Breeding, continued
The same operation as Breed with a bought mating, taken from the other end: you start from a dose in your stock and you choose the mare that will receive it.
It opens from Matings available, by the Breed action of a line.
Why go through the stock
Because it is the stock that has a deadline. An out-of-date dose is money thrown away, and it is the only element of breeding that is lost all by itself if one forgets it.
So the right habit is this one: you open your stock, you look at the nearest use deadlines, and you look for a mare for the doses about to expire. It is the reverse of breeding reasoning — you start from the constraint, not from the plan — but it is what saves you from losing a mating paid dearly for.
How it goes
The list of your mares, with a Breed button per line. One click, and the game displays the expected date of birth or the reason for the refusal; the confirmation appears only in case of agreement.
One mare at a time, which is logical: a dose covers one mare only.
The seven reasons for a refusal
Before writing anything at all, the game examines each mating and displays its verdict. A refusal always carries one of these reasons:
- Non-identical speciality. The sire and the dam must run the same speciality. It is the most frequent refusal, and the easiest to avoid.
- A mare for sale can't be bred. Withdraw the sale first.
- A stallion for sale can't breed. Same reason, from the other side.
- This mating exceeds the stallion's quota.
- This mare already has 2 foals waiting to be born. That is the maximum, and it cannot be got round.
- The foal would be born after the mare's retirement date. The trap of old mares: see further down.
- Mating prohibited, the catch-all message: the horse is not of the right sex, it does not belong to you, or it is not yet born.
As with the other way round, the quota does not apply — the dose belongs to you — and the state of the stallion it came from no longer matters.
One dose, one foal
As by the other way round, the dose is consumed only if the foal is conceived. If the mare has stopped being suitable between the display of the verdict and your click, nothing is done and the dose stays in your stock.
When the foal will be born
When the mating is accepted, the game does not say “all right” but “Ok for a birth on…”. The date is calculated, not chosen, and it obeys four constraints at once:
- A foal is always born on the 1st of a month.
- At the earliest 20 days after the mating.
- The mare must be at least three months old at the moment of the birth.
- And if she is already expecting a foal, at least 20 days after that one.
The date retained is the first that satisfies everything. In practice, count on one to two months between the mating and the birth.
The trap of old mares
It is the seventh reason for a refusal, and it surprises everybody once. A mare cannot be bred if the foal would be born after her own retirement — and since the birth is pushed back to the 1st of the following month, the window closes more than a month before the end of her career.
In other words: a mare with five weeks left to run is already barren. If you were counting on getting one last foal out of a good broodmare, do it two months before her retirement, not the week before.
And if no mare is suitable
That happens, above all at the end of the term: a different speciality, mares already carrying, or too old. Two ways out, and neither is pleasant: sell the dose on while it still has value — see Sell a mating — or let it expire.
The lesson is upstream: one buys a mating for an identified mare, not because the stallion is handsome.