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Haltanny · Jul 22, 2017 10:13 AM

Although not strictly gene related, I'm putting this here because it is more genetics related than anything else.

I'm considering ststaing a clan mating system here. If you don't know what that is, I'll explain it next, if you know what it is, you can skip to the last paragraph. :)

Clan mating, also known as spiral mating, is a line breeding system that is used to keep genetics diverse. You divide your breeding stock into at least three groups ("clans") based on whatever criteria you choose, and name each clan (for example: green clan, blue clan, yellow clan). The first breeding, you breed your males to the females of the same clan (example: green clan male to green clan females). The resulting offspring are assigned the clan of their mothers (example: green clan females give birth to green clan offspring). The next breeding, you breed your males to females one clan over (example: green clan male to yellow clan females, yellow males to blue females and blue males to green females). The resulting offspring are assigned the clan of their mothers (example: blue males x green females = green offspring). In real life situations, you would breed the F1 males of one clan to the F1 AND parent females of the next clan. For the game, you would probably breed those of the same generation together. The third breeding, you would continue as above breeding males to the next clan over. Eventually, depending on how many clans you use, the pedigree will be a spiral around the clans. :) Feel free to ask questions.

Now that is explained, I am considering doing this for my farm because it will be a simple way to keep bloodlines and breeding straight without having to keep a document for notes. (I don't have a computer). I plan to start this next season, I just need to figure out how I want to divide my clans. I plan to use 1 stud for each clan foundation, and at present can have 10 mares per clan foundation. I made a rough draft dividing by type of create and can do 2 clans of "regular foundation", 2 clans of "perfect foundation" and 2 clans of RS/ExProducers/TNP. I have considered getting rid of the regular foundation, but I would like to keep the colors, so haven't made the cut. I could switch around so that the RF, PF, RS, EPr and TNP are spread throughout each clan. I may not get as many intact foals, but I'm ok with that since I use the pasture bonus and get a ridiculous amount of intact foals already. If I do it that way, I have to come up with different criteria for dividing the clans, ideally keeping similar colors or genes together to improve my chances at producing those colors. Anyone have any thoughts, questions or suggestions that may help me decide?

fj1482 · Jul 22, 2017 10:27 AM

I actually use this technique in my bird breeding programs in RL. I deal with endangered poultry and waterfowl so finding breeding stock is not easy. This was the best technique I could find to keep my stock as divers as possible without having a lot of new blood that I could just bring in at any given time. My advice on genes would be to purposely set up at least one clan that will give you the combos you want. You can even set up several clans to give you different combos that your looking for. When your looking for the next male that will be moving to the next clan look for one who most fits what that clan is looking for or what the mares might be lacking. Just like I pick males to fill in gaps of the girls so that hopefully the offspring better fit the standard of their breed. It's not as difficult as it sounds. If you can give me a gene that you actually want I can walk you though it and show you what I would do with your actual horses.

MoonAcre Stables · Jul 22, 2017 10:40 AM

Ive never heard of clan/spiral mating its super interesting though!

Haltanny · Jul 22, 2017 10:53 AM

@fj1482 I picked up this system when I started breeding rare colored quail. :) I figured it would be pretty easy to transfer over to the game.
I study genetics, so I pretty much know what combos will produce what colors, but a second set of eyes never hurts. :)

I am looking to produce a few colors: flaxen chestnut, silver wild bay, silver brown and silver black. With or without sooty/sooty+, pearl, champagne and/or dun. With or without rabicano, roan and/or LP. I have the genes in my herd, but I also have quit a few 'undesired' genes I need to weed out. Normal bay and paint markings being the biggest ones. And I have to do it through breeding, because I can't afford to GMT.

Haltanny · Jul 22, 2017 11:05 AM

Flaxen chestnut mostly just because I have so many chestnuts in my herd, it would take a lot more effort to breed it out. So while I probably won't actively breed for a bunch of chestnuts, I won't cull based on E/e, especially if they have other genes I want. Flaxen is preferred to non flaxen so that it fits in with the light manes of the silvers. :)

fj1482 · Jul 22, 2017 11:09 AM

You sound like you got a pretty good idea of what you want and how to get it. I would set my clans up to get the combo's you want and to weed out the undesired genes. As long as one horse is het for an undesired gene just make sure you don't match them up with another horse who is also het for that same gene and so on. Because of the huge difference in the colors you want you might want to treat certain colors as their own breed and create a clan system for each. Your flaxen chestnut for example. The silver brown and silver bay you could probably mix and maybe even the silver black because you will get those color possibilities from those three anyways.

Haltanny · Jul 22, 2017 12:13 PM

I don't have the space right now for keeping the colors separated. Maybe in the future I can separate them out further. As long as I aim for homozygous flaxen and homozygous silver on all horses, then I should get all the base colors I want out of one herd with various combos of E/e and A+/At/a. I have to breed out A, Cr, and paint patterns for sure. I have Sooty+ to add in starting in the second generation. Pearl will be the hardest one to keep, since its recessive and I only have 2 foundation horses that carry it, but I think it's do-able. Thankfully, my foundation stallions have very few unwanted genes, so all I have to do is select the foals with the least unwanted ones.

fj1482 · Jul 22, 2017 12:38 PM

That's the main reason why I strictly just line breed. If the game ever changed to take inbreeding into account the first thing I would do is start making clans lol

Haltanny · Jul 22, 2017 12:58 PM

*notes* edited July 24

Luxuria Clan
Expected results:
Bay, black, amber champ or classic champ. Silver bay dun. Bay. Bay or wild bay. Bay. Wild bay. Bay. Bay or black. Bay. Bay.

Superbia Clan
Expected results:
Brown with dun, cream &/or pearl poss. Bay or brown, dun poss. Bay or black, dun poss. Brown, dun &/or silver poss. Bay or black, dun &/or champ poss. Buckskin or smoky, cream pearl &/or dun poss. Wild bay or bay, dun poss. Bay or black, dun poss. Bay, dun likely.

Tristitia Clan
Expected results:
Chestnut or bay, flaxen poss. Chestnut, flaxen poss. Bay, silver poss. Bay carry brown. Bay, dun poss. Chestnut or bay, flaxen poss. Bay. Bay. Chestnut, flaxen poss.

Invidia Clan
Expected results:
Bay. Bay or black, cream poss. Bay or black. Bay or black. Bay or black, cream poss. Bay. Bay or black. Bay or black. Wild bay or bay, grey poss.

Avaritia Clan
Expected results:
Bay carry brown, dun, cream &/or silver poss. Chestnut or bay carry brown, dun poss. Chestnut or bay carry brown, dun poss. Chestnut or bay carry brown, dun poss. Chestnut or bay or brown, dun poss. Chestnut or bay or brown, dun poss. Chestnut or bay carry brown, dun likely. Chestnut or bay carry brown, dun poss. Bay or brown, cream &/or dun poss.

Ira Clan
Expected results:
Chestnut or bay, dun poss. Chestnut, cream, pearl, silver &/or champ poss. Chestnut or bay. Chestnut or wild bay or bay carry brown. Chestnut or bay. Bay, champ poss. Bay, dun poss. Chestnut or bay. Chestnut or bay, champ poss. Chestnut or bay.

*more to come*

HunterUnderSaddleGirl · Jul 22, 2017 12:59 PM

Wow! This is really neat! I considered rotating my stallions like that, but didn't know what it was called, and a thing people did.

DevilsParadise · Jul 22, 2017 1:01 PM

One of the first things I asked about when I started was penalties for inbreeding. Ammit said she had no plans of putting penalties for it in the game, so you're clear :)

Timber · Jul 22, 2017 2:07 PM

I kinda want to try this now. I might actually take a couple seasons and try this with my liver, gray, and wild bay herds or create three new herds with colors I like but don't really want to line breed hard for. Might be a good way to find a color combo or coat that I'm really wild about.

Cheers · Jul 22, 2017 2:46 PM

@haltanny. I don't know how using straws from outside studs would work into your spiral, but I would be happy to offer you some straws from my homozygous pearl foundation. He's A+/At but he's also homozygous for Champagne...

If you're interested, PM me and we can work it out.

Incandescent Light RS wpC

Haltanny · Jul 23, 2017 9:41 AM

Both my chestnut studs are AA. Blah! Gotta breed them to the mares that don't have A, but not many of them.

Finally got my clans organized though, now I just need come up with good names. The ones I have right now are temporary. :)

@Cheers I can work outside studs in pretty easy, since all foals belong to their mum's clan. I'm definitely interested in your boy, he's stunning. I'll shoot you a message in a moment. :)

Haltanny · Jul 23, 2017 9:44 AM

@Timber if you need any help, or anyone else really, with coming up with a clan system, feel free to join this topic. :)

Haltanny · Jul 24, 2017 9:08 AM

Clans are named (seven deadly sins in latin, 6 foundation clans and 1 "catch-all" for miscellaneous outside studs, purchased lined horses, etc.). Only thing left to do is decide on an order... Might wait on that until I see what exactly each clan produces. If you are curious, enter my id in the owner box in search and the clan names in the horse name box. Clan names are: Superbia, Invidia, Avaritia, Tristitia, Ira, Luxuria & Gula (Gula is the "catch-all").

Timber · Jul 24, 2017 6:44 PM

I haven't gathered the horses yet (that's gonna take some time) I think I know how I want to set things up.

Three clans be Plain Jane colors(no spots stripes or white whatsoever should I get so lucky) : Buckskin, Black, Brown Bay (Maybe)
Three clans with patterns I like: Dun, App, Sabino 1
I plan to keep to quality, but I'm not going to give them pasture time since my lines are reserved for that. (Boy that's going to be fun)

While I'd love to do the TNP PF ExPro bit myself, those are hard to come by. I may go that route in the future though when I can shell out a small fortune for what I want. Right now, this would be a good experiment whether just strict quality control can accommodate for lack of a pasture bonus.

I welcome thoughts and suggestions.

DivineDreams · Jul 24, 2017 6:51 PM

How does this work with genes that are lethal when homozygous? Ie frame

Timber · Jul 24, 2017 6:54 PM

I personally intend to avoid those like the plague. I love Frame, I love w, but I am not dealing with the headache those genes are going bring with them.

Cheers · Jul 24, 2017 7:50 PM

Frame is easy--keep it out of your stallions and you're always Golden.

White, and especially White 1, 2 and 10, can be harder but again, as long as you keep your stallion lines pretty plain you can safely mix those into your girls.

Wildland Acres · Jul 24, 2017 10:13 PM

That is so cool. Never thought of that before. I have two studs in pasture each time so things are random enough that I tend to have diversity, but looking at some of my horses they are rather line bred. My breeding program turns out a lot of silvers on my black, grullos, bays, bay duns, so if you ever want to trade sock let me know. I am working on encouraging sooty plus and dp while keeping out paint.

Ritsika · Jul 25, 2017 8:48 AM

Clan/spiral mating is a very neat process that I had not heard of before, but I am definitely interested.

My question is this, do you keep more than one stud per season from each clan breeding?

Typically, I breed an entire pasture of 2nd generation mares with one stallion and I rotate the stallion each season. If I try the clan mating, I would separate my mares into the appropriate clans and breed them to a stallion of a different clan. From the appropriate cross I might get more than one stallion, do I keep them both or pick?

My second question is this, what is the smallest a clan size can be?

Does a clan have to be larger than 15 individual mares? Or can 10 suffice? I ask because I use the pasture bonus and if I am to breed different clans, I would need a way to select which stallion covers which mares and that would only be possible in multiple pastures. So what pasture size would be ideal.

Thank you for introducing this technique! :D

Haltanny · Jul 25, 2017 2:17 PM

@Ritsika How many stallions you keep each generation/season per clan depends entirely on how many mares you'll have to breed them to and your preferences. :) Personally, I try to aim for 10-15 mares per stallion, but of course I may keep extra boys if they are just too gorgeous. :)

The smallest size system that would work would be 1 mare per clan bred to 1 stallion per system. With a minimum 3 clans, you could start a system with as few as 4 horses (1 stud + 3 mares, each mare being a clan foundation). You would want to keep as many daughters from each mare to grow your clan size for the second generation and only the very best son from each mare to cover the daughters of the next one. This would put second generation studs covering their half sisters, and then third generation studs covering cousins (?)(double cousins?) for the 3rd generation, and further away but still linebreed with each generation after. This would be a good way to linebreed to an extra special stallion.

I think 5 mares per clan would be the fewest I personally would use (unless I did something like above on an extra special stud), and you have to have at least 3 clans for it to work properly. So my personal minimum would be 3 stallions (1 per clan) and 15 mares (5 per clan) per system.

My clans have 9-10 mares and 1 stud each, and I have 6 clans. I could have done 3 clans with about 20 mares and 2 studs each. I keep all my mares, (except some RS, PF, etc show mares), in my main pasture. When I breed, I put up to 10 mares and my chosen stud into my small pasture. This way I still get the pasture bonus, but I am in full control of who is bred to whom. :)

Haltanny · Jul 25, 2017 2:29 PM

@DivineDreams Aside from the fact that I am aiming to breed out all paint patterns, I have only 1 horse with frame and few with any other lethal genes, so it's a non-issue for me.

For someone that is breeding for frame or other lethal genes, doing as Cheers says and keeping your studs clean of the lethal genes would be the easiest way to avoid problems. You could also alternate your clans in a way that avoids breeding two lethal genes.
For example, Clan A & C are frame studs over solid mares. Clan B & D are solid studs over frame mares. Keep foals that match their mums (so only keep frame fillies and colts from frame mares). That would ensure that the next generation you are putting solid colts from A & C over frame fillies from B & D, and frame colts from B & D over solid fillies from C & A.

@Timber Keep in mind that the stallions will be going to breed mares in the next clan. Let's say for example you start with 3 'plain" clans: Buckskin clan, Black clan and Brown clan. Your second generation, the colt from the buckskin clan will breed to the black clan fillies, black clan colt will breed brown clan fillies, and brown clan colt will breed buckskin clan fillies. It it entirely possible, you just have to be mindful of which colts you choose. You can add in clans fairly easily, if you wanted to start plain and add in "fancy" colors when you can afford to. Just insert the new clan between two and continue in the same place in each following generation. :)

Timber · Jul 31, 2017 6:24 PM

I've actually been rethinking my methods a bit. I kinda know what genes I want strive for and what genes I want to stay away from. I guess I need help figuring out how to split them up.

WANT
Cr (ht)
Brown Bay
Dun (hm)
Llp *
Sabino 1
Rabicano
Stysty

DO NOT WANT
Roan
Tobiano
Large amounts of splash
Frame
All volatile white genes (w1, w2, etc)
Gray
Wild Bay
Champagne
Palominos

TOLERATED
W20 (its everywhere why fight it?)
Miniscule amounts of splash
Silver
DP (should get so lucky)

*Note: I don't want a super spotty app. Just maybe a small patch of white and spots (butt spots). I'm more terribly interested in the varnish. However I'm not sure about the connection between lp, PATN1, and varnish. I haven't checked but I don't think this was addressed in the microdot discussion, which is the only detailed discussion of appaloosa pattern behavior I've been able to find..

Buckskins are one coat I'm looking for. I also managed to gather a few miscellaneous duns. I was thinking of gathering some cremellos and trying to snag some at least heterozygous brown bays.

I'm also trying to pick up PF ExPro TNP ExPer herd helpers when they pop up. I was thinking at least trying to get my stallions under those labels.

Maybe 1 stallion to at least 5 mares for each group. Probably up that number should I run across more available within the time frame available.

Salvistar · Jul 31, 2017 6:44 PM

I like this clans idea. Clans just sound so catchy. I'd like to see what your project looks like a few generations in!

Cheers · Jul 31, 2017 6:57 PM

@Timber

PATN1 definitely influences blanket size but there's a wide range of expression. I know horses with only one copy who are near leopards, but you can generally expect a homozygous PATN1 to be leopard or near leopard and horses with no PATN1 to have smaller blankets. Sounds like you probably want horses with no PATN1. Unfortunately you can't search for it, so that makes weeding it out harder....

I'm not sure what governs Varnish.

Timber · Jul 31, 2017 7:23 PM

@cheers on a whim I looked at my own horses and then through search to support my quick and dirty theory.

LLlp ECA3P+ ECA3P+ seems to give me what I want. I did notice that it appeared that the horses completely covered in varnish had at least medium to extensive WF. Those with light to none just had tiny wisps of varnish. Not sure if there's a correlation but I found it to be an interesting observation.

May just nix the Llp entire for simplicity's sake. Maybe I'll just throw together a varnish herd to go with my gray/liver/wild herds.

Haltanny · Jul 31, 2017 8:33 PM

@Timber you don't have to split the colors or genes up at all. In fact, the more you can spread around, the more likely you are to get the genes you want. If you can show me the horses you want to start with, I can help you with ideas on how to increase your odds of getting the genes you want. I may have some PF and TNP mares for sale that might help your project.

Timber · Jul 31, 2017 9:45 PM

My only stallion so far:

1076412
The Mares:

1081964

1081956

1081967

1081966

1076413
Just made this Het brown mare:

1082060

There's also like 4 Het brown mares I'm staring at in Foundation Rescue.

Haltanny · Aug 1, 2017 9:38 AM

@timber So far it looks like you need some more brown genes. :) I'd pick up a hom At boy if you can find one, even if he doesn't have dun (D), buckskin (cr) or even black (E), he would be useful. Your mares so far have have enough of those genes. Your 3rd stud you could do Appy if you wanted. It's not terribly hard to keep a smaller blanket, if that's your preferred marking. If not Appy, I'd look for a hom E/E grullo or black, that would help breed out the regular bay, if you didn't want that, and also the chestnut.
For mares, I would look for more het or hom At. Some chestnut, palomino or red dun if they have At or other desired genes would work too. Definitely look for some rabicano mares and/or hom sooty, no matter their color, they will be useful in the long run.

And I'd def take those het brown mares from the foundation rescue, they will be perfect foundation quality. :)

I would put split agouti mares to the black/grullo stud (so any A/At, A/a, A+/A, etc). That would show you without genetic testing which foals carry which agouti gene. Then you can keep the ones with the gene you want. Try to keep a colt with At/a and preferably E/E, if you get one intact (might take a couple seasons, don't get discouraged).
Then I would put dun/buckskin/palomino mares to the hom At stud. This would give you all At/?Foals. All duns from your hom dun mares, and some buckskins. Again, try to keep an At/a (or At/At if you're lucky) E/E if you can, preferably one with D or Cr. At/A or E/e or even e/e could work.
Then I would put the other mares to the buckskin stud, trying to keep number of mares per stud kind of even. Depending on what mares you have, results may vary on this one.

Timber · Aug 1, 2017 2:04 PM

Oi. Hom brown stallions seem a bit hard to come by. I've earmarked a couple to pursue should I not encounter a hom brown HH.

Gotta wait for foundation rescue to situate itself before I can get those girls.

Got a new smoky grullo stallion. I'm kinda pleased with him.

1082426
And these two rabicano mares were the only intacts out of 6 creates.

1082440

1082438

I still have 4 smoky grullo creates, should I make some more mares out of those?

Timber · Aug 1, 2017 2:43 PM

1082444

1082445
Two more rabicanos that are also the perfect app pattern.

1082447

1082448

1082450
And some smoky grullo girls I went ahead and made. I have one more create but I ran out of funds.

Haltanny · Aug 1, 2017 5:07 PM

@timber Gorgeous! And they'll be perfect if you get a hom brown stud to use.

Wildland Acres · Aug 1, 2017 5:22 PM

@timber they will be lined, but I get many of the genes you are looking for. Let me know if you still want something after I breed and i can see what I got.

Timber · Aug 2, 2017 11:15 AM

I got lucky jumping on a true breeding HH and got this guy.

F Cinnabar

So the clan names with be
Cinnabar (Brown Stud)
Jade (Buckskin stud)
Lazuli (Grullo stud)

Going through and assigning my mares to each stud. Will update when done.

Timber · Aug 2, 2017 1:34 PM

Alrighty let's see...

Clan Cinnabar
Stallion:

F Cinnabar
Mares:

F CC Lust

Clan Jade
Stallion:

F Jade
Mares:

F CJ Harlequin

Clan Lazuli
Stallion:

F Lazuli
Mares:

F CL Carolina

F CL Aoi

F CL Majorelle

F CL Indigo

Still need one mare for clan lazuli. Those het browns in the foundation rescue will also be added to the list. Might have to up the number of mares to keep things even.

Haltanny · Aug 2, 2017 7:29 PM

Looks awesome! Can't wait to see your first babies! I'm going to be breeding some of mine on the 5th when pastures open.

Timber · Aug 2, 2017 9:46 PM

I didn't expect to get my clans together so quickly so i created mine young. I still have a couple seasons but this will give me time to build space for them and maybe add more members.

Haltanny · Aug 3, 2017 7:47 AM

Yeah, and plenty of time to show to get points. :)

WheatgrassFarm · Aug 8, 2017 11:24 AM

If you look into it, and are interested, they do this a lot with betta fish and guppies. They usually use two lines (you call them clans) and then use two females, and one male, and then they breed the siblings together until eventually (most of the people I know do this every 5-7 generations) they become almost completely genetically different, and they breed back. I think that it's a really cool way to breed animals, and (depending on the animal), it's a good way to breed them. I think that it might actually be really effective in this game, and I will probably use it for my newly acquired horses!

Haltanny · Aug 9, 2017 1:02 PM

@WheatgrassFarm. That is a very different mating system than Clan/Spiral mating. But it sounds interesting.

Lallyhop · Jul 21, 2018 9:49 PM

Pardon the bump of a long dead thread, but I’m extremely curious to see the results of this project! Did it go anywhere? Did it die out of the gates? Did you get any cute babies? Did you throw in the towel?

CherryCola · Jul 22, 2018 12:48 AM

@Lallyhop I maintained it for several months, but ended up adding new boys and genes, and it was tricky to try to add in, so I nixed it. Now I just breed mares to whichever stud will give me the closest to my goal.

And this is my second account.

Lallyhop · Jul 22, 2018 12:55 AM

Interesting! Thanks for the update :D

Timber · Jul 22, 2018 2:16 AM

Mine's still going. I'm working on breeding the second generation of my herds now. My OCD brain did cause some trouble by insisting that I not breed any second generation foals until there were 10 mares for each clan. Clan Cinnabar had a heck of a time throwing any good fillies so that was holding the whole operation back. When I realized my second gen was getting up in age I decided to act. The ones that are able are currently in pasture. The clan foundations are all between 12 and 13 years now so I might either let them retire and continue on with their legacy or reboot the clans. Might even start a new clan to add to the mix second go around.

But anyway, here's me shamelessly showing off my clan gen 2's.

Lazuli Clan
Stallions

Z G2 Aoi Oni

Z G2 Paul Bunyan

Mares

Z G2 Plucky Gal

Cinnabar Clan
Stallions

C G2 Jalapeno

Mares

C G2 Gold Flake

Jade Clan
Stallions

J G2 Emerald

J G2 Mule Deer

Mares

J G2 Jingle Jangle

levesel2 · Jul 22, 2018 1:55 PM

This sounds like an excellent idea, just not sure I personally could keep it straight!

Lallyhop · Jul 22, 2018 7:35 PM

@Timber They’re gorgeous!

Amgr1992 · Jul 23, 2018 1:33 PM

I absolutely love this idea! With merging all my accounts I think I may give this a try! I have a few extra barns I can set up for this! I will also be buying bigger barns as I go so I'm excited to try this! I was thinking possibly using my special gene boys for this and starting with all sba girls. I'm thinking start 3 clans of 5 mares with my Macchiato, Watercolor, and Axiom studs. As well as my counterpart mares in said clans. Pasture them all on the 28th, breed between the 7th and 10th. Keep it smallish and let all foals age up after the 3rd cycle maybe? Worth a shot :)

Timber · Jul 24, 2018 2:34 PM

@amgr1992 I'd be interested to see what comes out of that.

Amgr1992 · Jul 24, 2018 5:47 PM

Some of my special genes need to age up so itll be a few months till I start, and after the rounds I'll post the offspring:)

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