Breeding for Conformation (HELP WANTED!)

I love this idea! I would like to start looking into Conformation breeding. Once I'm done with my current pairs I will definitely like to see what it would take!

The Well Conformed OMG I love it!!!

I have an interesting set of foals (twins) that were born in the old EV (and I do not know if the conformation "rules" were different then but I thought I would share)

Sire
Head 44.00 Poor
Neck 33.00 Poor
Withers 28.00 Poor
Back 96.00 Perfect
Shoulders 46.00 Poor
Legs 43.00 Poor
Knees 46.00 Poor
Hooves 31.00 Poor
Average 45.88

Dam
Head 97.00 Perfect
Neck 33.00 Poor
Withers 85.00 Excellent
Back 29.00 Poor
Shoulders 93.00 Excellent
Legs 72.00 Good
Knees 70.00 Good
Hooves 72.00 Good
Average 68.88

Filly
Head 65.00 Good
Neck 57.00 Good
Withers 42.00 Poor
Back 90.00 Excellent
Shoulders 35.00 Poor
Legs 59.00 Good
Knees 58.00 Good
Hooves 61.00 Good
Average 58.38

Colt
Head 70.00 Good
Neck 60.00 Good
Withers 97.00 Perfect
Back 40.00 Poor
Shoulders 80.00 Excellent
Legs 67.00 Good
Knees 69.00 Good
Hooves 89.00 Excellent
Average 71.50


I just find it interesting how different these twins turned out.

Guys. What if it's just random and Abbey is out there laughing her head off at us trying to figure this out? o.o

^ That would be evil, but I suspect like stats, there is a formula to it. It may have a touch of random, within a set range.

I've begun tracking daily stats with each horse. For this month I'll show, treat, care, and leisure ride every horse every day.

Next month I'll drop half down to just showing and caring and see if there is a change.

I hope to see slow improvement the first month and a loss of improvement with the poor horses in the second month.

I'll have to create a bar graph if the stats change XD

So far, it's been very consistent among my foals that they are near an average of their parents' conformation (going by the average conformation number, not stat by stat), but that the younger a parent is, the lower the foal's conformation number will be. So, foals who have a young parent will be slightly below average, and foals that have older parents will be above average.

I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with age and everything to do with either how much work has gone into the parents, or how many points they have accumulated. Of course, all else being equal, an older horse will have more improvement/points, so it appears that age is the deciding factor when it isn't.

I could conduct elaborate experiments involving older but unimproved horses vs. younger horses that have had a lot of work, or older, unshowed horses vs. younger horses that have been showed, but I don't have the capacity to do that without interrupting my work on my current lines. If anyone else is interested in trying it, I'd love to hear the results.

I am joining with my Shetland Ponies (I know, they have horrible conformation right now, but let's see how they improve >.

Well no one has posted to this thread in over a year...

But just for the fun of it, I'm about to do three breedings of high conformation AK pairs, and I'll share the results when the foals are born!
I'm crossing my fingers there isn't too much negative drift.

I know this was an older post, but I wanted to mention that conformation works a lot like it does in real life.  I raise rabbits, and when I breed them together, I combine bucks and does based on strengths and weaknesses.  The best buck in my herd may not produce the best offspring with all does, but can produce offspring better than him even when bred to a poor quality doe if she balances out his weaknesses.  There is always a genetics lottery, though, and the game incorporates this nicely.

As a rule, I breed my horses for confo the same way I breed my rabbits for type, and sometimes I come out with foals that are significantly better than both parents, such as when I bred to 70 somethings together and got an overall score in the high 80's.  Sometimes the foal is better than only one parent, or worse than both parents.  However, sometimes they are still better balanced, with less variation in scores between the traits.  This last point is very important, because you want all your scores to be as close to the average as possible for a well-rounded animal, IMO.  At least, this is true in real life.  If all the traits are balanced, you can breed a pairing several times and select for the + factor, getting rid of the foals with a - factor.  I often geld colts that come out with lower scores than both parents and put them in the rescue center, as I am fine with people showing them, but don't want anybody to breed them...not to mention the fact that geldings don't really sell on the game.  Fillies usually I keep on my spare and age out until they die, since my method produces very few animals that are not an improvement on at least one parent.

That being said, breeding for confo is a lot of work, especially if you are combining with stats and color.  I usually depend on the genetics lottery and do several breedings to preserve rare color genes, and focus more on the gene being present than the actual color produced, because having the potential for a color means it is not lost from the pool.  I let the game tell me if animals are too closely related, as the new inbreeding feature minimizes the need for me to check pedigrees, and I do not mind distant relationships between a foal's parents.  I have noticed that lines that have better confo going farther back on the ped tend to produce good confo more consistently, so I wonder if this is factored into whether a foal is more of a + or a -.

Of course, I have been working on confo since I started, so I have a large number of high confo Gypsy Vanners, Arabians, and Andalusians (less so in my other breeds that have not been around as long), but I started focusing on stats more, and I wish I had understood from the beginning more about how they work.  The specialty stats go up and the non-specialty stats go down with every generation almost effortlessly, as long as I provide specialty treats, enter my horses in riding schools, and train them on a daily basis...and simply wait to breed them longer.  I usually breed my horses at 15 or older anymore, with an occasional exception, mostly for mares.  I have a bunch of horses that had awful stats from before the recode, and with following these rules, I actually got them to where their foals were 300+ stats (as opposed to the parents, who started at 200 stats if I was doing well).  Then when I breed, my decisions are based almost entirely on confo.  The trick is to be patient, as the stats take a generation or two to truly sort themselves out, but the speed at which results happen is actually quite impressive.

Can someone tell me how his perfect head got in here? Slow Pie No one in his lineage has a perfect head.

@Zeke: His parents are excellent head and good head, though.  Sometimes you breed two good animals together and get something better...otherwise, you could not start with foundies with 50 confo and breed up into the 90's.  You play the genetics lottery every time you breed, and if you breed well, you win fairly often.

@Silver Foxie Sox: It's very helpful what you've posted! I've just got some more questions in head about your breeding technique.

I've just started my very fresh TB herd aiming 256 animals in the end (I still need about 110 horses). I don't cull TBs with lower confo points because I'm terribly interested in working for confo with standard Equine Center horses (I know it's easier when you sort the weaker ones out but I like challenge). I still have tons of time, but I want to figure out the breeding pairs a long before the time for breeding comes because it's not easy when you have 250+ horses to match.

I'm plunged into the forum topics to get some help about breeding for conformation and I got from other player's experience that older horses got higher confo foals, and maybe grandparents also taken into account.

So my questions are: You've said that you combine strengths and weaknesses of the horses for breeding to get a better balanced foal in all stats. Do you take into account the average confo points as well, or just the special points (head, knees, etc)? 
I don't know in which topic about confo, I read that some player got bigger "dispersion" of foals if difference between the average confo points of parents were bigger. Did you experienced similar things in your breedings? (Dispersion seemed to lower with the average confo points growing, so in 70-80-90+ horses.)

If you also take the average of confo points into account, do you pair up the extremes (lowest to highest average confo points, eg. 51 to 62) or the horses which have similar average conformations (eg. 51 to 51,8)? 

I know that I'll try to balance out the strengths and weaknesses. But I'm asking because my biggest problem is that I'm not sure if at first I should balance out my whole herd's average confo points (then getting about 55% for all horses), or breed similar avg conformations (and getting a range between 51-60%). I don't know which way help me to get higher conformations sooner, and I don't know if anybody has any experience with it.

^{^ People generally tend to pair weak attributes to best attributes for each pairing whilst keeping as many goods paired together as possible. The main goal for a lot of people is to achieve all goods and then build on that, there's no use having a poor point dragging an all good score down. They also breed several times in order to get the highest conformation they can out of the pairing, as there's a random + or - aspect after the parents average for each attribute.} 

I'd love to know about this too... I bred a Shetland pair on another account... and was quite shocked by the offspring as its conformation scores averaged out to be LESS than both parents original scores! How is that even possible?