Trait Breeding Woes

[Argent]

I should just be a color breeder and completely ignore traits. I swear, the more I try to breed for them, the worse they get. And somehow, my horses are all scoring really well in traits that I both do not need, and neither foundation breed is supposed to be good for, and yet the traits they're marked highly for tend to be moderate at best.

[nyraeia]

I've had it so many times now that I breed a mare with a positive remark to a stallion with a green trait and the resulting foal is average at best, most of the time below average.
So count me in for the colour breeders, I'm one at heart anyway.

[PaintingPony]

Thing to keep in mind when breeding is that there is a phenotype and genotype - meaning that the genes expressed in the horse (ones you get info on) may be good but the ones you can't see which may not be so good may also be passed on. This is like how a horse like Secretariat may have been an awesome race horse - but not all his babies are good runners - they got the not fast genes that weren't expressed in Secretariat's physical traits you can see. A horse with a bad report may also throw really good babies - because they have the hidden genes that are better but do not show on the report. Often times you won't tell what you are going to get until you breed a few and see how the babies turn out. Hope this makes sense.

[desertrose984]

i bred my mare whos report says plenty left after workouts to a stallion with greed stamina and got a below average foal,i cant keep spending thousands on breeding to keep getting crappy horses! is getting anoying when both horses are showing good traits and all resulting foals are no good,and since we can not tell a horses genotype or phenotype then basicaly you can not believe anything a breeding report says is what you just told us

[Ms. Trouble Maker]

lol welcome to the real world of horse breeding. California Chrome was a great example of the so called $8,000 * horse...compared to the $50,000 other "top of the line" thoroughbreds. Think of like 7 generations of breeding. I think California Chrome had a top winner like 8 generations back....So you really really have to be careful with what horse you breed with...because 7 generation back will come to haunt you in the game

[Macabre]

I think that's what I really like about this game. It gets a little boring if you know EXACTLY how a foal is going to turn out.

A lot of it is luck. I crossed one of my best mares with a really good stallion up for stud and got a Baladi cross with all very good to average stats (excluding strength). I wanted to see if I could get a full Baladi with the same pair, and I did, but his brother had very poor stats. It's fun!

[*Corvus*]

I was talking to a guy who had been a horse breeder for many years (it was at his 70th birthday party) and he said you only get one really good horse in a lifetime. He got his back in the eighties, it won darn near every point to point race going. None of the progeny were ever as good as that one particular horse.