HGG Community Forums

Every time you breed a mare and stallion pair there is some math that goes on behind the scenes to look at the stats of the mare and stats of the stallion and that determines a mathematical range of what quality of foal they can produce. Within that mathematical range you have the middle or average quality of what they can produce and then room above and below that middle average.

Breeding Advice looks at your foal, looks at the average, and then compares if your foal is at or above the average.

There are some hidden numbers that determine the odds of whether your foal is more likely to be at the low end, high end or near the average of the range. Odds should be the same no matter what stud and mare you use. I have not seen any discussion or seen any evidence that stud or mare choice improves your odds. HOWEVER, you can influence the odds in your favor depending on what breeding method you use:
-Live cover: no bonus, foals have the generic odds of where they might fall within the range.
-AI Breeding (straws, or embryos implanted into surrogate mares with no pasture bonus): Have the equivalent of a 15 day pasture bonus, making them more likely to fall into the better end of the range.
Pasture Breeding: You can accumulate up to a 30 day bonus, making your foals even more likely to fall into the better end of the range.
Embryos implanted into surrogate mares with a 30 day pasture bonus: You get the 15 day AI bonus PLUS the 30 day pasture breeding bonus for a 45 day total bonus. The consensus among players is that the 45 day bonus is pretty guaranteed to get you foals at or near the top range of what the stallion and mare can produce.

Long story short, every stallion and mare pair has a chance of producing foals that fail breeding advice or pass breeding advice. Changing up the pairs won't change your odds of a pass/fail. Changing up your breeding method can sway the odds in your favor to give you foals more likely to pass.

So the TL;DR of this is the handful of mares I have whose offspring always pass no matter the stallion, and the handful of mares whose offspring seem to always fail no matter the stallion (all of these via live cover) is purely coincidence?

Cheers, thank you for the detailed explanation! (My also elder millennial brain got overwhelmed and had to condense it to a takeaway statement LOL)