The Art of Herding

[Asgaroth22]

One thing I've been thinking about: do you kill your old breeding male as soon as a better one is born, so all females are ready to be impregnated by the new male? Otherwise some females may be pregnant from the old male when the new one grows up. Shouldn't matter if you're keeping a big herd, but with a smaller one it could set you back.

[Sevenless]

One thing I've been thinking about: do you kill your old breeding male as soon as a better one is born, so all females are ready to be impregnated by the new male? Otherwise some females may be pregnant from the old male when the new one grows up. Shouldn't matter if you're keeping a big herd, but with a smaller one it could set you back.

I've thought about that, but I don't do it. I'm doing some tests, but breeding cycles after herding are 1/2 the length of a growth phase according to the different announcement posts I could find on the topic. You could remove him towards the end of the baby growing up to reduce efficiency loss on spare products if you wanted to. It's certainly an interesting concept. If you're running a herd and don't care about the outputs, it's almost certainly the best choice if you get a max roll male (which would be more relevant the bigger your herds get). I'm always careful about killing off my males though, I prefer to segregate them in case an accident happens. One drunk villager sheering off my best breeding sheep's balls taught me that lesson.


I'm currently changing my opinion on how male vs female breeding selection goes in the Q pen. Due to 50/50 males, but only needing 1 male, your male is going to be miles better than your average female. Frequently to the point of the females stats being almost entirely ignored with only a 1/4 chance of a father clone baby popping out that you care about. In all seriousness, I genuinely think at this point that my herd could be 1 breeding male and entirely Q10 breeding females and my advancement would be identical since my females are <20q below my best breeding male now.

So it's got me wondering, maybe don't care about the raw quality of the females at all. You can have too much Q, but never too much BQ. I should only be selecting females for BQ, because if both the male and the female's BQ is enough, I get a 1/2 roll for an animal that might push your herd higher.

In the end, your products would be the 1/2 of the animals that pop out with the Q you want (don't really care about BQ on milkers or slaughtered animals after all), and the other 1/2 would just be garbage. Could change this strategy at any time later on if you cared about the other 1/2 of the calves being produced not sucking.

[Sevenless]

Nope. Just got a female with garbage BQ and equal to best male Q. Same 1/2 chance the baby has the relevant stat bases to make progress.

I guess female sorting is really only based on the highest stat for the Q herd, either Q or BQ.

[Sevenless]

One thing I've been thinking about: do you kill your old breeding male as soon as a better one is born, so all females are ready to be impregnated by the new male? Otherwise some females may be pregnant from the old male when the new one grows up. Shouldn't matter if you're keeping a big herd, but with a smaller one it could set you back.

Tried it, don't like it.

There's definitely a breeding cooldownn, because he's only gotten 2/20 females pregnant after growing up. So the actual time it takes him to impregnate the entire herd might not be that different than the time it takes for the babies to keep popping out.

Secondly: Females with 1 trait tying with your breeding male take your 1/4 chance for a clone to make the next breeding male into a 1/2 chance because you only need to roll 50/50 on the other trait. It's certainly possible to get some more of those, and if your male doesn't max roll you can still find them useful.


Edit: In four hours, my pregnant females went from 2 to 8. So ~40 minutes breeding cooldown? That means the maximum herd size for 1 male is 126 females lol.

[talt89]

"-In the Q/BQ herd, males need higher Q than their BQ"

I was curious why does the male q need to be higher than the BQ? I thought that the BQ Capped the Q.