Instructional Breeding Project (Week 7 Info: MEGA!)

[Wendi Lavendel]

(06-07-2013 08:37 AM)Luna1987 Resident Wrote:  I am loving this! I do spreadsheets for all my starter cats and list what traits i find .... lol i think it's fun!

Thanks Luna, I'm so glad!! Haha, I do the same thing with my starters!

[Charles Courtois]

It's great that this breeding produced a boy, and one that matches well with the girl from week 2 too.

I think this is a good time to discuss 3 common breeding techniques for learning the hard-to-determine hidden traits of a starter (or any cat, for that matter). The 3 techniques I'm referring to are the direct pull (I know some people hate using the word "pull" here, but I need a short, simple phrase & this is the best I could come up with in my tired state lol), backbreeding, and sibling breeding.

The direct pull involves pairing the starter with a partner with very recessive traits of the particular type you're trying to discover. That is what Wendi is planning by bringing Sammy in; he has a very recessive (and retired) fur, a decently recessive whisker colour, and a very recessive whisker shape. The idea is that the traits from the "puller" will likely hide behind whatever you're starter is hiding (and if they don't, then you probably have something really nice hehe). The biggest advantage of his technique is that it is most likely to give a direct answer quickly of the 3 techniques mentioned here (if the traits used are recessive enough, a 50% chance per breeding per trait, as opposed to a 25% chance for the other techniques). The primary disadvantage of this is that it requires access to cat of the right gender with the right recessive traits, which can be a problem (and possibly an expense). Also, if the trait(s) on the cat being used aren't recessive enough, you'll never get a direct answer ( for example, if Sammy's whiskers are pure Black whiskers, breeding Poppy with Sammy would never tell us if she hid Latte whiskers; only that she hid at least Black).

Backbreeding involves pairing the offspring (OS for short) of a parent that is known to hide the hidden trait(s) being investigated with the parent, in the hopes that both OS and parent pass their hidden traits, which will be the same, telling you exactly what the parent is hiding. The primary advantages of this approach is that it doesn't require searching for & buying a new cat (since it utilizes an OS), and, as long as the hidden trait isn't the same as the OS's shown trait, will give you a definite answer (assuming both cats pass their hiddens at the same time at some point). The disadvantages are that, unless both the parent & OS have a lot of shown traits (and obviously, if a starter is involved, the starter will have no shown traits), the resulting kittens will likely be low-traited. Also, it is likely to take longer to get an answer than a direct pull would take. Finally, if the hidden trait happens to be the same as the shown trait of the OS being used to backbreed, you won't get a useful answer, & you'll never find out that you won't get a useful answer unless it comes out by another technique. For example, if Poppy hides Black Russian, & the choice was made to backbreed the week 3 kitten to Poppy, we'd either get the gen fur back (if Poppy passed her shown fur), or Black Russian (if Poppy passed her hidden fur), but we wouldn't know if it was the case that Poppy's hidden fur was Black Russian, or that the starter got Ricky's shown fur & was passing it every time Poppy passed her hidden, or both. I tend to use backbreeding as a technique of last resort, when I simply don't have the right cat available for a direct pull.

The final technique I sibling breeding, which involves breeding 2 OS's of a parent that are both carrying hiddens you are trying to discover together. When both siblings pass their hiddens of those traits, that should be what the starter is hiding. This is what Wendi is planning to do once the week 2 & week 3 OS's are old enough to breed. The advantages of this technique is that it will generally give more highly-traited kittens than backbreeding ( breeding the week 2 & week 3 OS's together will yield 4T kittens minimum, with the possibility of as many as 9T), so you're more likely to get useful cats this way. Also, since this technique doesn't use the starter directly, you can use one of the other 2 techniques at the same (this is what Wendi is planning; using Sammy for the direct pull & sibling breeding the week 2 & week 3 kittens). The primary disadvantage is that it requires 2 decently-traited OS's of opposite genders carrying the same traits (you won't likely get much out of breeding a 5T OS with a 4T OS if most of the traits shown by the 4T aren't the same one the 5T is showing), which depends quite a bit on luck hehe. Also, you'll only likely get info about the traits that both siblings are showing (for example, we aren't likely to get info about Poppy's hidden whisker shape from breeding the week 2 & week 3 starters together).The other thing is that you could run into the same problem as you would with backbreeding if the parent's hidden is the same as the OS's shown. Because sibling breeding still allows using the other techniques, I will use it whenever I have decent siblings to breed, & use either a direct pull or backbreed with the starter at the same time.

Hopefully this has helped give an understanding of what techniques to use when. Please feel free to respond with your questions & suggestions.

[Wendi Lavendel]

~ Week 4 Kitten Info ~

(This assumes you've been following the project and have already read everything up to Week 3)
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/At...73/189/127

It's Week 4 and to be honest, we weren't expecting much this week, thinking that we'd have to wait until the Week 2/Week 3 kittens and Sammy/Poppy bred... However, we ended up getting a nice surprise: Poppy revealed her hidden mystery fur!

Let's get right to it - here are the stats of the new kitty:

? Week 4: Fur Mystery Solved!

Fur: Balinese - Blue Lynx
Eyes: Genesis Water (Shape: Curious | Pupil: Big)
Shade: Natural
Tail: Plush
Ears: Mysterious
Whiskers: Silver (Shape: Curious)
Size: Normal

MOM: Poppy
Fur: Genesis - Diamond III
Eyes: Genesis Water (Shape: Curious | Pupil: Big)
Shade: Natural
Tail: Genesis
Ears: Genesis
Whiskers: Silver (Shape: Guitar)

DAD: Ricky
Fur: Russian - Black
Eyes: Gerbera Purple (Shape: Mysterious | Pupil: Small)
Shade: Flair
Tail: Big Boo Boo
Ears: Soft Fold
Whiskers: White (Shape: Curious)

So we can now add to our list of discoveries: Poppy hides Balinese Blue Lynx fur! This is a great discovery, not only because it's a new fur, but we've been able to further narrow down the placement of Balinese Blue Lynx in the hierarchy of recessiveness.

Recall that Poppy and Ricky have given two kittens with Ricky's shown Russian Black fur. This indicated that those kittens received Poppy's hidden fur as their hidden fur trait. That hidden fur had to be Russian Black or something more recessive.

Recall also that Ricky hides Ocicat Ebony Silver. What has happened this week is that instead of the kitten receiving Dad's/Ricky's shown Russian Black, it received Dad's/Ricky's hidden Ocicat Ebony Silver fur trait. This is a very recessive fur, so when it came up against Mom's/Poppy's hidden fur trait, the Ebony became the kitten's hidden trait, and Mom's/Poppy's hidden fur became the kitten's shown fur trait. That's how we end up getting the Balinese Blue Lynx!

If we look at the notes at the bottom of Saga's Fur charts (https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B0_Wqb...iMDhm/edit) we can see that Balinese Blue Lynx is known to be dominant to Balinese Flame Lynx, and that's it.

We can now confirm that Balinese Blue Lynx is recessive to Russian Black: When it was matched up against Dad's/Ricky's Russian Black fur, the Balinese Blue Lynx hid behind the Russian Black. (We will confirm this further once the Week 2 and Week 3 kittens produce a Balinese Blue Lynx.)

This means we now have a more clearly defined range for Balinese Blue Lynx: Between the Balinese Flame Lynx and the Russian Black!

Note that when you discover important information about a trait's recessiveness, you should get a screen shot of the relevant pedigree(s) and pass them along with a notecard to Liriel Garnet so she can review them and update the charts if necessary! Your discoveries help all breeders!

That's the only new discovery this week, but what a good one! Not only did we find the fur, we found out a little bit more about where this newer fur fits into the charts!

Next week we'll be breeding Sammy with Poppy, and the Week 2 and Week 3 sibling kittens, and maybe we can learn more about those whiskers!

[Sanura Snowpaw]

Such an exciting little kitteh!! Now we just need to discover those whisker traits!!!

[Charles Courtois]

It's great that Poppy is hiding such a new fur! Hopefully she passes it again next week, so that we might learn more about how Bali Blue compares to Bali Seal!

It's important to take stock of what offspring your starters give you on a regular basis (ideally every week, but especially when you learn something new about what the starter hides, or when you get a different gender than what you had been getting, or when you get an offspring showing a good number of traits). Given the new development on the fur front, now is a good time to take a closer look at her offspring and re-assess.

The Week 1 kitty (still in the box) gave us 3 traits, 2 of which are fairly standard (ears & tail), plus a whisker colour that may or may not have an interesting hidden. This box is probably best left in its current state until we learn more about Poppy's hidden whisker colour.

The Week 2 kitten (8 days old at this point & named Week2Kitten) has a lot of potential; she shows 6 traits, and hides the other 3 (hiddens she got from Ricky). She shows Russian Black Fur (and , as we found out this week, hides Balinese Blue Lynx), Grape Ice Eyes (hiding Gerbera Purple or more recessive), Small Pupil, Plush Tail (hiding Big Boo Boo or more recessive), and White Curious Whiskers (possibly hiding more recessive versions of both of those traits). She hides Mysterious Eye Shape, a Shade (Flair, Porcelain, or Twinkle), and an Ear trait (Soft Fold or more recessive).

The Week 3 kitten (named Week3Kitten, and also 8 days old) is the only male produced by Poppy so far; thus he is the only one of Poppy's bloodline that can be backbred at this point, & will be one half of any sibling breed at this point. He shows 3 of the same traits as Week2Kitten (fur, eyes, and whisker colour), shows Mysterious Ears (hiding Soft Fold or more recessive), and hides the rest (hiddens he got from Ricky). He's a pretty solid choice for sibling breeding.

The Week 4 kitten (currently still in the box) has Balinese Blue Lynx Fur (hiding Ocicat Ebony Silver), Plush Tail (hiding Big Boo Boo or more recessive), Curious Whiskers (possibly hiding something more recessive), and has hiddens from Ricky in all other traits. She is currently still in the box.

The plan for next week is to sibling Week2Kitten with Week3Kitten & breed Poppy with a new partner, Sammy, which, with luck, should give us a better idea of Poppy's hidden whisker traits, as well as possibly giving an idea of the recessiveness of her hidden fur. This is a solid plan for next week; the sibling breed will give a solid kitten (3+ traits, with a good chance for 5 or more), and the breed with Poppy has good potential for learning more about her hiddens. But the Week 4 box offers some interesting possibilities starting the week after that.

The plan for Poppy going forward probably won't involve backbreeding with a sibling, although that could change if her hidden whisker shape or whisker colour proves too recessive to determine by drawing out directly. Assuming we can get the whisker info directly, and since Week2Kitten was as traity as she was, it might be an idea, once we learn about the whiskers, to use her to get more knowledge about the recessiveness of Balinese Blue Lynx (since she hides it), by continuing to breed her with cats with different furs (9-traited partners if possible).

It makes sense to use Week3Kitten for sibling breeding. He has a decent number of traits, and, at this point, 2 potential partners starting in Week 6.

The real question is what to do with Week2Kitten & the week 4 box. I see a few potential options.

Option 1 is to leave Week 4 in the box for now & sibling breed week 2 to week 3. This will probably give us the traitiest kitties we can get from sibling breeding, at least for the moment, and is fairly economical in terms of resources. The biggest disadvantage of this approach is that it will be difficult to track when the Balinese Blue Lynx fur is hiding in an OS (the OS's of this sibling breed will be pure Bali Blue only 25% of the time, and will show Black Russian 75% of the time; 2/3 of these Black Russian OS's will hide Balinese Blue, but we won't know which ones). Also, we may get better cats with another option.

Option 2 (the second least desirable of the 3, in my opinion, but not without some merit), is to stick with the sibling breed of week2 with week 3, unpack week 4, and work on uptraiting week 4. This does have some potential, but uses more resources than Option 1, and the sibling breed still has the same problem with knowing when Bali Blue is hiding.

Option 3 (the least desirable imho, at least for this project) would be scrap sibling breeding, and either uptrait just weeks 2 & 3, or uptrait week 2 and maybe try & sell week 3 (there may be a market for him, since he hides a new fur), or unpack week 4, and do some combination of uptraiting & selling the 3 cats, though I would probably uptrait Week2Kitten for sure (she has the best potential). Because this is designed to be primarily a BREEDING project, I think it best to focus this on breeding techniques, and showing the potentials in them.

A final option (one that I'm leaning slightly in favour of) is to unpack week 4, and, in week 6, sibling breed week 3 & week 4, & put Week2Kitten with a 9-traiter with a fur recessive to Black Russian to uptrait. The main disadvantages of this over option 2 are that it uses more resources (2 more live cats than option 2), and the sibling breed will be a bit less traity, on average. The advantages over option 2 are that the uptrait will give a very traity (6+ traited) kitten, and the sibling breed will give you OS's with the Bali Blue fur showing 50% of the time(half of these will be pure Bali Blue, the other half will hide Ocicat Ebony Silver), and will show Black Russian 50% of the time (half of these should hide Bali Blue, the other half the Ebony Silver).

As I said, I'm slightly inclined to like the last option, but you may have a different opinion (or maybe even other options). What do you think? Please share!

[Wendi Lavendel]

Ahhh I wish we'd thought of that final option on Tuesday hahahaha. Oh well, I've opened the Week 4 Kitten and Charles has donated a nice traity cat (maybe a little nicer than most of us would typically have lol) for Week 2. So in 2 weeks, after the siblings Week 2 and Week 3 have a couple of goes, we'll try Week3 + Week4, and Week2 + the new kitty (we named him Bailey!). I'll update the in-world notecard.

At some point soon, Charles will explain how to go about up-traiting using a lesser kitteh! Maybe that will be round 2 or 3 of the project!

[dakillakm Resident]

awesome! what a lovely mystery fur to find and so great that you can narrow down the position of Bali Blue as well! Can't wait to see what other surprises are in store!

[Charles Courtois]

As Wendi's previous post indicated, I donated a very nice 9-traiter to put with Week2Kitten that we named Bailey. As it happens, Bailey, a 9T Cream Lynx with other very nice traits (including Light Wash eyes & Porcelain shade) is the descendant of a cat named Tilly that I bought from Wendi at auction. Through careful breeding I managed to get a pair of grandkitties showing the same traits as she does, and Bailey is the OS of those grandkitties hehe.

The nice thing about Bailey being a 9T with such a recessive fur available is that Balinese Cream Lynx is recessive to Balinese Blue Lynx ( since Bali Blue is dominant to Balinese Flame Lynx & Bali Cream is recessive to it), so breeding Week2Kitten to Bailey will give a Balinese Blue Lynx with at least 6 traits showing as an offspring 50% of the time ( the other 50% will show Russian Black & hide the Bali Cream). This is one of those situations ( a pretty new and still rare fur) where it really important to use one of the best cats available, so that is what we did. Many of you may not have a 9-traiter with such a recessive fur available, so what follows is an explanation of what I would do in that situation.

What we want to do is find a partner for Week2Kitten that will allow us to make offspring that are more nicely traited, on average, than Week2Kitten, but that also allow us to know when Week2Kitten's hidden Balinese Blue fur passes (that is the high-value trait that people will be looking for). Here is a list, in order of importance, of what to look for in a partner for Week2Kitten:

1. A fur recessive to Russian Black (Ocicat Cinnamon Silver or more recessive). This is the most important priority, since the Balinese Blue Lynx fur is what people will likely prize most in the offspring, and any offspring of Week2Kitten that show a fur recessive to Russian Black will carry the Balinese Blue Lynx as the hidden fur (ones showing Russian Black or something more dominant may not).
2. A high number of traits (preferably 9), since we are trying to produce offspring that are an improvement on Week2Kitten, and a higher traited OS will generally be more valuable.
3. If possible (but not necessary), a different hidden fur than what is showing, because it will make it a bit easier to track when the hidden Balinese Blue fur passes if you sibling breed offspring (assuming you do sibling breed the offspring, try and breed ones showing different shown furs together (as long as they are recessive to Russian Black); if you do that, & the more recessive of the 2 furs shows, that one should be carrying the Balinese Blue Lynx. Usually in a situation like this, I would prefer the hidden fur to be closer in dominance to the shown fur (it allows more "breeding room"), but in a situation like this where the fur of interest (Balinese Blue) is a bit of an unknown in terms of dominance, it may be worth it to look for a more recessive hidden fur and hope that the Balinese Blue fur shows over it.

When you put such a partner with Week2Kitten, 50% of the time you will get Russian Blacks (these WILL NOT carry the Balinese Blue Lynx fur), and the other 50% of the time they will show Week2Kitten's partner's fur (which WILL carry the Balinese Blue Lynx). The ones not showing the Russian Black are the ones you either want to sibling breed, backbreed to Week2Kitten, breed to a fur recessive to Bali Blue,or sell as hiding Balinese Blue fur (be sure to provide clear supporting evidence of this claim ( the Bali Blue full sibling of Week2Kitten's pedigree, clearly labelled "Mom's Bali Blue Full Sibling"), and DO NOT TRY TO SELL THE BLACK RUSSIAN OFFSPRING CLAIMING THEY HIDE BALINESE BLUE LYNX! The objective of sibling breeding/backbreeding/ breeding to a more recessive fur is to get a cat showing the Balinese Blue Lynx fur. If you can do that, then, if desired, you can work on getting a second Bali Blue & hope that you can get a breeding pair of Bali Blues.

If you have any questions about this, feel free to ask!

[Wendi Lavendel]

~ Week 5 Kitten Info ~

(This assumes you've been following the project and have already read everything up to Week 4)
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/At...73/189/127

It's Week 5 and we have some more new, interesting discoveries!

Recall that we have 2 kittens this week - one from the sibling breed of the Week2Kitten and Week3Kitten, and one from breeding Poppy and her new partner, Sammy. The bad news is that one kitten was a dud; but the good news is that we've found out a couple more interesting facts, and discovered Poppy's hidden whisker traits!!

Let's look at the bad news first!

1. Sibling Breed: Week2Kitten + Week3Kitten

New Born Kitten

Fur: Russian - Black
Eyes: Grape Ice (Shape: Curious | Pupil: Small)
Shade: Natural
Tail: Big Boo Boo
Ears: Genesis
Whiskers: White (Shape: Curious)
Size: Normal

MOM: Week2Kitten
Fur: Russian - Black
Eyes: Grape Ice (Shape: Curious | Pupil: Small)
Shade: Natural
Tail: Plush
Ears: Genesis
Whiskers: White (Shape: Curious)

DAD: Week3Kitten
Fur: Russian - Black
Eyes: Grape Ice (Shape: Curious | Pupil: Big)
Shade: Natural
Tail: Genesis
Ears: Mysterious
Whiskers: White (Shape: Guitar)

So, except for the tail, this kitten is exactly like its Mom. Unfortunately, we don't know if this kitten's hidden fur came from one of the parents' shown or hidden fur, so we have no idea if this kitty is simply hiding Russian black or if it's hiding the Balinese Blue Lynx.

The Big Boo Boo tail comes from dad. When Poppy and Ricky had these kittens, Week2Kitten got Poppy's Plush tail as her shown tail, and her hidden tail came from Dad. Week3Kitten got his Genesis tail from Poppy, so his hidden tail also came from Dad. Recall that Dad shows Big Boo Boo and hides the same, or something more recessive. So Dad must have passed his Big Boo Boo tail to at least one of the kittens (and either the same, or his hidden tail to the other). That's why breeding these two gave us the Big Boo Boo tail.

This new kitten also has the same Curious whiskers as Mom. This is interesting because Dad had Guitar whiskers (so he's hiding Ricky's shown/hidden whiskers [Curious/Frazzled]). So two things could have happened:

a. the new kitten got its shown Curious whiskers from Mom and is hiding Dad's shown or hidden whiskers.

b. the new kitten got Dad's hidden whiskers and is hiding Mom's hidden whisker (Poppy's hidden mystery whisker shape!)

As with the fur, however, we can't tell whether it's A or B

All in all, we learned nothing new from this kitten, and it's not very useful to the rest of the project. You could try to sell it to someone who might like a 6-traited, purple-eyed black Russian (these colours sometimes sell better around Halloween) who's willing to gamble on the hidden fur and/or hidden whisker shape, or hang onto it in your inventory in case you need the fur/whiskers for something, or maybe for KittyCat of the Month, or whatever.

2. Starter and a New Partner: Poppy + Sammy

This is the more exciting of our two kittens!!

New Born Kitten

Fur: Balinese - Seal Lynx
Eyes: Genesis Water (Shape: Curious | Pupil: Big)
Shade: Natural
Tail: Genesis
Ears: Genesis
Whiskers: White (Shape: Stubby)
Size: Normal

MOM: Poppy
Fur: Genesis - Diamond III
Eyes: Genesis Water (Shape: Curious | Pupil: Big)
Shade: Natural
Tail: Genesis
Ears: Genesis
Whiskers: Silver (Shape: Guitar)

DAD: Sammy
Fur: Balinese - Seal Lynx
Eyes: Fire (Shape: Curious | Pupil: Small)
Shade: Natural
Tail: Chop Chop
Ears: Genesis
Whiskers: Black (Shape: Wavy)

We've learned three new things with this breeding!! Let's look at each:

a. We now know that Poppy hides the Balinese Blue Lynx. The question last week was, where does Balinese Blue Lynx fit in terms of recessiveness? We knew from Saga's charts that it was dominant to Balinese Flame Lynx and from our own breedings that it was recessive to Russian Black. That's a huge range!! This week, we bred Poppy with a pure Balinese Seal Lynx and got Balinese Seal Lynx back! Go and check Saga's charts - where is Balinese Seal Lynx?
(https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B0_Wqb...iMDhm/edit)

What did you find out? You should have seen that:
Balinese Flame Lynx < Tawny & White Tabby < Balinese Seal Lynx

Wow, this really narrows things down!! We know know that Balinese Blue Lynx falls somewhere between Balinese Flame Lynx and Balinese Seal Lynx... since there's only one fur (at the time of this writing) between those - the Tawny & White Tabby - this means Balinese Blue Lynx is either just above or just below the Tawny & White Tabby.

We've decided that since we have the opportunity to place the newer Balinese Blue Lynx in a more specific position, we're going to do just that. This probably wouldn't be part of a normal breeding project whose purpose is to extract hidden traits from a starter, but in this case it shouldn't be too hard for us to do, and we happen to have a cat we can use to test this (and he's also showing a shade, which will give us an opportunity to keep trying to see if Poppy does hide a shade). Charles has donated Adalbert for this purpose:

Fur: American Shorthair - Tawny & White Tabby
Eyes: Odyssey Bellini (Shape: Curious | Pupil: Big)
Shade: Illume
Tail: Boo Boo
Ears: Vampire
Whiskers: Silver (Shape: Guitar)

Charles is fairly confident Adalbert is pure Tawny and White, which will be a huge help: If Adalbert and Poppy have a Blue Lynx, then Blue Lynx is dominant to Tawny and White Tabby. If Poppy and Adalbert have a Tawny and White Tabby, then Blue Lynx is recessive to Tawny and White Tabby.

I had some Tawny and Whites hiding Flame Lynx, but using one of those might have taken longer:
- if Poppy and the new cat give a Blue Lynx, you won't know if the Blue Lynx came up against the Tawny and White Tabby or the hidden Flame Lynx... if Blue Lynx is dominant to Tawny and White Tabby, then this scenario could happen 50% of the time for each breed, and you'd have to breed these siblings together to find out if they hid Tawny and White fur. Sometimes however, if you don't have a cat with a pure trait, this is your only option. We would simply hope to get lucky and get the Tawny and White fur from the breeding, which would clearly indicate that Blue Lynx is recessive to Tawny and White.

b. We can now confirm that Poppy hides White Whisker Colour.

Poppy's hidden whisker came up against Sammy's shown Black whiskers (Black is more recessive than White), and this confirms that Poppy does hide White whiskers. Recall that we weren't 100% sure if this was true, because Ricky also shows White whiskers - when kittens from Poppy and Ricky had White whiskers, we didn't know if they came from Ricky's shown Whisker Colour trait or Poppy's hidden Whisker Colour trait!

We can now confirm with 100% certainty that Poppy hides White Whiskers.

c. We've discovered Poppy's hidden Whisker Shape!! Poppy hides Stubby whiskers!!

Check Saga's charts - you should see that Stubby whiskers are more dominant than Sammy's Wavy whiskers, so Sammy's Wavy whiskers were able to pull out Poppy's hidden Stubby whiskers!

Note also that Stubby is more recessive than Curious - that's why the kittens born from Ricky and Poppy had Curious Whisker Shape - those Curious whiskers were coming up against the Stubby whiskers, and the more dominant Curious whiskers were showing over the more recessive Stubby whiskers. This is good news - it means that any of the Curious whisker offspring hide the Stubby whiskers!

All in all, another great week!! Next week we'll continue the plan to breed the traity Bailey to our Week2Kitten in an effort to try and create a nice, traity Balinese Blue Lynx, and we'll breed Week3Kitten with Week4Kitten to see if we can pop out anymore Blue Lynx's. Furthermore, we'll breed Adalbert to Poppy and see if we can figure out where the Blue Lynx falls in relation to Tawny and White Tabby, and make a last-ditch effort to see if Poppy hides any kind of shade.

PS Ricky says he's enjoying his time in Vegas. I think we might send Sammy there so they can do some boy stuff and maybe go trolling for some nice girlie cats!

Tune in next week!

[Charles Courtois]

It's great that this week we managed to learn about Poppy's hidden whisker traits, and as a bonus, almost totally determining the recessiveness of Balinese Blue Lynx! Hopefully Poppy passes her hidden fur next week with Adalbert, and then maybe we'll know exactly where Bali Blue is!

I want to make a few points this week about the challenge of dealing with starters (and breeding KittyCatS in general, for that matter). I consider the luck that we have had with learning Poppy's traits to be quite a bit above average. In 5 weeks, we have managed to determine 7 of Poppy's 9 hidden traits, including all 6 of the traits she is guaranteed to hide. Part of that is due to the quality of cats we have been using, and switching cats when the time was right, but quite a bit of it was simply due to luck.

I may talk in more detail about randomness in a future post, but for now, I just want to emphasize that as breeders, we need to understand what we can & can't control when it comes to breeding KittyCatS.

We have NO control out of how many hidden traits a cat passes, though by choosing their partners wisely, we can have better knowledge of how many traits they pass, and what sort of quality those traits are. Sometimes, we get lucky , and a starter will toss 7, 8 or even 9 traits. Sometimes, they won't pass any. There is nothing we can do about that, though using 9-traiters with starters will certainly relay when the starter passes traits.

When I started training for my first marathon, I was told that the most important thing was patience. The same is true for working with starters, and one of the main reasons that many people give up on working with starters is impatience. There will be runs of good luck, & runs of bad luck, and it is important to ride out the bad so that you can benefit from the good. One of my 2011 Hallowe'en kitties went 8 breedings without passing her hidden fur; when she finally did, it was American Shorthair-Red Tabby, the most dominant non-genesis fur there is lol. I've also had starters pass 8 traits in a single breeding. That doesn't mean there was anything wrong with the partner I used for the aforementioned 2011 Hallowee'en starter, or that, other than the fact that I use 9-traited partners with my starters, anything unusually right about the times when my starters coughed up 8 traits.

We can't control our luck; what we can do is create situations where we can recognize & benefit from good luck, and also get the best quality of information possible so we can know when to change our approach. That is why I use 9-traiters with my starters, and generally use ones with decently recessive traits (and retired ones when possible). It enables me to learn as much as I can, as fast as I can, and get quality offspring I can use.

Another point is that it is important to re-assess as much as possible, ideally after every breeding, so you can see what is relatively unimportant, what may be special, and when to change approaches. After every breeding, take a look at the starters pedigree page, and look at the offspring. Look for the most recessive traits in the offspring, and compare them to what their non-starter parents carry, as Wendi has been doing with Poppy in this thread. Then you should be able to determine if your approach is correct, and decide what changes (if any) need to be made. Every once in a while you may make a mistake and realize later that you took a wrong turn, or missed an opportunity; if that happens, shrug your shoulders, learn from your mistake, and make whatever adjustments you need to make. Don't get too bothered by mistakes; we all make them.

Finally, remember that you can do everything right and not get great results, simply due to bad luck. Just evaluate if your approach is sound, and if it is, simply accept that you can't control luck.

Good luck! If you have any questions or comments, go ahead!