The breeder's manual

Breeding

Coverings

Horses can breed starting from 2 years and 6 months.

With your stallions:

  • Make public covering offers with a limit of 100 per day.
  • Make a reserved offer to a particular mare, including one of your own mares.

With your mares:

  • Choose from the public coverings.
  • Accept a reserved offer, including from one of your own stallions.

Each covering costs between 500 equus and 7,500 equus, unless the stallion is yours.

In addition to that, you will have to pay between 100 equus and 2,500 equus in vet costs, according to your Equus reserve.

Gestation

pregnancy lasts for 12 months. Starting from the 8th month, for 50 Equus you can ask for an ultrasound in order to know the foal's gender, breed and coat in advance. When reaching this phase, the mare can only take missions.On the 12th month of pregnancy, you must call the vet and make sure your mare is boarded at an equestrian centre. If you don't call the vet, you will lose the foal.

Once the foal is born you can name it and start taking care of it. Once it is separated from its mother at the age of 6 months you will have to board it at an equestrian centre.

Foaling is the only action that can occur after midnight in the horse's history.

Keep in mind that it is not necessarily advantageous, for example, to breed a mare that excels in dressage with a horse whose strong point is speed. In fact, the offspring will not necessarily be better in each of these characteristics. It is therefore better to favour breeding between close breeds.

Foaling is a tiring experience for a mare. There must be an interval of at least 10 months between the birth of the last foal and the next covering.

Geldings

You can castrate your males who are between the ages of 2 and a half years old and 6 years old. Your horse will become a gelding. It will no longer be able to reproduce, but it will gain a bonus (stamina: +8, speed: +8, dressage: +4). Gelding a horse takes at least two hours.

Note that it is not possible to give Zeus's Lightning Bolt to a gelding, and that castration is irreversible.

The foal

The foaling went smoothly, a foal is born. Its breed is determined by the majority breed in its ascendants if they are not "pure bred". Its coat is selected at random among the coats authorised by the foal's breed.

Your foal's capacities depend on the genetic characteristics of its parents as well as their training level and competition achievements.

The foals that you produce remain with their dam, in the same box, until they are 6 months old. They do not need to be boarded during this period, and they feed exclusively on their dam's milk.

Unicorns

Unicorns are very rare and reproduce almost like ordinary horses.

Breeding is only possible between unicorns of the same breed. You'll then need a little luck to get a unicorn foal.

Every day, you can activate 2 unicorn covering sessions, that can be activated whenever you want. A session is activated the moment you cover a female unicorn, after you have confirmed. From that moment on, you have 60 seconds to cover all the other female unicorns that you wish to cover.

Once you've used up both covering sessions, you have to wait till the next day (after the daily update) to be able to cover your unicorns again.

Remember, you may only cover a unicorn at least 10 real hours after its conception or after its previous covering.Therefore you may want to space out your covering sessions.

Donkeys

Donkeys can only reproduce three times in their lifetime, and only with another donkey. This is the only species whose genetic potential decreases with every generation.
When a male donkey is put up for sale, any coverings he has offered that haven't yet been accepted by a female are cancelled.

Draught horses

Draught horses can only breed 3 times in their lifetime, and only with another draught horse.

When a male draught horse is put up for sale, pending coverings that have not yet been accepted by a mare are cancelled.