The Mechanics of Breeding Mares

Original article written by Regina Moore posted 11 years 0 weeks ago

There are articles, by myself and others, about things to consider when breeding mares, in terms of finances, and selecting mares and stallions. This article focuses on the raw mechanics – in other words, the preliminaries and how fake SIM horses “do it”.


PLAYER ELIGIBILITY FOR BREEDING
Players must have been playing SIM for six weeks to breed any mares. If you’re not sure if you’ve been in SIM six weeks, you can look at any broodmares you might having in your breeding barn, and see if there is a “Breed This Mare” option on her page, which would be located just below “Change Home Location”. If the option isn’t there, then your six weeks isn’t up yet.


BASIC EQUINE BIRDS AND BEES
In real life, horses have a gestation period of eleven months, which means they can have one foal a year. In SIM, broodmares can also have one foal a game year, but there isn’t any gestation period. Conception and birth happen simultaneously. Therefore, if you breed a mare in Year 34, the foal will be born in Year 34, become a yearling that can be trained (worked out and galloped, etc) in Year 35, and will be racing in Year 36. (Exceptions: Arabians don’t start racing until they are 3yo. Thoroughbreds bred for steeplechasing can’t be turned into a steeplechaser until they are 3yo, and they don’t start racing over jumps until Week 8 of their 3yo season.)

Horses in SIM have a 100% conception rate, so you always get a healthy foal from breeding. This is tempered slightly by the fact that, at the beginning of each game year, the computer randomly selects a certain number of stallions and mares to be sterile for that game year.

In real life, a horse is “bred” in the state or country where the foal is born. In SIM, the foal is “bred” where the stallion is standing. So, if you want, say, a foal that is eligible for stakes races restricted to Texas-breds, you need to breed your mare to a stallion standing in Texas. It won’t matter where your mare is located because, in SIM, the stallion and mare don’t need to be in the same place, or even the same country, to breed. If the mare is in Japan, and is bred to a stallion standing in Texas, the foal will be born in Japan at the same farm the mare is at, but he will be considered a TX-bred.


TIMING
There isn’t any advantage to breeding at certain times of the SIM year. It will have no bearing on the quality of foal if you breed the first minute of a new game year, or wait until the very last minute of the game year.

The breeding year (and therefore the SIM game year) extends one week beyond the final Week 16 races. This gives access to newly retired stallions that ran in Week 16 races.

The deadline for breeding mares is the equivalent of the ending of a game year. According to the SIM calendar (located under the Community heading of your office page), the deadline for Year 34 foals is noon Pacific Time on Friday, January 25th. You can breed mares for Year 34 foals right up until 11:59 AM Pacfiic time that day. As soon as the clock hits noon, the computer rolls over to Year 35, aging all horses by one year, and all your mares will show “unbred” status (unless they’ve been randomly chosen by the computer to be sterile for that year). At that point, you can immediately start breeding for Year 35 foals, if you desire.


MARES ELIGIBLE FOR BREEDING
Any female used for breeding is known as a broodmare. In SIM, broodmares can be anywhere from 2yos to 12yos and older. Once they hit 12yo, there’s a possibility that they might die during foaling. If the mare is at risk of dying, the vet will give you the option of paying $20,000 to keep her alive, but she’ll be pensioned to your pasture to live at least a few more years, and no longer be eligible for breeding. If you’re a new player, you probably aren’t going to want to pay that $20,000, unless you’re really, really fond of the mare.

There’s also an option, for 12yo+ mares, to insure that the mare won’t die during foaling and can live at least another year to have a foal, but that price is astronomical. If you could afford to pay it, you wouldn’t need be reading an article on how to breed SIM horses.

If you have some broodmares in your Breeding Barn, and you aren’t sure if they’ve been already bred this year or not, you can look at the column on the far right in the list of horses, which is titled “Bred”. Any mare that shows “unbred” is eligible to be bred this year. Once she’s bred, her status will change to “bred” for the remainder of the current game year, and then back to “unbred” at the beginning of the next game year.

You can also look at your mare’s progeny tab. If she has an offspring that is “0” years old, then that’s a foal, and it means she’s already been bred this year. You’ll have to wait until next year to breed her.

If a mare doesn’t have a foal this year, and yet shows “bred” status in your Breeding Barn, that means she was randomly chosen by the computer to be sterile this year. Again, you’ll have to wait until the next game year, when her status switches back to “unbred”, before you can breed her.

You don’t need to worry about buying a mare off the sales list, or at auction, that might have already been bred this year. The game prevents bred mares from being sold in such public venues. Mares already bred in the current year can only be sold or given away via private transaction.


WHERE TO FIND BROODMARES
You can turn any 2yo+ filly or mare in your Racing Barn into a broodmare, by choosing to “Retire This Horse”. (It’s located above the “Sell or Offer Horse” option.) Once she’s retired, she can never race again, and can’t be un-retired. She will now be located in your Breeding Barn, rather than your Racing Barn.

If you want a “fresh start” broodmare, you can spend 6000 game points and Create a Mare (CAM). This is where you choose a stallion and a maternal grandsire from a list, to create a 6yo unraced broodmare that is ready for breeding. Once a CAM is created, then breeding her, selling her, etc., isn’t any different than for any other mare. You’ll probably want some advice from other players before creating a CAM (see the webpage at https://sites.google.com/site/simcreateamareresearch/), as some of the bloodlines are more successful at producing sprinters than routers, etc.

Of course, there’s hundreds of mares available on the sales page at any time, so you can always find mares there.

There’s also lots of broodmares available at auctions, and there’s more on that subject in a section below.


FINDING OUT MORE ABOUT A MARE
If you can afford it, you can pay the bloodstock agent $10,000 to find out the quality of your mare, which goes five levels, from “this is a star mare” down to a comment about how the mare is of such poor quality that she shouldn’t be bred. (I’m not sure of the exact wording of the latter, as I believe I’ve only seen it once.) However, I wouldn’t recommend that new players pay this fee, as it’s costly for a small bank balance. What’s more, if the mare has been bred in the past by another player, there’s a good chance that she’s already been “bloodstock checked”, and the resulting comment will be in the History tab, as well as the mare’s Notes.

If you do choose to check with the bloodstock agent (which is located below the “Pedigree Chart” in the lower left box of the mare’s main information), know that you can do this before purchasing the mare, if she’s already been retired from racing. Therefore, you can know her quality before buying her. But again, this can get costly pretty quickly, if you bloodstock check multiple mares.

Another service the bloodstock agent can do is check the “nick” quality of the mare with a certain stallion that you’re thinking about breeding her to, for a fee of 250 game points. You would do this from the “Hypomate This Mare” option, which is located below “Ask the Bloodstock Agent”. Once you’ve entered the name of the stallion you want to hypomate her with, and get a page with the foal’s pedigree, there a link in the upper right hand corner to “Ask the bloodstock agent about this mating”, and you’ll get a grade from A to C. Know that As and Cs are less common. Most grades are going to be from B+ to B-.

You can do nicks with any mare or stallion combination, even if other players own both. However, both mare and stallion must be retired from racing.


LEASING AND SWAPPING MARES
Leasing a mare can be a good option, in terms of giving you access to higher quality mares than what you currently have.

Leasing a mare means that you “own” her breeding services for one game year, and then she is returned to her prior owner by the beginning of the next game year. Many mares can be leased, free of charge, from other players. At other times, however, the mare’s owner might require a lease fee. Please note that paying a stud fee for the stallion’s services is going to be in addition to paying any lease fee to the mare’s owner.

A “mare swap” is when two players lease mares to one another other for a breeding season. In other words, they’re temporarily trading their mares with each other. Usually, the mares need to be of equivalent value and proven worth for both players to be willing to do a swap.

Often, when leasing out a mare, the mare’s owner will give or sell (if there’s a lease fee) the mare to the receiving player, and then that lessee can breed that mare at will. The lessee will then be the breeder of record for the foal. Sometimes, however, the mare owner will maintain ownership of the mare, and merely ask the lessee for information on which stallion they’d like the mare bred to, and the foal’s gender, color, etc. The lessor will do the actual breeding, so that he or she is the breeder of record, and then “sell” the foal to the lessee for the price of the stud fee. Sometimes, the price will be the stud fee, plus a lease fee.


LEASE AUCTIONS VERSUS SELL AUCTIONS
There’s always broodmares available at auctions. Starting with Year 34, what you really need to be careful about is knowing if you’re bidding on a “sale auction” or a “lease auction”. In the latter case, know that any mare you bid on is a bid only for her breeding services during the current game year. At the beginning of the next game year, the computer will return her to her prior owner. If you bid on a mare in a “sale auction”, you’re buying her permanently (though, of course, you can choose to re-sell her later).


THE FORUM
Whether you’re looking to lease or buy, players often give detailed information about their available mares, such as mare quality and nick grades, on the “Auction and Sales” board of the Forum. Get familiar with browsing through there, if you’re looking for mares to breed.

Sometimes, players with just a few mares to sell or lease will mention those mares as being available on the Forum, rather than going to the expense of holding an auction.


A NOTE ON NOTES
When you get a new mare, she might have lots of information in her Notes, including nicks with stallions.

I strongly, strongly recommend that you keep such notes intact. Even if they don’t make much immediate sense to you, they might make sense later. Plus, if you own the mare and later re-sell her, the new owner might find the information valuable.

If you yourself pay game points to do nicks for that mare with various stallions, it’s a courtesy to any future owners or lessees of the mare to have that information recorded in the Notes.

Most especially, if you lease a mare from another player, be respectful and don’t delete anything in the Notes. They have that information there for a reason, and they won’t be very happy to get the mare back and find the Notes deleted.


THE STALLION
Once deciding which stallion you want to breed a mare to, you don’t need to do anything concerning the stallion. You don’t need to have any communication with the stallion’s owner. If the stallion is available at stud, then he can be bred to any mare whose owner is willing to pay the stud fee.


IT’S TIME TO MATE
Finally, it’s time to talk about the actual breeding, once you have a mare, and have decided which stallion to breed her to.

The fastest way to breed, in my opinion, is to use the “Hypomate This Horse” option (the same place you do nicks), rather than the “Breed This Mare” option.

Once you click on the hypomate option, and have filled in the stallion's name, you click “Create Hypothetical Mating”. You’ll get a pedigree chart for the foal. On the upper right is the stallion’s stud fee and the button “Breed These Horses”. Click that button.

You will now be taken to a screen where you create the foal. You can check the box at the left to name the foal later. Or, you can name the foal now. You can select gender and color, or have the computer randomly select such. If you’re a SIMperior player, you can choose the foal’s markings.

Once you’re certain that all the information for the foal is as you want it, click “Make This Foal”. The stud fee will be automatically deducted from your bank, and a “0” year old foal will now appear in your Breeding Barn, with the same location as the mother.

If you didn’t name the foal, he will be listed alphabetically as “Horse”, and have a big long number after the word Horse.

If, instead of hypomating, you use the “Breed This Mare” option, you will have to choose from one of three selections to get a list of stallions. Most likely, you will use “SIM Money Stallions”, as these are the stallions that players stand for SIM dollars. Unfortunately, this usually creates an extremely long alphabetical list, which is why the “hypomate” option is so much easier.

The “Game Point Stallions” are ones that The Steward owns, and breeding costs game points rather than SIM dollars.

The “My Alert Stallions” is for when you place favored stallions in your alerts, so that you have a short dropdown list when you reach the point of actually breeding.

Once you've created the foal, you will always be the breeder of that foal. As such, you will get 9% of the purse for any race the foal wins, regardless of who owns the foal at the time of the race.


This is a long article, but a lot of this information will very quickly become second nature, as you become familiar with the process of breeding mares.

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