Breeding for Milk

[Girlinhat]

Or wool or pork, really. The point is, we've got some tame animals, and we're breeding them. What's the best way to go about pairing up the animals? If we're going for highest quality milk (ignoring hides, meat, and quantity), then would it do best to breed the best milk cow and milk bull, or to pair the best breeding cow and bull? The way I imagine it, the offspring will take on the traits of its parents' averages, with the +-20 or so that comes with generational changes, but the breeding stat acts as a sort of softcap for the result. A friend has suggested that all stats are ignored except breeding, and that a q10 milk cow and bull, if they both have q50 breeding, will produce q70-ish milk calves. This seems illogical to me, but a recent thread has shown that cows don't actually have to touch a trough to eat from it, so obviously logic is out the window.

[TeckXKnight]

Breeding is all that matters for both male and female. Everything else is based off of that and has lots of variance.

[Girlinhat]

So, combine high breeding and ignore the other stats?

[TeckXKnight]

That is correct~

[sabinati]

i thought it was the average of stats of the mother and father, softcapped by father's breeding, then the -5/+20 variance.

[TeckXKnight]

i thought it was the average of stats of the mother and father, softcapped by father's breeding, then the -5/+20 variance.

You're most likely right. You and Exewu have always done circles around my knowledge of animal breeding.

[sabinati]

i'm just basing that off the old thread

Now, how do we get more cows? Well, children, there's this thing about birds and bees. A bull in the vicinity of a non-pregnant cow will... adjust her pregnancy parameters. Two weeks later (in game time), a calf is born. The stats on the calf are the mean stats of its parents, soft capped by the father's breeding value, all modified randomly by (-2/+5), except for meat quantity (-2/+2, harder to breed). In one month (ingame time) the calf will become a cow (or a bull). During its calf month the animal will only drink milk from a cow (doesn't have to be mommy), it will drink one liter per five hours, so here's hoping mom can provide. A calf only produces half the meat of a fully grown cow if slaughtered.

note that it was changed later to -5/+20, and i think -5/+5 for meat quantity

[Potjeh]

What I do is try and match them so the milk q average is as high as possible while breeding average is same or higher than milk q average. Sure, only the father's breeding caps the calves, but you have to think about the next generation, so you want them to have high breeding too.

[Girlinhat]

How large of a breeding stock do you have?

[sabinati]

half a dozen right now