 70 70 65 58 60 45 59.50 // Once I have all the mares written down I go through the stallions and try to pair up the highs and lows. If you have enough color in your herd, it won't matter too much, cause the genes will be passed on and you can worry about it in the second generation.

Now, if you were breeding -just- for color, it's a matter of deciding what you want the next generation to have, and how many chances to pass the gene on you want. If you go by my ratings, you'd want to pass along as many At genes as you can first. Assuming all your brown horses are Ata (heterozygous brown - you could see this if you revealed genetics for each of them), you have a 50% chance to pass it along to the offspring. So say you breed each pair twice, and the mare you breed to does not have an At gene, you have a 50% chance to have a brown foal each breeding.

All your cremello vanners are CrCr - so they'll pass along a cream gene no matter what. If you pair a cremello with a cremello, you'll get nothing but cremello foals - foals with CrCr. If you pair a cremello with a... let's say bay, you have a 100% chance to have a single Cr gene passed on, giving you palomino/buckskin. That horse would then have a 50% chance to produce a foal with that Cr gene with a non-carrier.

I'm probably making it much more confusing than needed, haha. So example to make it easier:

Aluminum (CrCr) x Neon (crcr) = all foals from pair will be Crcr (Palomino/Buckskin).

Oxygen (Crcr) x Neon (crcr) = 50% chance of Crcr (Palomino/Buckskin) / 50% chance of non-cream (bay/black/chestnut etc).

You pretty much would have to do this with all genes from each pair you decided on - which is why it's easiest to pick the genes you like/want to pass on first. XD

Last edited on 2016-12-06 at 22:18:52 by Nittrous

I haven't been around long enough to be an established breeder, but this is what I've gathered from the forums and studying genetics.

If you have already set them in a discipline I would just feed them a standard treat. Using hay cubes would make showing harder if you can't transfer.

I'm a color breeder. I tend to try and match genetics I like together, such as breeding a horse with the At gene to another horse with the At gene. I strive for these genes mainly: At, Cr, Ch, Rn, Sp, f, O and D myself (not necessarily in that order) . I'll either breed for my desired mix of these genes or match two horses of the same (or almost the same) color together. Of course there are other things to keep in mind, such as stats, linage, and if the horse is a foundation or not. I know a lot of people also like the T and Sb genes (I like them, but I don't necessarily look for them)

The easiest way to color breed, in my experience, is to:
Genes you want to maintain -
pair heterozygous withh eterozygous (Zz to Zz) so you have 75% chance of passing at least one Z to the foals (50% Zz and 25% ZZ) and I breed homozygous dominant to homozygous recessive (ZZ to zz) which gives you 100% heterozygous foals.
Genes you want to eliminate -
pair homozygous dominate to recessive (GG to gg) to "break" the genes apart, then breed heterozygous to homozygous recessive (Gg to gg) this gives you a 50% chance to eliminate the gene in your foals however if you have to you can also pair heterozygous together (Gg to Gg) for a 25% chance of eliminating the gene.

I find it important to also prioritize genes by importance to make pairing easier.
For me (w/ QHs) At > f > Cr > Ch > D > Z > T > aa & E > Sp > Rn > O > Sb > g > + > W (I don't like white ;-;)

Treating:
Peppermints & haycubes & sugarcubes are bad if you want to compete with the horses. You might consider a) continuing to treat with special treats and entering your horses into riding school while you slowly collect the money & evc to do the conversion trick, b) converting to the second most popular discipline and working from there with plans to save money and re-convert in the future if you can, c) go to proper treating and entering your worst horses only in riding school and the better ones entering into shows when they are near the next lvl (non-specialty stats higher than 80 really won't place well even when they are at the top of their lvl sadly), d) buying an equal number of new foundies from the equine center to pair with your horses that you make the mistake with and putting everybody on the correct treats, this would minimize the effects of the improper treating on your future foals, e) you could buy second gens and pair them with your mistake foundies which will work even better to fix the problem and you have a better chance to get cool colored foals from other members

however: since your foals are only 3, I'd put them on proper treats and compete them when they are at the top of their lvl (i.e. 149 stats is N1 almost N2) putting them in riding school when they aren't near the top of their lvl.

I made the same mistake with my clydes (they had peppermints until they were about 3) but they still managed to make it to ~600 stats (not great compared with the 800 stats that foundies can reach now, but their foals aren't too bad off).

Last edited on 2016-12-07 at 06:41:30 by insomniaglet

I generally only use peppermints on foundation horses. I make sure to get them at 0 yrs old and make certain that their stats at the time they're created, are for the specific specialty I want them to have, ie western.
I make a notation of what their ideal specialty will be and then I start feeding them peppermints until they hit 3 yrs.
At 3, I'll randomly set them a specialty I DONT want them to have, and then go and convert them to their noted specialties. This really helps to boost their stats. Once converted, I feed ONLY discipline specific treats.
Colour really depends on your preferences...I like my dunalinos, flaxens, browns, cream dilutes etc...

Last edited on 2016-12-07 at 07:05:42 by 🌀 Windspun Appaloosas

If you can't transfer the specialty, I would use only specialty specific treats. Even if you don't intend to show your horses, they will sell better if you keep your stat gain within the specialty.

Color breeding can be tricky if you aren't familiar with genetics. Even if you do understand genetics, there is a lot of luck involved.

When it comes to base colors, brown (At) is probably the most valued, but wild bay (A+) is the rarest. To get brown or wild bay to show, your horse needs to be either EE or Ee. An EE horse will always pass an E down to its foal, so if you have a horse with At or A+, but only an Ee or even an ee, breed it to an EE horse so you can be sure that any brown or wild bay will show up. Also, there is a sort of hierarchy involved. A+ is stronger than A, which is stronger than At, which is stronger than a. A horse that is EEAA+ will be wild bay. A horse that is EEAAt will be bay, and a horse that is EEAta will be brown. If you want your foal to be brown, it is best to try to avoid any A+ or A genetics.

Cream is another very desirable gene. A horse that is CrCr will always pass down cream to its foal. Match it with a crcr horse to be ensured a Crcr. Match it to a Crcr and you will have a 50% chance of getting another CrCr. Match two Crcr's together, and you will have a 50% chance of a Crcr, a 25% chance of a CrCr, and a 25% chance of missing cream altogether. A Crcr bred to a crcr will produce 50% cream and 50% not cream.

Dun and the patterns all inherit similarly to cream. Like cream, some of them are stronger when the horse has two copies of the gene, but with others, it won't affect the appearance - it will just make it easier for the horse to pass on that color or pattern.

Pangare and flaxen are a little different. Pangare only shows up on red hair, not black, and flaxen only shows up on chestnut. To make sure that pangare shows, you need to pay attention to both the extension (E,e) and the agouti (A, At, A+, a). Your foal will need to inherit at least one A, At or A+ if it is EE or Ee. If the foal is likely to be aa, you will need it to be ee to show pangare.

Flaxen will only show up on an ee horse. Also, flaxen is recessive, which means you need the foal to be ff. This means that both parents need to have at least one e and one f. The more e's and f's you have between the two, the better chance you have of getting a flaxen, but each horse must have at least one e and one f.

I hope this makes color breeding a little easier for you. If you have any questions about a specific color you want, or to know what you would get from a specific pair, I would be happy to explain further.

Thank you so much for the help guys! I guess I'll start treating them with category specific treats now and see what stat range they end up in. As for colors, I'll see what i can do with my genetic skills xD

Omg I just started breeding recently and this post is super helpful. Thanks guys!