Buy a mating

The mating market: every mating right offered in the world, at a fixed price, reserved or at auction.

Buying a mating means buying access to the genetics of a stallion that is not yours. It is what makes breeding possible without owning a great sire, and it is often the best use of one's sulkies when starting out in breeding.

At the top of the screen, the Current offers counter recalls the total of what you have committed in auctions, horses and matings together — it limits what you can still offer.

Reading a line

The stallion and his description, with his genetics: a stallion who sells matings shows them to everybody, whatever the display setting of his owner.
The owner, clickable.
The deadline and the type of sale.
The quantity offered in that batch.
The price, which is a price for one — per mating, not for the batch.
Refuse and Buy.

One can take only part of it

A batch of five matings does not have to be bought whole. You choose the quantity at the moment of buying, and the rest of the batch goes back on the market for the others. See Purchase of a mating.

That is a good reason not to rush at a big batch: nothing obliges you to tie up your money in ten matings from the same stallion.

The filters

The type of sale first — Fixed price, Reserved, Auction, and above all Offer in progress, which finds the auctions you have bid in. Then the stallion's name, the owner's name, the speciality, the age, all the genetics, the price and the earnings. The sort starts on the price.

The speciality filter is to be set first, and it is not optional: one crosses only between horses of the same speciality. A trotter's mating will never serve a flat mare.

The genetics filter comes next, and it is the one that does the work: one buys a mating for the characteristic one's breeding lacks, not for a name.

What you are buying exactly

A right, poured into your Matings available, which carries the stallion's birth genetics — the ones that count for heredity, and that will never move again.

Two things to know before paying:

The right expires after 90 days, and nothing is refunded. Only buy what you will use.
The stallion's record guarantees nothing. What makes a good sire is his ability to pass things on, which can be read on no card. Breeding explains how to spot it, and why a modest stallion may be worth more than a champion.

Refusing a reservation

When a player reserves matings for you, the menu counter lights up and the line appears here with a Refuse button. Refusing immediately gives the quota back to the seller, who can do something else with it: see Refuse a reserved mating.