Best ways to organize breeding projects

[brittanybelike Resident]

I've just invested some lindens into about 30 kitties and would like to start some breeding projects for fun. May I have some tips on the best ways to organize and keep track of my projects. Not to fond of google docs (noob) & my notecards in my inventory are starting to overwhelm me. Not enough space & I always forget what I name things. Thanks in advance

[Tad Carlucci]

If you don't like google docs how about MS Office/Excel, or Open Office

[Kayleigh McMillan]

Reading the traits talk is quite important to give you a good idea of what you are doing and to be able to give direction to your breeding projects.
So I'd read and read and read that and use the rest of the docs as a reference mainly to know the dominance order of trait in relation to each other.

[Ivy Norsk]

I do over 90% of my cat work on this forum alone, using the notes on the pedigree pages. I have it open in one tab, the cattery open in another tab, and trait charts open in other tabs. I, and many people, track cat lines and traits using the names of the cats themselves: "Edward hPoshT" or simply "hRhonda" (where Rhonda is a matriarch of a line with both good ears and tail and I can tell that the kitten hides both) or simply "hSassyW/ORF" - although that's waaay too impersonal for a cat that runs around my yard. Naming a cat "hRhonda" is often enough to jog my memory, and the complete hidden details are in the notes of the pedigree.

Cats listed for sale, or to be pulled out of the Cattery to be sold, I list with trait number first: "8T OciBlue FancieIndigo". Cats that I might use for breeding in the future are named "Box" first, like "BoxB8T OciBlue FancieIndigo". That helps keep the boxes in my pedigree view a bit more sorted.

I have goals for various cats listed in the notes too.
Of course, I can forget. And any more than this needs to go on some other document.

[LibGwen Resident]

I use simple text documents in a folder on my computer, one document for each female I breed. Each mate and the offspring that resulted go in that file. All my conclusions and the evidence for them are written in those files, and a note on what I'm going to do (or have done) with that box and why. There's nothing more annoying than wondering how I managed to draw a strange-seeming conclusion and going through it all again just to find that it is correct after all.

I use other files as work files, with a note in the work file and the mother document saying which file to see for what purpose.

It is helpful to keep a master list of what you're trying to do with each project. If you're doing many projects at once it's easy to forget that you want to keep *this* trait active in one project but want to filter it out of *that* project.

More suggestions for keeping track of names:

- If you're having trouble finding "that cat I was breeding at about X date", preface the title of the document with the year and month the cat was born, for example November 2014 would be 1411. You may still have several documents to check, but not many.

- If you unbox cats in batches, use a theme for the names of the batch. Gems, plants, a letter of the alphabet, games, characters from a book or TV show with a large cast....

- If you're having trouble remembering who is the offspring of whom, incorporate the names of the parents into the offpsring's name.

- If you're working on a dynasty, use a name or symbol in the names of all the cats involved in it.

[Tad Carlucci]

yeah, I forgot about it since it's been a while, but charm used to use OneNotes (there are alternatives if you're not on Windows). it allowed her to organize and re-organize her notes, and stash images in the notes. worked well early on, got to be too cumbersome for her to keep it up with hundreds of cats and 2.718 bazillion boxes.

after that, she used a system I wrote which added notes to her pedigree and cattery. that worked well until KC added their own notes and it was easier for her to give up on web-based notes. it was just too confusing for her to remember which system had the notes, and she couldn't move her notes from mine to theirs because they don't allow her to save notes except under certain conditions.

The best advice is to pick a system which works for you, and remember no solution will work in all cases, so don't be afraid to try new things, and adjust your system as conditions and your needs change.