HGG Community Forums

I am looking for feedback on this idea.

A common trend is members not understanding what breeding advice is for. They want it to be either an absolute judge of quality or tell them how good the foal is for that cross. How it actually works is to compare the foal against the sire, and then separately compare the foal to its dam, and if it is a good deal worse than either it fails the foal. This means that some crosses will never produce a foal that passes as one parent always drags the quality down too far.

I think how people really expect it to work is for it to tell you if this foal is a good foal for that particular cross.

Example using completely made-up numbers:

Sire has an ability of 125, dam has an ability of 95. The average ability of both parents is 100. Foals are an average of the parents plus or minus a weighted random factor. Let's say foals can be born with an ability of 92 to 117 from these parents and that the average foal is born with an ability of 109.

Right now it is impossible for this cross to ever produce a foal that passes breeding advice because even the best possible foal at 117 (a foal massively better than the dam) does not compare well to the sire.

How I think people intuitively expect breeding advice to work is for any foal that is better than average for this cross to pass. (The exact passing percentage could be dialed in) In this case, any foal that was say 110 breeding ability or better would pass breeding advice. It would make breeding advice more intuitive and more newbie friendly, plus allow bootstrap breeders access to basic testing and not have to see that untested message constantly. (I would leave strict breeding advice alone. )

I am interested to hear what you think the pros and cons of such a switch would be.