Quest Breeding Guide

[MaryAkatsuki]

Thank you @BlackOak2

[EclipticEnd]

Hello! I'm not sure if here's the place to ask, so if there's a better forum please let me know.

If you attempt for one of the breeds and get a half breed instead, does that mean that the horses don't evaluate well enough? For context I'm trying to do a Cleveland bay. I have Thoroughbreds and Arabian/Barb horses, but I always end up with a Half thoroughbred instead of a Bay. I'm breeding with horses that have 4 star evals for the breed.

[Silverine]

Hello! I'm not sure if here's the place to ask, so if there's a better forum please let me know.

If you attempt for one of the breeds and get a half breed instead, does that mean that the horses don't evaluate well enough? For context I'm trying to do a Cleveland bay. I have Thoroughbreds and Arabian/Barb horses, but I always end up with a Half thoroughbred instead of a Bay. I'm breeding with horses that have 4 star evals for the breed.

A lot of it is luck-of-the-draw, even with parents that eval well and especially for breeds that are a mix of two very different horses. TBs and [ArabxNAB]s aren't as different as some of the crosses, but you also have the inherit uncertainty of using a crossbred itself in the recipe. And sometimes you just get really unlucky and keep popping failures even though everything seems like it should go well.

After looking at your stock, it appears to me as though you might have particular difficulty getting the correct build and horse-ness ratio. Arabians are always going to skew things super light and super horsey (unless you find an Arab line like BlackOak's that is specifically bred to be the opposite). NABs, on the other hand, are not as light and not as horsey. So instead of using a 50-50 ArabxNAB with a TB it would probably be better to take the 50-50, breed it to a somewhat heavier NAB, and then breed the resulting offspring to an appropriate TB.

[EclipticEnd]

After looking at your stock, it appears to me as though you might have particular difficulty getting the correct build and horse-ness ratio. Arabians are always going to skew things super light and super horsey (unless you find an Arab line like BlackOak's that is specifically bred to be the opposite). NABs, on the other hand, are not as light and not as horsey. So instead of using a 50-50 ArabxNAB with a TB it would probably be better to take the 50-50, breed it to a somewhat heavier NAB, and then breed the resulting offspring to an appropriate TB.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll try that out.

[tagnichan]

I NEED CONFIRMATION FROM A SMART PERSON. haha.
Super nerdy and numbery question below.

I'm currently trying to create the WAB breed from scratch. Its a step on the road toward my own Friesian line and also the current community project so I figured this would be a great time!

However, I'm having trouble.

To create the WABs I need an [Arabian x NAB] cross, but the pairs I select keep throwing Baladi.

My theory is that my pair selection is wrong. I'd like confirmation on this before I do it to try to save myself some time.

Question: Do I have to select the parents of the cross based on my desired outcome or is the result more random than I expected?

Example: The goal is the WAB. Height Range based on the Eval is 14.0hh to 15.1hh (We'll just keep it to the height for the sake of the example)
SO does my Arabian and NAB parents have to be between 14.0hh and 15.1hh ?

ALSO *ranty sidenote*
WHY CAN MY NO RED HOLDING PARENTS THROW A FOAL WITH A RED STAT?!

Ahem. Thank you so much for your time and consideration in helping me with this. I just haven't had enough experience with manipulating the conformation of the horses yet so I'm unsure what my next steps should be. xoxoxo

[BlackOak2]

I NEED CONFIRMATION FROM A SMART PERSON. haha.
Super nerdy and numbery question below.

I'm currently trying to create the WAB breed from scratch. Its a step on the road toward my own Friesian line and also the current community project so I figured this would be a great time!

However, I'm having trouble.

To create the WABs I need an [Arabian x NAB] cross, but the pairs I select keep throwing Baladi.

My theory is that my pair selection is wrong. I'd like confirmation on this before I do it to try to save myself some time.

Question: Do I have to select the parents of the cross based on my desired outcome or is the result more random than I expected?

Example: The goal is the WAB. Height Range based on the Eval is 14.0hh to 15.1hh (We'll just keep it to the height for the sake of the example)
SO does my Arabian and NAB parents have to be between 14.0hh and 15.1hh ?

ALSO *ranty sidenote*
WHY CAN MY NO RED HOLDING PARENTS THROW A FOAL WITH A RED STAT?!

Ahem. Thank you so much for your time and consideration in helping me with this. I just haven't had enough experience with manipulating the conformation of the horses yet so I'm unsure what my next steps should be. xoxoxo

Getting a non-Baladi from this cross is a little difficult.

So, let me get into the specifics a little and you'll understand well, I think.

Baladi requirements are: 14 to 15.1 hands, 0-25 body size and 100-70 Horse type.

The Arabian requirements are: 14 to 15.3 hands, 0-25 body size and 100-78 Horse type.
The NAB requirements are: 14 to 16 hands, 20-40 body size and 80-70 Horse type.

For the most part, the AC breeds will come out randomly but also mostly within the breed requirements. Sometimes they'll be four star (usually lacking in height) sometimes even three star (body size and type's might just fall outside of the norms. But for the most part the AC stock will be relatively correct for breed standards.

So, before I go onward, you can see with just a quick glance that the Arab and the NAB are already nearly perfect for the Baladi. This is why it's one of the easiest breeds to obtain from straight-from-the-AC parents.

For the WAB, the requirements are: 14 to 15.1 hands, 30-50 body size and 90-70 Horse type. So you'll be producing stock SO VERY CLOSE already to the Baladi requirements.

There are a few handy tricks to getting outside of these req's to produce the cross you want, rather than the Baladi foal. One is to use NAB's that are on the taller side. By breeding at least one parent that's at the upper end of their breed standard, you pull the Baladi req's further away (creating foals that are taller than the Baladi standard). The other option is to find an NAB that's much heavier, although in this case, the arabian's super-light tendencies kind of defeats the purpose.

There's not too many of these crosses that make other breeds in the recipes, I think I recall three of them, so you won't come across this problem too often, unless you're working with parents that are really far from their breed standards.

If you have a lot of trouble with a certain pair of parents constantly throwing Baladis, switch the pairing to another partner. Sometimes one particular pairing just always throws one way. While another (particularly with the Arab, NAB cross) will just always throw crosses when those foals are just 'perfect' for the Baladi breed.

Even with perfect foals (for whatever breed standard), there is still a 50/50 whether the new breed will pop or not.

So, you're selection isn't wrong, you're just working with a pair of horses that're perfect for another recipe as well. Also, you should be choosing the parents based on the desired outcome. The closer you get to the desired breed req's, the higher chance you'll have of creating that breed.

And, for your ranty sidenote. It's because the parents have a range of hidden genes that they carry. What we see is just what's visible, what's been selected for the horse to be affected by. The horse has a much wider range that it can pass on.

Think this way: Parent A is 16 hands, fully grown. But has a range of 14 hands to 18 hands. Parent B is 14 hands, but has a range of 13 hands to 14 hands. Their foal inherits a range of 13.3 hands to 17 hands and comes out as 17 hands. Why didn't the foal shrink??? you think, I need the foal to be shorter. Well it's because the range that the parents carry can be much greater than what we actually see. The system chooses semi-randomly, maybe fully randomly. But through selective breeding, we can narrow the ranges that are inherited and thus breed-out the traits we don't want.

[tagnichan]

Oh my goodness. Thank you SO much.

I feel much better knowing that the cross is difficult with all things going for it!

You've validated and substantialized things I've only hypothesized so this has helped me incredibly. I didn't know the odds of the crosses or the inherited ranges. This game is so cool! FUEL FOR THE FIRE! I'm excited to try some more! Hopefully I can get a handle on the selective breeding soon so I can share my ideas to the community and participate in the community projects!

Thanks again! Off to the barn I go! xo

[BlackOak2]

Good Luck!

[Silverine]

Adding on to what BlackOak said, there is definitely an element of luck with it. I pull pairs from the AC and breed them until I get what I want. I've had pairs that popped Arab x NAB 75% of the time, and others that popped Baladi until the day they died. I personally don't worry about the eval anymore, because I've never found it to accurately determine which pairs will successfully NOT have a Baladi. I just grab from the AC and cross my fingers.

[RuneSnap]

..Plateau Persian: Arabian X Persian Arabian
............*Pahlavan: Thoroughbred X Persian Arabian
......Cape Horse: Persian Arabian X Java

Love this guide so much!!!

I did spot this error though - I'm not sure if there are others, but this one's tripped me up twice now XD (once for being the first of two reds for Persian Arabs, and the second for realizing Pahlavans should actually be by Plateau Persians!)