Hello and welcome to my introduction to Selective Breeding in Petz using PetzA! I’ll be using the PetzA fork that adds batch breeding to make things simpler and faster for any breeding project.

What is Selective Breeding?

Selective breeding is the process used to create breeds in the first place. We’ve done this in the real world with plants and animals to produce things like bigger fruit, larger chickens, dogs with more docile temperaments, and stronger, faster horses for work. Of course, we’ve also used selective breeding to produce things like prettier guppies, companion animals and more. In the scope of petz, we use selective breeding to produce petz that have a specific look, personality or – in more recent years – specific goal values.

For the purpose of this demonstration I’ll be focusing strictly on a selective breed’s appearance though the same principles can be applied to other breeding goals.

How do Petz Genetics Work?

This topic is outside of the scope of this practical guide to selective breeding, but you can find more comprehensive information on Reflet’s site. Look under “Petzy Things”. Crushing Petz also has a wonderful primer on the finer points of selective breeding.

How do I start a Selective Breeding Project?

There are a few guides out there that exist on the topic! I started out with Woodland Park Breeding Center’s guide way back in the day. Thankfully the site is archived and seems to be functioning.

This one here by Rogue Kennelz and Ranch is a great launching point but doesn’t illustrate how to actually go about the process of creating a selective breed. This is where I hope to fill in some gaps.

There are a few ways to tackle starting a project. Two that I’ve enjoyed are starting with a specific goal in mind – like for my Laptop Ponies with Surprise Dali coats – or “just seeing where the road takes you”. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll be calling them “Strict Style” and “Relaxed Style”.

Strict Style Selective Breeding

This is probably my personal favorite style of selective breeding. I’ll delete or adopt out a lot more creatures during this process but this way I get exactly what I’m looking for. For my example I have my Surprise Laptop Ponies.

For my ponies these were the goals I had in mind:

• MUST have laptop pony scales (referring to the pony’s size)
• MUST have a Surprise Dali coat
• MUST have laptop pony shape (no dog parts, except for ears and tails which I thought were cute)
• Any “extra” pony parts are okay. Things like wings and horns were not bred out.
• Any pony shape (lithe unicorns to mini drafts) is okay.
• Variety is the goal
• No inbreeding. This is the most time consuming part but also makes getting lots of variety much simpler.

Like with all of my large breeding projects I used batch breeding through PetzA. For each generation I would breed 60 ponies per pairing and then select only the ponies that met my criteria. Large numbers are important because in the first generation less than 5% of ponies would be a fit for my goal. Everything else looked like this:

Projects like this will test your patience.

It takes several generations and lots of different pairings, especially if you’re going for a non-inbred project like this. We’ll go into more detail in the practical guide.

Relaxed Style

Of course, I’m not always in the mood for something as labor intensive as a Strict Style non-inbreeding project. Sometimes I like to see where the file takes me. In the case of my Lap Lions I just grabbed a small lepitaur and a medium one and bred them together to see what they gave me. When I found one that I liked, I bred it with its most similar sibling and just followed that process til it started to breed true.

For my “Lepitaur Lap Lions” I had much broader, less strict goals in mind:

• MUST be small
• MUST have a mane
• Tails are preferred
• Inbreeding is acceptable. * Note: whether the project is inbred or not does NOT dictate whether it’s strict or relaxed. That’s purely up to you as the breeder.

This is the kind of project that can be done in an afternoon with batch breeding. It’s fast, it keeps you from ripping your hair out when a pet doesn’t come out just right and sometimes it’s just fun to see where a project takes you. This is actually where I recommend starting if you’re new to selective breeding projects.

In my next article I’ll be walking you through a Relaxed Style selective breed and after that, the Strict Style. To make things simpler for myself, I’ll be using inbreeding for both projects but if you’d like to follow along with your own project, you’re welcome to use multiple gen1 pairings to get your breed started. I can also provide a non-inbreeding article if there’s enough interest. Just let me know!

I’ll see you in the next post.

If you have any questions or find an error in my articles, feel free to message me on discord @.kezune .