Fun with Breeding "Advice", "Tips", Tricks and Superstitions :)

[Devilness Chant]

I have to say Mal knows her kitties. I wanted to be a breeder just like her if I ever grew up. She watches each of her kitties and knows them inside and out.

Ok back to tricks I had mentioned before about giving my kitties initials to keep track of who the parents were so I could keep track of traits inbreeding and so forth.

I just wanted to mention also that this helps to find them in your pedigree. Rather than having to scroll up and down the page to find each one, having the same initials or variations of the same name, groups them so they're easier to find. It's also helpful if you use the hud.

The HUD is one of the greatest helpers with kitties. It helps you to find them if you think one is missing you can check the hud. If you want to bring two kitties to you to set partner or to breed, you can do it from the hud. You can check all your kitties stats with it. I swear by mine.

[Saxoni Fenstalker]

The best tip I have is to whine to your friends about how awful your kitties are being, then the little buggers will throw you a great box just to prove you wrong! That's what happened to me this morning! Oh, and shaking a dead meerroo on a stick at them works too, just not as well. Other than that, I pay close attention to the dominant/recessive trait lists developed by Saga with so many people's input. Oh and NEVER open 20 kitten boxes at once - I did and now can't keep track of who has what! lol

[Liriel Garnet]

(09-25-2012 06:24 AM)Sara Franco Wrote:  

(09-25-2012 06:13 AM)Kayleigh McMillan Wrote:  

(09-25-2012 06:09 AM)Sara Franco Wrote:  OMG Anna LOL
And yes I get toys and teacups now waaaaay more than before dunno about others!

Hm,... I feel a discussion coming about randoms and odds

*giggles* See rareness of these sizes for example must be managed somehow, their rareness can't be random and probably they made them less rare now .

Actually, this is one area where I do believe that they 'influence' the odds, and it's only in the initial 'setup' of starters plus the 'random' birth events like teas, toys, and gems. Please note that this is my opinion only, based on observation from a year of breeding.

We all know that starters are guaranteed to hide a minimum of six non-genesis traits (fur, eye color, ears, tail, whisker shape, whisker color). As an example, there are currently 38 non-retired eye colors on Saga's chart. Do we really believe that 1 in every 38 new starter boxes carry Ody Bellini? Or that 1 in every 4 starter boxes hide Blonde-streaked whiskers?

As for the non-guaranteed traits, while it's possible that there's a 50/50 shot for each of the eye traits, there are three unretired shades. If it was a random chance for any of the four (the three plus natural) then 75% of starters on average would hide a shade. My experience says they don't. Even if they calculated it by 50/50 shot at a shade and then a three-way tossup for which shade... I don't see that 50% of my starters hide shades (at least the ones that weren't guaranteed, like the Ambrosias).

Size-wise -- I know there are lines and cats that seem to give me more small ones, but even this I'm not sure of any more. It's possible there's just a random calculation at the end of a box's calculations (whether it's a starter determining its initial population of traits or a bred-out box) that says something like 'roll a d20, if you get a 1, i'm a tea, a 20 i'm a toy, anything between is normal'. (Please don't take this as a true representation of the odds, it's just an example i pulled out of thin air to explain what I'm thinking.)

The last facet is the 'random' things that happen when a box is bred. Most times this is limited to jewels, which one assumes is a 1/1000 chance or something similar, another calculation done when the box is populated and if so, the little rezzer thing rezzes a jewel along with the box. The other is the 'random special costumes' like the Mardi Gras kitties, the Lucky Irish kitties and the recent Olympics Team kitties. In both cases, we *know* that these are calculations which can be and are biased in the programming somehow. Fancie cats give a jewel every box as opposed to a 1/xxx chance. The specials are limited to one per AV, so whatever the initial odds are, once your cats birth one, the odds drop to zero.

There are some odds that they *do* influence. I simply don't believe that the timing of traits passing from a starter or the apparent tendency of some cats to throw hidden traits and others shown traits is one of them.

[Devilness Chant]

(09-25-2012 09:21 AM)Saxoni Fenstalker Wrote:  The best tip I have is to whine to your friends about how awful your kitties are being, then the little buggers will throw you a great box just to prove you wrong! That's what happened to me this morning! Oh, and shaking a dead meerroo on a stick at them works too, just not as well. Other than that, I pay close attention to the dominant/recessive trait lists developed by Saga with so many people's input. Oh and NEVER open 20 kitten boxes at once - I did and now can't keep track of who has what! lol

We need a voodoo doll on a stick to wave over them now! Scare them with the pins! lol

I have a ton of new kitties I opened the past month. One thing I do lately since I can't keep track of them is sort them on the pedigree site by age.
I also keep a lot of the babies in cattery so i can I can see their traits without having to click on them or look them up all the time. By the time I pull them out of cattery I have a good idea what they show and hide.

[Kayleigh McMillan]

(09-25-2012 09:21 AM)Saxoni Fenstalker Wrote:  The best tip I have is to whine to your friends about how awful your kitties are being, then the little buggers will throw you a great box just to prove you wrong! That's what happened to me this morning! Oh, and shaking a dead meerroo on a stick at them works too, just not as well. Other than that, I pay close attention to the dominant/recessive trait lists developed by Saga with so many people's input. Oh and NEVER open 20 kitten boxes at once - I did and now can't keep track of who has what! lol

ROFL!!!
The dead Roo trick I should try for sure!
Does the trick work with dead Meepets as well?
I tried to feed my kitties a Roo once and they looked quite interested.

[Saxoni Fenstalker]

(09-25-2012 09:37 AM)devilness chant Wrote:  

(09-25-2012 09:21 AM)Saxoni Fenstalker Wrote:  The best tip I have is to whine to your friends about how awful your kitties are being, then the little buggers will throw you a great box just to prove you wrong! That's what happened to me this morning! Oh, and shaking a dead meerroo on a stick at them works too, just not as well. Other than that, I pay close attention to the dominant/recessive trait lists developed by Saga with so many people's input. Oh and NEVER open 20 kitten boxes at once - I did and now can't keep track of who has what! lol

We need a voodoo doll on a stick to wave over them now! Scare them with the pins! lol

I have a ton of new kitties I opened the past month. One thing I do lately since I can't keep track of them is sort them on the pedigree site by age.
I also keep a lot of the babies in cattery so i can I can see their traits without having to click on them or look them up all the time. By the time I pull them out of cattery I have a good idea what they show and hide.

I sort mine on my pedigree page as well. I use my pedigree page constantly and can't imagine trying to breed without it (THANK YOU, KC peeps for creating that!!!). But I also keep various paper lists of which cats have or hide whatever trait I'm interested in breeding. Clovis keeps telling me I should create a database, but I'm old fashioned that way I guess (and lazy!)...paper lists just seem easier to me. I would love to hear about the various ways other people keep track of their breeders.

[Kayleigh McMillan]

I group my breeders on pillows next to eachother and their boxes I place in between them.
Not sure why but I sort of remember who they are and what they hide by the location they are at in my cattery.
So if KC comes with the Lucky Irish Clover eye or some other random breed and I need to seperate the boys from the girls I get a total freak out and need to wear my lucky pants and underwear to handle that (COD).
When I finished a line the boxes get some sort of complex name of what they hide and all and I place them in my stock grouped together when they are siblings.
Odd enough I rarely use the pedigree only if I have new cats from an auction or bought one to investigate them.
And ofcourse I use the pedigree from cats for sale.

[Bea Shamrock]

(09-25-2012 10:56 AM)Saxoni Fenstalker Wrote:  I sort mine on my pedigree page as well. I use my pedigree page constantly and can't imagine trying to breed without it (THANK YOU, KC peeps for creating that!!!). But I also keep various paper lists of which cats have or hide whatever trait I'm interested in breeding. Clovis keeps telling me I should create a database, but I'm old fashioned that way I guess (and lazy!)...paper lists just seem easier to me. I would love to hear about the various ways other people keep track of their breeders.

My way is rather similar to yours Saxi (although I'm my own Clovis, telling me I should create a database so I can search more easily by a number of different variables).

When the autonaming started and I stopped staring at each new kitty wondering what name would suit them (I usually like the autonames) I started adding silly last names that would remind me of their parents. For example, XXX of da Surprising PassioNate Russian are babies from PassioN (mum) and Ivan (a gen flame II boy that ended up hiding oci chocolate). XXX of da XtraSurprising PassioNate Russians are their grandbabies, who turned out to be hiding fussy from dad as well.

My handwritten notes are in notebooks and I also write down my plans for next pairings there when new kitties have been born, adding a check mark when I've paired them.

[Sara Franco]

I use a spreadsheet in google documents to be able to access them on my phone anywhere, in columns I keep the visible and hidden traits and I use the filtering option to search in them which is really helpful.

The database idea is good too, but as I don't have a database server and can only access that at home, I prefer google documents.

Also doing plans in a different sheet for breeding, I think it is very important to plan them, I never let any 2 cats mate randomly. I keep also a record for all my past matings and for the almost retired cats to be aware they need to get milk or cuddling.

Keeping the hidden traits in a document or anywhere really helps later with knowing their offspring, I highly recommend it.

[dakillakm Resident]

I also use the Google documents and have several spreadsheets for various things. Now that I have a few more pairs of cats though, its getting a bit confusing the way I have it set up. Going to need to do some re-vamping soon. I love the pedigrees as well but it is helpful to have it written down for later when I may have forgotten something that was hiding way back there.

Random Kitty Habit: I definitely fall in the category of holding kitties when they are close to making a box. I don't even pretend this makes any difference in the quality of the box, but I do think it speeds the process up a little bit.