Black Oak Farms

[NekoCookie2]

. . .

Hello dear! Long time no see. I know you restarted your Dauntless project in January, and it is now March, but would you like to see if these two (three if one survives her foaling) mares would help you? Currently they are all pregnant but once they foal, I'd love to give them to you to help out.

Night Sky

Mystic

Bubblegum Mystery


I know it's been super tough finding any Belgians on the market lately, which is the main reason I decided to come back to my belgian project. Hopefully I can start breeding up some decent stock to put on the market.
On another note, I have a belgian stallion up for stud for free if you ever have need of him!

Dexter

[BlackOak2]

. . .

Hello dear! Long time no see. I know you restarted your Dauntless project in January, and it is now March, but would you like to see if these two (three if one survives her foaling) mares would help you? Currently they are all pregnant but once they foal, I'd love to give them to you to help out.


I know it's been super tough finding any Belgians on the market lately, which is the main reason I decided to come back to my belgian project. Hopefully I can start breeding up some decent stock to put on the market.
On another note, I have a belgian stallion up for stud for free if you ever have need of him!

Indeed it's been awhile! Good to see you're still kicking and breathing.

I have found just enough to keep the project moving (lag and everything).

Night Sky, the first link, doesn't appear to have what I'm looking for, for this project. Although I've noticed that intake requirements do change during pregnancy, her daily energy requirements appear to be too high for her to have the genes I'm looking for. She'll be a no-go.

It's another thing I don't understand. Why is there such a feeding weighted difference between these two genders. For the AC males, I can find stallions that have massive eating ability and rather low requirements. Though they're uncommon, they're not quite at the rare rate. But a mare with something like that... they don't seem to exist. They're rare and almost nonexistent with the ones that can fulfill their requirements on straight grass from the AC. They usually need about 5%. -_-
I have no idea why though. It also shows when I breed them for this project. Takes about three generations and I can pop stallions that register in the 500% + grass eating potential on straight pasture. I haven't gotten any mare to be above I think 200% yet. I'm about 5 generations in. If it goes the way it does as it did last time, it'll be another 2 generations until I get mares above 200% at least.

Anyway, moving onward.

Mystic is in the same boat as Night Sky. Well, maybe I'm wrong. She's thin right now, she might have quite a bit of a difference if she picks up weight. I'll give her a try.

Bubblegum Mystery won't work I think either.

...
Dexter's a pretty stallion. Not bad as AC 1st gen goes, but not great either! Aren't we always saying that!
-_- I'll keep him in mind, but he won't work for this project currently. My stallions already show the genes I need.

On the same note, if you're looking to expand your belgian blood and want one of these dauntless project stallions (or a mare, but they don't carry the necessary blood yet), I can certainly send one over and you can play with adding these genes into your lines.

Here's, I think, my best gene-showing stallion right now.
Dimmer Than Light


His notes are in the comments... making note that I check all of their necessary stats at Very Fat status.
Although... I also think he's going to produce or start to produce in a generation out, the failure horses, that buggy, negative eating whatever that plagued and finally made my choice to scratch the first project.

It's weird though, now that I'm looking at him, not only has he dropped weight to Fat, he's also changed more of his stats from what I expect... -_- Yet another question I don't know if I'll ever be able to answer. *sigh*

Yeah. The story of HWO!

[NekoCookie2]

Indeed it's been awhile! Good to see you're still kicking and breathing.

Yes, quite! Life took a bit of a complicated turn for a bit, and I had to take a sudden hiatus. Happy to be back however!

I have other belgians, however I only listed the black shade ones. I will look to see if there are any others, but I will definitely raise their weights to very fat and list their intake (after pregnancy of course) to see if that would help you any!

AC Stallions, Belgians in particular, always seem to have more... oomph. A better body, better weight, better confo. It's the strangest thing! I've noticed it within the AC Turkmenes as well, however oddly enough it's the mares that are almost always better than the stallions. Perhaps that's just my luck though?

I believe Dexter is a second generation actually! I'll have to double check, but when I saw him I just couldn't resist.

Thank you for the offer! I just may take you up on it eventually. As of right now however, I'm mostly trying to cull some of my herd. It's the only good thing to being gone so long! Being able to look at projects and go "What the * was I thinking keeping you? Off you go!"

edit: So after a few turns on 100% Weight Gain, a few of the mares are pushing 50kg max feed. I don't know 100% if this is what you're after, but figured I'd throw it down here so you could take a look at a few. Still waiting on a few to pop but a few more turns should fix that.
https://www.horseworldonline.net/farm/pasture/155923
https://www.horseworldonline.net/farm/pasture/68569

[BlackOak2]

Indeed it's been awhile! Good to see you're still kicking and breathing.

Yes, quite! Life took a bit of a complicated turn for a bit, and I had to take a sudden hiatus. Happy to be back however!

I have other belgians, however I only listed the black shade ones. I will look to see if there are any others, but I will definitely raise their weights to very fat and list their intake (after pregnancy of course) to see if that would help you any!

AC Stallions, Belgians in particular, always seem to have more... oomph. A better body, better weight, better confo. It's the strangest thing! I've noticed it within the AC Turkmenes as well, however oddly enough it's the mares that are almost always better than the stallions. Perhaps that's just my luck though?

I believe Dexter is a second generation actually! I'll have to double check, but when I saw him I just couldn't resist.

Thank you for the offer! I just may take you up on it eventually. As of right now however, I'm mostly trying to cull some of my herd. It's the only good thing to being gone so long! Being able to look at projects and go "What the * was I thinking keeping you? Off you go!"

edit: So after a few turns on 100% Weight Gain, a few of the mares are pushing 50kg max feed. I don't know 100% if this is what you're after, but figured I'd throw it down here so you could take a look at a few. Still waiting on a few to pop but a few more turns should fix that.
https://www.horseworldonline.net/farm/pasture/155923
https://www.horseworldonline.net/farm/pasture/68569

Kg eating is important, but what I look for first (and is the more difficult of the two to breed larger) is their max ability to eat on 100% pasture. Most of these large horses will eat something anywhere from 73% grass to 98% grass. Any mare (when very fat) that can breach that line and eat... say like 102% grass is the type I'm looking for. Color can be bred out. Although I'm looking for black primarily, there'll be plenty of generations to fix color. Black is just a base color anyway. Much easier to work with and inject into other lines. Agouti will be negative with black (can't hide), no chestnut (also optional hiding agouti). Only problem is that black will hide the pangare. But I'm not going to make it too easy on everybody. They'll need to know there's a chance there's rather 'horrific' pangare genes beneath! Or pretty, if they like pangare. So that's the reason behind black.

Seeing a horse that's very fat and on 100% pasture makes it much, much easier to evaluate where they are for my project, but I'm getting a bit used to eyeing up what I see. For these mares they need to show one of these three things (at least), pasture on grass ability at or above 100%... Kg ability... at whatever I said it was in that post, which I can't recall off the top of my head... or feed requirements, those bars that are shorter than the norm. However... if there's low grazing ability, the horses generally loose a bit of my interest right off the bat... -_-

I'm heading over there to look now.

****************

Doesn't immediately look like any of them will work. But that's what I've been seeing. So I'm not disappointed.
I do appreciate it though!
That one mare, the second one you linked might do the job for some new blood, but she's the closest that I see you have.
Whenever you're done with her (even if she's older), just let me know and I'll swing by and pick her up.

[NekoCookie2]

That one mare, the second one you linked might do the job for some new blood, but she's the closest that I see you have.
Whenever you're done with her (even if she's older), just let me know and I'll swing by and pick her up.

She's up! Go ahead and offer $1.
https://www.horseworldonline.net/horse/profile/3270758

Knowing that now, whenever I go to the AC to collect more Belgians I'll try keeping an eye on such. Or if I happen to find someone selling a Belgian on market. Always happy to try and help out!

[BlackOak2]

That one mare, the second one you linked might do the job for some new blood, but she's the closest that I see you have.
Whenever you're done with her (even if she's older), just let me know and I'll swing by and pick her up.

She's up! Go ahead and offer $1.
https://www.horseworldonline.net/horse/profile/3270758

Knowing that now, whenever I go to the AC to collect more Belgians I'll try keeping an eye on such. Or if I happen to find someone selling a Belgian on market. Always happy to try and help out!

The market moves a bit slowly, for sure. Luckily, it seems the only belgians that are moving much on the market are the already competition-proven ones. They're generally avoiding the AC's. Lucky me.
And thank you!

[NekoCookie2]

. . .

You're welcome! Hope she helps Like I've mentioned, I'll try keeping my eyes open for belgians that fit your criteria for now on. Always happy to be of help.

[BlackOak2]

Dauntless Project

Small milestone update. And Additional Information, see lower section.

With the welcoming of the fifth and sixth generations, the mares have finally starting achieving grazing broaching 200% on 100% pasture. Here's the first two:

Lunar Rule

Envy Experiment


I'm hoping that within another two generations max, that I'll have mares that will at leach make minimum grades (BE 3/EK 3). They're already Big Eater 3 and 4, but the grazing is always a little slow to increase. Whether that's because of my preference for the Max Feed in kg over grazing numbers or not, I don't know.

Once I finally pass the minimum grades, I can phase out all of the other mares that aren't crossing that threshold and work on breeding out colors as I push their eating requirements down and their eating ability up.

Meanwhile, I have been regularly introducing fresh AC stock to keep the COI down and ensure there's a good amount of random genes.

Part Two of this project is finally within sight.

****************
Additional information.

Well, a turn or two after I posted this reply, one of my stallions that I had just moved from a barn and into a retirement pasture, gave me that 'not eating enough' error.

It's certainly disheartening, but not unexpected. Although I did think it wouldn't be popping up with so few generations in. But such is.

Now I must make a decision to either keep striding ahead, or cull out all of his offspring. The problem is, though it may be 'genetically inherited' (I'll get to that phrase in a moment), I suspect that all of these horses will eventually suffer from this error regardless of whether I cull him and his offspring or not.
I still don't know what causes it and I don't know what makes him different from the other stallions. I have more than a few with stats that trumps his and yet they haven't yet thrown any errors.

Red Hot And Daunting


I have already resurrected the bug report that covers this bug from my project as well.

Now to tackle my phrase 'genetically inherited'. I don't mean that it's an actual code in the game that admin put there to be used. The error is, at least in my mind, an actual bug. Or, maybe just an unintentional break of what the code is actually supposed to do. But once it manifests in one horse, in my first run-threw of this project, it manifested that much more quickly and more easily in the offspring. Eventually, it either snowballed into those negative-food horses or the bug or unintentional break was pushed until math makes negative numbers appear.

So, I'm still facing a little impasse... Do I cull him and his offspring? Or do I keep him, let this downward spiral happen and play with the eventual outcome horses to see if the issue can be 'bred back out of' just like I 'bred the issue in'?
For those of you that are keeping track, opinions are welcome.

[BlackOak2]

Dauntless Project

After a number of days of self-deliberation, I've decided that I have enough stallions available and that I will be culling Red Hot And Daunting from the project and rehoming all of his foals.

I have run a couple of more experiments with him, with varying results (and still very confusing results). He will stay with me until his eventual end (and that will likely happen soon enough).

I don't know what else I'll be able to glean from him before then. For whatever results I do pull from him, they can be found here in the newest posts.

[BlackOak2]

Dauntless Project

While looking through some of my retired pastures to see about rehoming some of these older ones that haven't produced acceptable offspring, I cam across another stud that is displaying the 10% energy issue. Since I've decided to cull out all of these that I can find (meanwhile hoping that I find all of them that happen), I won't be taking note of this one in the bug-log, but will just be culling all offspring and pulling him from the project.

Dimmer Than Light


Considering he is an older adult, there are foals of his that have already entered into the breeding phase of their lives. Perhaps some of the aforementioned horses in this log will suddenly disappear. This will indicate the reasoning for their disappearance.