Breeding animals ?

[Kamekono]

Hi,
I'm trying to figure out how animal breeding works, but there's so many stats which make it very difficult to understand what's what.

For example:
I have a cow quality 15, with breeding quality 64 (!?!).
I have another cow quality 36, with breeding quality 41.
Which one is better, and why?

How do all the qualities transfer to babies?
For example:
My male goat stats are q20, meat qnt 14, milk qnt 8, wool qnt 10, and breeding q13
If it breeds with a female q10 on everything, what should the resulting baby come out as?
Is there some random involved? does it average? does anyone know?

[FaithfulToadd]

To answer your example question: I would consider the Q36 cow better, because her offspring will still turn out higher quality on average than the Q15 cow's offspring, despite being softcapped. But if they were bulls, I would consider the BQ64 bull better, because his breeding quality will softcap way more offspring than any one cow's BQ value.

For each stat, breeding selects a value at random (it's a coin toss) from one of the parents, and adds a modifier. For Quality and Breeding Quality, it is between -5 and +20 points IIRC. I am not sure about the other values, but I suspect the range is something like +7 to -5.

I can't say much that Sevenless hasn't already said. Breeding Quality, alongside the quality of your swill(?), will softcap the quality of offspring at birth. Ideally, you want BQ to be 20 points higher than the Quality stat of your breeding animals. BQ is particularly important for males. A male will breed with any females that are in its pen. The male's BQ is used much more often on average, as a result.

Last Updated Dec 10, 2022

Breeding:
-For each animal you want, breed a herd JUST for Q and BQ.
-In the Q/BQ herd, males need higher BQ than their Q
-For females select the highest trait, either Q or BQ. Do not worry about balancing them.
-For each trait you care about, breed a Q% herd for that specific trait. You just need more BQ than the Q% minus 100, but keep on eye on it. Ignore everything else including quantity.
-After your Q% gets high enough that you care (maybe every extra 50%?), bring some females from Q% herd and let them breed with Q/BQ male
-Some babies will have all the best traits of Q/BQ/Q%, select them as your new Q/BQ breeders
-Keep breeding your Q% herd separately, and once all your Q/BQ breeders have the better Q% trait go back to only breeding them for Q/BQ

Traits
The ones most worth raising in no particular order: Milk cow, Meat pig, Stamina horse, Truffle pig, *Hide/Bone pig
(Don't overdo the number of herds you can keep, just doing Q/BQ for each species is fine)

You can find Sevenless' full guide on the subject here. This quote is taken from the KISS section. As far as I know, this guide is still relevant in 2026 - I hope someone will correct me otherwise.

[Ukhata]

short answer,

dont bother, just breed high Q and BQ and get more animals.

[Kamekono]

How does fodder quality play into it? Does it just need to be higher than the animals? Or is there a difference if the fodder is 20 points higher vs 100 points higher?