Welcome To The Instructional Breeding Project II

[Charles Courtois]

First of all, let me mention that the cats and info, plus a tutorial by Wendi, are rezzed and available to look at at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/At.../189/127 .

Arti and Sydney produced their first box late on Thursday. As you’ll see later, it is an interesting box, but before we take a close look at it, I’d like to talk a bit more about choosing partners for your starters.

Making smart choices when picking partners for your starters is crucial in order to make sure you get the best results that you can from your starters, both in learning as much about them as you can, as well as getting their most desirable traits (assuming they have any) into your breeding programs.

I like to use what I call “second-best 9-traiters” with my starters. What I mean by that is that I look for the most recessive traits in my cattery (or that I feel I can acquire fairly easily), and then I choose 9-traiters whose traits are just a bit more dominant than that to breed with my starters. For example, if the most recessive tail my cats have is Puff, my preferred shown (and ideally hidden, though you may not know what all of your cats are hiding) tail trait in a cat for pairing with a starter would be something in the range of Tiger Curl to Posh. Of course, you may not have 9-traiters that carry all of your second-best traits (I know I don’t lol), but that is the ideal that I aim for, and I try to use 9-traiters that are as close to that ideal as possible.

I like to use relatively recessive traits to breed with my starters, at least in the early stages, for 2 reasons. First of all, recessive traits are more likely than more dominant traits, to hide behind whatever the starter’s hidden traits are when you breed kittens, allowing you to learn the starter’s hidden traits as quickly as possible. The other reason is that you know that the kitten will be at least hiding the traits from the starter’s partner. The better the starter’s partner’s traits, the better resulting kittens will be, and the easier it will be for those kittens to be productive additions to your cattery.

At this point, you’re probably wondering why I don’t use my most recessive traits with my starters. It has to do with what I call the “recessiveness wall”. If you use the most recessive trait you have available from your non-starters, then breed with the starter and get that trait showing in the resulting kitten, it’s hard to find out whether your starter is hiding the same trait as the non-starter has, or something more recessive. The resulting kitten won’t be a great choice to backbreed, simply because, if it happens to hide the same trait as the non-starter shows, you will never find out from backbreeding, since you’ll never know whether it’s simply a case of the kitten tossing its shown trait all of the time, or if the kitten is pure-traited. For example, suppose that you breed a starter with an Aby Dark Chocolate-furred kitty (Aby Dark Chocolate is the most recessive known fur at the time of this post), and the kitten is showing Aby Dark Chocolate. You backbreed the kitten to the starter, and all of the kittens show either the Starter’s Genesis fur or Aby Dark Chocolate. Does the starter hide Aby Dark Chocolate, or does it hide an even more recessive fur, with the kitten backbred to it tossing its shown fur Aby Dark Chocolate every time the starter tossed its hidden? We have no way of knowing! Your best course of action in this case is to not use that kitten to backbreed, and instead reach for a cat with a more dominant fur to put with the starter, wait for the right kittens to either sibling breed or backbreed to the starter, and then wait for the sibling breed/ backbreed to breed out the starter’s hidden trait. This will work, but it will take a lot of time.

My preference is to use a second or third most recessive trait I possess, and if I get that trait back, then pull out my most recessive and use it on the starter, keeping the kitten from the previous parent with the more dominant trait as a potential backbreeding/ sibling breeding option. You might not learn as quickly if it is a near-top-recessive quite as fast as if you used your most recessive trait available, but that time lost isn’t as valuable as the time lost from not being able to learn that your starter hid a new most recessive. So, if I want to discover a starter’s hidden fur, my approach of choice is to use something like a Bali Cream Lynx (the most recessive retired fur, so it can’t be hiding in a starter), and if the resulting kitten shows Bali Cream, then I will pull out the Aby Dark Chocolate to put with my starter and see what happens.

It’s time to check out the project’s first box!

Here it is:



Exercise: List Week 1 Kitten’s hidden traits (answer to follow).

Week 1 Kitten (which is still boxed for the moment- more on that later) is showing 3 non-genesis traits (eye colour, tail and ears); the rest of the shown traits are genesis. Since Dad (Sydney) is a 9-traiter, we know that Week 1 Kitten is hiding all 9 traits, that any shown Genesis traits come from starter mom Arti, and since we know quite a bit about Sydney, we have a pretty good idea of what most of Week 1 Kitten’s hiddens are.

Let’s examine the 3 shown non-genesis traits and see what we can figure out.

Eye Colour: Week 1 Kitten’s has is 18-carat Gold eye colour. Non-starter dad Sydney’s shown Mercury eye is recessive to 18-carat Gold. Therefore the 18-carat Gold eye colour must have come from starter mom Arti, and since Arti’s shown eye is Genesis Meadow, 18-carat Gold must be her hidden eye colour trait.

Tail: Week 1 Kitten has a Curious tail. That means that the shown tail trait is Curious, and the hidden tail trait is Curious or more recessive. If we look at dad Sydney, he also has a Curious tail, which should be pure. That means that the shown tail trait came from dad Sydney, and the hidden tail trait (which could possibly also be Curious) came from mom Arti. Arti’s shown tail trait is Genesis, which can’t hide behind Curious, so Arti’s hidden tail trait must be Curious or better, and is a mystery we’ll have to solve in the coming weeks!

Ears: Week 1 Kitten has a Rounded ears. That means that the shown ear trait is Rounded, and the hidden ear trait is Rounded or more recessive. If we look at dad Sydney, he also has a Rounded ears, which should be pure. That means that the shown ear trait came from dad Sydney, and the hidden ear trait (which could possibly also be Rounded) came from mom Arti. Arti’s shown ear trait is Genesis, which can’t hide behind Rounded, so Arti’s hidden tail trait must be Rounded or better, and is another mystery to be solved in the weeks to come!

It is tempting to unpack this box, pull out a male kitty with a recessive tail and ears to put with her, and find out what the hidden ears and tail are that way, or to switch Arti’s partner to one with a more recessive ear and tail (which would be the better way to go), but I think I’ll wait for the moment and see what we can learn about some of Arti’s other hidden traits from a couple of more breedings with Sydney first, and then decide the best course of action from there.

To sum up, from the first week’s breeding, we now know that starter Arti hides 18-carat Gold eye colour, Curious tail or more recessive, and Rounded ears or more recessive.

All in all, an exciting result for the first week. I hope you learn a lot from this thread, and feel free to leave comments/ questions here if you so desire! Stayed tuned to see what happens next week!

Exercise Answer: Week 1 kitten hides either Abyssinian Fawn or Siamese Flame fur, Mercury eyes, Mysterious eye shape, Small pupil, Flair or Glitter shade, Curious tail or more recessive, Rounded ears or more recessive, Black whiskers, and Curious whisker shape. The hidden tail and ear traits come from mom Arti, the rest of the hidden traits come from dad Sydney.

[Sanura Snowpaw]

So glad you guys are putting this together again! As always if you need help you know where to find me! I think this is such a great way to help other breeders because they can follow along and SEE what we all say.

[Charles Courtois]

I was originally planning to write about breeding techniques this week, but since we just had a new starter release, I figure it would be best if I revisited the topic of what to do with these starters in the first few weeks.

First of all, my normal advice regarding breeding starters together is that it is generally not a good idea, because (1) it tends to result in low-traited offspring, (2) because both parents are 50% likely to pass Genesis traits, it is hard to tell whether the offspring’s hidden trait is genesis or not, which could be vital information to have if one the starters happens to hide some highly desirable trait, and (3) even if both starts pass non-Genesis hiddens, it would be impossible to tell which starter passed which trait without breeding them separately. However, since there are special kittens that can be produced by breeding Scarecrows together or Monster Mashes together, it’s a good idea to get the special kittens from them at some point during their breeding periods. However, only put them together for the one breeding to get the special ; the rest of the time, put them with highly traited cats, ideally with fairly recessive (and preferably retired) traits, at least until you discover what the starter’s hiddens are.

It is also a good idea to pay attention to the forums and Saga’s charts over the next few weeks, as new traits emerge, to get an idea of what traits are emerging and how recessive they are. Also, if you do get any information on the relative dominance of a new trait, please send your information to SagaKitty, Wendi or myself, so we can keep the charts up-to-date (which will probably be quite the challenge in the weeks ahead).

Finally, when picking partners for your starters, you may want to pay a bit of extra attention to eye colour and whiskers, since there are definitely new eye and whisker traits in this release. It is also always a good idea to be careful about choosing the furs you use carefully, as new furs and eye colours (especially furs) tend to be the traits that garner the most attention in the marketplace.

Now, let’s move on to taking a look at the kitten we got from the most recent breeding of Sydney and Arti. Here’s the pedigree:



Week 2 Kitten (which is still in the box for now, is a male showing 2 traits (whisker colour and whisker shape), neither of which were showing in Week 1 Kitten, and, since dad Sydney is a 9-traiter, is hiding all 9 traits (Sydney can only pass non-Genesis traits). Let’s examine implications of this result.

First of all, Week 2 Kitten is a boy. This is important to note, since it does open up the possibility of breeding this back to mother Arti in an attempt to discover any of Arti’s mystery hidden traits that Week 2 Kitten happens to be carrying. Technically speaking, it is also possible to sibling breed this cat to Week 1 Kitten. However, it would not really accomplish anything to do so.

Exercise: Look at Week 1 Kitten (which showed 18-carat Gold eyes, Curious Tail, Rounded Ears, and Genesis traits everywhere else. Imagine that you bred this cat with Week 2 Kitten, and assume that the breeding went amazingly well, and that you got a 9-traited cat from the breeding! This would be remotely possible, since both hide all 9 traits (since their dad shows all 9 traits). What would be the range of results (which would be the best-case scenario) in terms of shown traits that you would get in the offspring? Assume that their dad Sydney may hide Siamese Flame and Glitter shade, but has pure (i.e. hidden is the same as shown) traits everywhere else.

Now, let’s take a look at Week 2 Kitten’s shown traits and see what we can learn.

Whisker Colour: Week 2 Kitten is showing 2-Tone Black and White whiskers. Dad Sydney shows Black whiskers, and mom Arti (who is a starter) shows Silver whiskers (as all starters do, at least under any costumes they happen to be wearing). According to Saga’s charts, Week 2 Kitten’s 2-Tone Black and White whiskers are dominant to dad Sydney’s shown Black whiskers. Therefore, the 2-Tone Black and White trait did not come to Week 2 Kitten from dad Sydney (since the more dominant 2-Tone Black and White cannot hide under Sydney’s shown Black whiskers (a hidden trait will always be at least as recessive as the shown trait, except in very specific situations which KittyCatS! always informs us about beforehand (e.g. Lucky Irish Clover and Royal Sapphire eyes)); the shown 2-Tone Black and White must have come from mom Arti, and thus must be Arti’s hidden whisker trait (hiding under her more dominant Silver whiskers).

Whisker Shape: Week 2 Kitten shows Curious whiskers. Dad Sydney is known to have pure Curious whiskers, whereas starter mom Arti is showing Guitar whiskers (as all non-costumed starters do). Since Sydney has pure Curious whiskers, he can have passed only the Curious whisker shape to Week 2 Kitten. But Week 2 Kitten’s shown whisker shape is Curious. Therefore, Week 2 Kitten got his shown whisker shape from dad Sydney, and thus got his hidden whisker shape from mom Arti, and Week 2 Kitten’s hidden whisker shape is at least Curious. Since Arti’s shown Guitar whiskers are dominant to Curious, Week 2 Kitten is hiding Arti’s hidden whisker shape, which is Curious or more recessive.

So now we have another mystery to solve…what is Arti’s hidden whisker shape? Unlike Week 1 Kitten, Week 2 Kitten is a male, and thus could be bred back to Arti try and discover Arti’s hidden whisker shape. However, it isn’t the best course of action at this point in my opinion. So far, we have 3 hidden traits of Arti’s that are the same as, or recessive to, Sydney’s traits (tail, ears and whisker shape); using Week 2 Kitten to backbreed to Arti would, at best, help us determine only one of those (whisker shape). Secondly, Arti could potentially be hiding Curious whiskers, and backbreeding wouldn’t reveal this. Finally, Arti has yet to pass her hidden non-Genesis fur (all starters hide a non-Genesis fur), and I would like to have an idea of the fur Arti hides before switching breeding partners around. In a normal breeding situation, I would definitely give serious consideration to switching Arti’s breeding partner to a cat with a more recessive tail, eye and whisker shape. However, for the sake of the project, I would rather avoid using a cat that might be too expensive for many people to acquire, and instead focus on illustrating breeding techniques once I breed out the kittens I need to do so. For now, I will keep Week 2 Kitten in the box; if I happen to get a female kitten in a subsequent breeding that is carrying Arti’s hidden whisker shape, I may consider using him for a sibling breed at that point.

To summarize what we have learned about Arti’s hidden traits in the first 2 breedings…Arti is hiding:
18-carat Gold eye colour,
Curious tail or more recessive,
Rounded ears or more recessive,
2-Tone Black and White whisker colour, and
Curious whisker shape or more recessive.
Since Arti is a starter, she will also be hiding some non- Genesis fur (which Arti didn’t pass in the first 2 breedings).

As always, feel free to reply to this thread with questions or comments, and good luck with your new starters!

Exercise Answer: We know that both Week 1 and Week 2 are hiding a fur trait from Sydney (either Aby Fawn or Siamese Flame), a shade (either Flair or Glitter), Mysterious eye shape, and Small pupils. Week 1 shows 18-carat Gold eyes, and both Week 1 and Week 2 are hiding Sydney’s Mercury eye colour, so if we bred them together and got a non-Genesis eye back, it would have to be either 18-carat Gold or Mercury. Similarly, Week 2 shows 2-Tone Black and White whiskers, and both Week 1 and Week 2 are hiding Sydney’s Black whiskers, so if we bred them together and got a non-Silver whisker colour back, it would have to be either 2-Tone Black and White or Black.

Week 1 shows Curious tail and is hiding Arti’s hidden tail trait, and Week 2 is hiding Sydney’s Curious tail under his shown Genesis tail. For Week 1 and Week 2 to produce a non-Genesis tail, Week 2 will have to pass his hidden Curious tail to the offspring; Week 1 will pass either Curious tail or Arti’s hidden tail. Since Arti’s hidden tail trait is Curious or more recessive, it will hide under the Curious that Week 2 will pass if he doesn’t pass Genesis. So, any offspring of Week 1 or Week 2 that isn’t showing a Genesis tail will have to show a Curious tail.

Similarly, Week 1 shows Rounded ears and is hiding Arti’s hidden ear trait, and Week 2 is hiding Sydney’s Rounded ears under his shown Genesis ears. For Week 1 and Week 2 to produce a non-Genesis ears, Week 2 will have to pass his hidden Rounded ears to the offspring; Week 1 will pass either Rounded ears or Arti’s hidden ear trait. Since Arti’s hidden ear trait is Rounded or more recessive, it will hide under the Rounded that Week 2 will pass if he doesn’t pass Genesis. So, any offspring of Week 1 or Week 2 that isn’t showing Genesis ears will have to show Rounded ears.

Finally, Week 2 shows Curious whiskers and is hiding Arti’s hidden whisker shape, and Week 1 is hiding Sydney’s Curious whiskers under her shown Guitar whiskers. For Week 1 and Week 2 to produce non-Guitar whiskers, Week 1 will have to pass her hidden Curious whiskers to the offspring; Week 2 will pass either Curious whiskers or Arti’s hidden whisker shape. Since Arti’s hidden whisker shape is Curious or more recessive, it will hide under the Curious that Week 1 will pass if she doesn’t pass Guitar. So, any offspring of Week 1 or Week 2 that isn’t showing Genesis tail will have to show a Curious whiskers.

To sum up, a 9-traiter produced by breeding Week 1 Kitten and Week 2 Kitten will be showing the following traits:
Aby Fawn or Siamese Flame fur,
18-carat Gold or Mercury eyes,
Mysterious eye shape,
Small pupils,
Flair or Glitter shade,
Curious tail,
Rounded ears,
And either 2-Tone Black and White or Black Curious whiskers.

(Note that this cat would tell us absolutely nothing about the hidden traits of her grandmother Arti that we haven’t already learned, which is why this sibling breeding would be pointless for learning about Arti’s hiddens).

[Vrem Vaniva]

Now, after seeing Week 1 and Week 2 Kittens, I'd be chomping at the bit to put Arti with a partner capable of revealing what she has.

So far we know her hidden eye color and whisker color ...
But the ears are "rounded or better" and the tail is "curious or better" and the whiskers are "curious or better." -- I'd want to give her a mate with the "or better" already!
If the boxes are going to be unpacked some time in the future to help with analyzing Arti ... I'd be thinking about what the grand-children / great grandchildren will look like. Actually they'll be cute (they'll look like Sydney -- maybe with Mama Arti's ears. whiskers, and tail).
But the whole line forevermore is going to be affected by Sydney's traits, and if you find something great, you want the starter-mate to add something excellent to the discovery. It's a good thing you didn't pick a mate with objectionable traits (I've done that ... had whole lines stuck with the original not-favorite eye color of the starter mate, etc).
Anyway, I admire your patience, and appreciate your careful explanations!

[Charles Courtois]

This time I’d like to discuss 3 commonly used breeding techniques for learning the “mystery” hidden traits that a kitty may have. The 3 techniques I'm referring to are what I call the direct pull, backbreeding, and sibling breeding.

The direct “pull” (I know there are people who don’t like using the word pull in this context, for the quite legitimate reason that you’re not actually pulling the hidden, but simply using a trait that can hide under the starter’s hidden when they toss it, but I can come up with a simple understandable phrase that conveys that, so I’ll stick with “pull” hehe) involves pairing the starter with a partner with very recessive traits of the particular type you're trying to discover. The hope is that the traits from the "puller” are sufficiently recessive to hide behind whatever you're starter is hiding. The biggest advantage of his technique is that it is most likely to give a direct answer quickly of the 3 techniques mentioned here (if the traits used are recessive enough, a 50% chance per breeding per trait, as opposed to a 25% chance for the other techniques). The primary disadvantage of this is that it requires access to cat of the right gender with the right recessive traits, which can be a problem (and possibly an expense). Also, if the trait(s) on the cat being used aren't recessive enough, you'll never get a direct answer (in the case of Sydney and Arti, we have already seen that Sydney’s tail, ear and whisker shape traits aren’t recessive enough to hide behind Arti’s hiddens). If your starter hides a trait that is the most recessive of its type (what I call a “top-end-recessive”), you’ll never discover it by this method; you will likely have to use one of the other 2 methods.

Backbreeding involves pairing the offspring of a parent that is known to hide the hidden trait(s) being investigated with the parent, in the hopes that both offspring and parent pass their hidden traits, which will be the same, telling you exactly what the parent is hiding. The primary advantages of this approach is that it doesn't require searching for & buying a new cat (since it utilizes an offspring), and, as long as the hidden trait isn't the same as the offspring's shown trait, will give you a definite answer (assuming both cats pass their hiddens at the same time at some point). The disadvantages are that, unless both the parent & offspring have a lot of shown traits (and obviously, if a starter is involved, the starter will have no shown traits), the resulting kittens will likely be low-traited. Also, it is likely to take longer to get an answer than a direct pull would take (the two cats are have only a 25% chance of passing the hidden at the same time). Finally, if the hidden trait happens to be the same as the shown trait of the offspring being used to backbreed, you won't get a useful answer, & you'll never find out that you won't get a useful answer from this technique. For example, if Arti hides Curious whiskers, & the choice was made to backbreed the Week 3 Kitten to Arti, we'd either get Guitar whiskers back (if Arti passed her shown whisker shape), or Curious whiskers (if Arti passed her hidden whisker shape), but we wouldn't know if it was the case that Arti's hidden whisker shape was Curious, or that Week 2 Kitten was passing the Curious whisker shape that he would have received from dad Sydney every time Arti passed her hidden, or both. I tend to use backbreeding as a technique of last resort, when I simply don't have the right cat available for a direct pull. I may also use it if I have discovered all but one or two of a starter’s hiddens, and what I have found isn’t highly desirable. In this case, I may use it if I have an offspring hiding the hidden(s) I haven’t determined yet, just to see what happens without investing too much expense. In fact, this is how I discovered Swanky whiskers! The starter that hid them (a 2013 RFL starter named Desyre), had revealed in the first 3 weeks that most of her hiddens were fairly dominant, older traits (Bengal Sorrel, Key Lime eyes, Big Boo Boo tail, and 2-Tone Black and white whiskers). The only traits that Desyre was guaranteed to hide that I had left to discover were the ears and whisker shape. Fortunately, I had a male from her second breeding hiding both the ear and whisker shape, so I unpacked him (his name was MacPherson) and set him to partner with Desyre, not expecting much. On MacPherson’s 2nd breeding with Desyre, both of them passed their hiddens, and Swanky whiskers appeared on the grid for the first time (I would later discover her hidden ear was Boo Boo btw)!

The final technique I’ll talk about is sibling breeding, which involves breeding 2 offspring (I’ll use the abbreviation OS for offspring from now on) of a parent that are both carrying hiddens you are trying to discover together. When both siblings pass their hiddens of those traits, which should be what the starter is hiding. As you will learn later, I’m planning to set one of these up with 2 of Arti’s kittens. The advantages of this technique is that it will generally give more highly-traited kittens than backbreeding), so you're more likely to get useful cats this way. Also, since this technique doesn't use the starter directly, you can use one of the other 2 techniques at the same time (which I will probably do with Arti). The primary disadvantage is that it requires 2 decently-traited OS's of opposite genders carrying the same traits (this is why I didn’t set up a sibling breed with Week 1 Kitten and Week 2 Kitten; they weren’t hiding the same hiddens from Arti, and so would have not given me any new information about Arti, as last week’s exercise was intended to show). Also, you'll only likely get info about the traits that both siblings are showing (as I just explained lol).The other thing is that you could run into the same problem as you would with backbreeding if the parent's hidden is the same as the OS's shown. Because sibling breeding still allows using the other techniques, I will use it whenever I have decent siblings to breed, & use either a direct pull or backbreed with the starter at the same time.

Now let’s look at Week 3 Kitten. Here is her pedigree:



We haven’t learned anything new from this breeding (we already learned from the first 2 weeks that Arti hides at least Curious tail and at least Curious whiskers, and these are the only 2 traits that Arti passed this time). However, that doesn’t mean that this cat isn’t useful. Since This is a male, it can be either backbred to Arti or sibling bred to Week 1 Kitten. Either method has a good chance of giving us an answer on what Arti’s hidden tail is (though if Arti hides Curious tail, it won’t). I’ve opted to sibling breed Week 3 to Week 1, because this allows me to use other breeding methods with Arti. So I’ve unpacked Week 1 and Week 3, and we’ll see what happens.

Exercise: Week 1 + Week 3 isn’t a great sibling breeding combination, but we haven’t had the best luck in terms of Arti passing traits, so sometimes you just have to make do with what you have. What are the minimum and maximum number of traits that Week 1 and Week 3’s kittens will have? Remember that Week one has 18-carat gold eyes, Curious tail and rounded ears, with Genesis traits showing everywhere else. Remember also that the dad of Week1 and Week 3 is a 9-traiter (Sydney). Answer is below.

Please feel free to reply to this thread with comments/questions as you see fit!

Answer: Week 1 Kitten show eye colour, tail and ear traits, but is hiding all 9 traits from 9-traited dad Sydney. Week 3 Kitten show tail and whisker shape traits, but is also hiding all 9 traits from 9-traited dad Sydney. The smallest number of traits this combo will give is if both cats only pass their shown traits wherever they have Genesis-type traits showing. In this case, Week 1 would pass non-Genesis eye colour, tail and ears, and the rest would be Genesis, while Week 3 would pass non-Genesis tail and whisker shape, and the rest would be Genesis. Since Genesis traits are dominant to non-Genesis, the only traits that would end up showing in the OS in this worst-case scenario would be where both pass a shown trait of the same type. In this case, the only shown trait that they have in common is the tail, so that would be the only shown trait in this case. The most traits that Week 1 and Week 3 could pass would be 9 each, since both are hiding all 9 traits, since their dad Sydney is a 9-traiter. In this best-case scenario, their kitten would be a 9-traiter!

Therefore, the answer is minimum 1 trait, maximum 9 traits.

[Charles Courtois]

This time, I’d like to discuss randomness and what you can and can’t control when it comes to your kitties.

You can’t control which traits, or how many traits (beyond the 6 that are guaranteed to hide), that a starter hides.

You can’t control which shown traits and which hidden traits a cat passes in any breeding.

You have NO control over the size of the offspring.

Sometimes you will get starters with a bunch of traits that you’re not fond of. Sometimes they will be irritating and not pass some of them for many breedings, so that you won’t know how little use they are to you for a number of weeks.

Sometimes you will get wonderful starters, with a number of desirable traits, which you’ll never have the good fortune to breed out in a group, no matter how much you want to.

Every once in a while though, you’ll get a starter that has solid traits and tosses them in bunches. I’ve heard of people getting all 9 traits from a starter in a single breeding! While I’ve never had that happen, I have had them toss 8 a few times (3 times, I think). I can recall another time when I had a starter that had, in consecutive breedings, a 6-traiter and a 7-traiter, of opposite genders, possessing the most recessive tail and one of the most recessive furs at the time, allowing me to setup a fantastic breeding line within about a month of the first OS. I’ve also had plenty of occasions where starters paired with 9-traiters passed absolutely no traits. That doesn’t mean that I did anything wrong in those breedings; it simply means that I wasn’t lucky at the time.

While you can’t control which/how many hidden traits a starter passes in a particular breeding, you can know which types of hiddens a starter passes by keeping them partnered with 9-traited cats. Also, using more recessive traits will give you a better chance of learning what those traits are. These are things you can control.

Having said that, there are times when breeding dominant traits with your starters can be useful. That’s a topic I hope to get to next time.

The important things to realize are that you will have good luck and bad luck, and that if things don’t work out the way you would like them to, assess your approach; stick with it if it is sound (which it may well be), change it if it isn’t. If you make a mistake (which we all do), don’t be too hard on yourself; learn from it and fix it if you can. If you have bad luck now, try to avoid becoming discouraged, keep at it, and eventually there’s a good chance you’ll have some good luck too!

Speaking of bad luck, let’s look at the latest breeding from Arti and Sydney! Here’s the pedigree:



Arti passed only one hidden trait this week, one which we already learned about in week 2. Arti passed her hidden 2-Tone Black and White whiskers, which are dominant to Sydney’s Black whiskers, which is why this kitten shows 2-Tone Black and White whiskers. This OS isn’t really useful, and will likely be sent to the menagerie once the breeding project is over.

We’ll leave Arti with Sydney for one more week, then I’ll likely switch Sydney with another male.

Good luck with your kitties (but be sure to save some good luck for me)!

[Charles Courtois]

When you have breedings where you are trying to discover a hidden trait and don’t get a conclusive answer, there are 2 approaches you can take; you can switch to a more recessive version of that trait or you can switch to a more dominant version. Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages.

The approach that is probably more commonly used is to switch to a more recessive version of a trait. For example, suppose that you breed a starter with a cat with a pure Frisky tail, and get an offspring with a Frisky tail back. In this case, I will often switch the starter’s partner to one with a much more recessive tail (for example a tail in the Fussy to Dreamy range), and hope that my choice is sufficiently recessive to hide behind the starter’s hidden tail when it gets passed the next time by the starter. The primary advantage of this approach is that it is likely to give you a quick answer (you have a 50% chance every breeding that the starter will toss its hidden trait, and if the version of the trait that your starter’s partner has is sufficiently recessive, you will get your answer whenever the starter passes its hidden).

There are 2 disadvantages to this approach, however. One is that you won’t get a definitive answer if the starter’s hidden is as recessive or more recessive than that of the partner you used. In the above example, if you use a partner with a pure Fussy tail, and get a Fussy tail back, you won’t know whether the starter hides a Fussy tail, or a more recessive tail (for example Dreamy). The other disadvantage is that if you do get an answer, and the trait is something that you like, you’ll have an impure version of the trait (the trait from the starter will be showing, and a more recessive trait will be hiding), meaning that if you try and breed the OS with other cats in the hopes of getting that trait into other lines, 50% of the time you will get the offspring passing the trait that you want, but 50% of the time it will pass its more recessive hidden instead, which you may not want. In the above example, suppose that you bred the starter with a pure Fussy-tailed partner and got a Stubby-tailed OS back. Suppose that you like Stubby tails, but not Fussy ones. Every time you breed that OS to another cat, 50% of the time it will pass the Stubby that you want it to pass, but the other 50% of the time it will pass Fussy instead.

The other approach is to use a trait that is more dominant than what you used before, and hope that either (1) you get the right gender hiding the trait you seek to discover in order to set up a backbreed, or (2) you get one of each gender hiding the trait in question, in order to set up a sibling breed, or (3) get a cat hiding the trait in question that you can breed to another cat with a recessive version of that trait (i.e. use the previous approach on this OS). Since you have already established that the starter is hiding something more recessive than what you are using, you know that any OS is hiding something distinctly more recessive than what what their partner pass, so you don’t have to worry about the starter hiding the same trait as what her partner has. In the example above, if you followed by putting the starter with a partner with a pure Mysterious tail after the Frisky-tailed partner bred a Frisky-tailed OS, you would know that any Mysterious-tailed OS of that pairing would hide Frisky tail or better; it wouldn’t be hiding a Mysterious tail, since you have already established previously that the starter hides Frisky or more recessive. You can then use any Mysterious-tailed OS’s of the starter-pure Mysterious tail pairing in any of (1), (2), or (3).

This is a much slower approach than the other one, and requires a certain amount of gender luck if you want to proceed with (1) or (2) above ((1) requires getting an OS hiding the trait in question with the opposite gender of the starter, and (2) requires getting OS’s of both genders hiding the trait). The advantage of this approach is that if you take this approach and follow with either (1) or (2) above, and get decent luck, you will eventually get a conclusive answer (both the backbreed in (a) and the sibling breed in (b) require both partners to toss their hidden (a 25% chance)). When that happens, you will also have a pure version of that trait, so that you can count on that OS to pass that trait every time, if it’s a trait that you like.

This discussion will become more relevant when we look at Arti’s new partner for the next breeding, Oliver!

For now though, let’s look at the results from week 5 (it won’t take long, since my run of bad luck continued lol).

This week we have to breedings to consider: one involving Arti and Sydney, and the other involving Week 1 Kitten and Week 3 kitten. First, here’s the result for The Arti-Sydney pairing:



For the fifth straight week, Arti has passed her Genesis fur. These things happen, and are something over which you have absolutely no control. The 2 traits that she did pass are the 2 traits that we have already established that she hides; 18-carat Gold eye colour, and 2 Tone Black & White whisker colour. This kitten will remain in the box, since we can learn nothing new about Arti by breeding it.

Here is the result from the first breeding of Week 1 Kitten with Week 3 Kitten (remember that we set this sibling breed up to try and discover Arti’s hidden tail trait):



This kitten (I’ve called her “Week 5A Kitten”) has 4 traits, but really we’re only interested in whether she shows conclusively what Arti’s hidden tail trait is. In this case, at least one parent (maybe both) passed their shown Curious tail(s), so we got a Curious tail showing on this kitten (of course, we have to keep in mind that it is possible that Arti is hiding a Curious tail, and that both Week 1 and Week 3 have pure Curious tails- there’s nothing we can do about that, but it is important to remember that). We will keep this kitten boxed for now.

Exercise: Week 5A Kitten also has a non-Genesis eye colour, ears and whisker. What are the hidden eye colour, ears, and whisker colour of Week 5A Kitten? Remember that her only grandfather Sydney has pure Mercury eyes, pure Rounded ears, and pure Black whiskers. Answer at the end of the post.

In other words, no new info from either of the week 5 breedings. We still know that Arti is hiding:
18-carat Gold eye colour,
Curious tail or more recessive,
Rounded ears or more recessive,
2-Tone Black and White whisker colour, and
Curious whisker shape or more recessive.
Since Arti is a starter, she will also be hiding some non- Genesis fur (which Arti hasn’t passed in the first 5 breedings).

For next week, I’m going to switch up Arti’s partner! Let’s take a look at Arti’s new partner, Oliver:



Oliver is a very good starter partner (in fact, I had him with one of my Falloween starters for the past 2 weeks). His fur is not only retired, but it is the most recessive retired fur at this time (which makes it my favourite fur to breed with starters), Balinese Cream Lynx. He has a 2/3 chance of hiding a Curious tail, but other than that and possibly (a small chance) Twinkle shade hiding, he should be pure traits. His Swanky whiskers are the third most recessive whisker currently, and thus his whisker shape is quite likely to directly reveal Arti’s hidden whisker shape. His show tail and ears are both clearly dominant to Arti’s hidden tail and ears, giving us the potential to eventually set up a backbreed or sibling breed to breed out pure versions of Arti’s tail and ears. Of course, he’s a 9-traiter, and has some pretty great traits, so any OS of hise is going to at least hide great traits. We’ll soon see what we can learn from pairing him with Arti! ?

But what is going to happen with Sydney now? I have a special project for him! The Falloween Oliver was partnered with (a Monster Mash named Moina) previously is known to hide Odyssey Cognac Wine eyes. Sydney is known to have pure Mercury eyes (as was discussed in a previous post). Therefore, I am going to breed Sydney with Moina, and when Moina passes her hidden Odyssey Cognac Wine eye, I will know conclusively whether that eye is dominant or recessive to Mercury! Mercury is a good, mid-range recessive eye to compare to Odyssey Cognac Wine, so Sydney will help advance our knowledge of that eye!

That’s it for now…good luck with your Falloweens!

Answer: Week 5A’s hidden eye is Mercury (Week 3 Kitten’s hidden eye which he got from Sydney (Week 1 Kitten passed her shown 18-carat Gold). Week 5A’s whisker colour is pure Black as both of her parents passed the Black whiskers they got from Sydney. The ears are a more complicated matter. We know that since Week 3 shows Genesis ears, he got Genesis from Mom Arti and Rounded from Sydney (Sydney has pure Rounded ears). So we can assume that the shown ears came from Week 3 Kitten, and that Week 5A’s hidden ear trait came from Week 1 Kitten. Week 1 Kitten either passed her shown Rounded ears (which came from Sydney) or her hidden ears, which she got from Arti (which are unknown, but Rounded or more recessive). So Week 5A Kitten’s hidden ear trait is Rounded or more recessive.

[Shamu077 Resident]

(11-03-2014 07:26 PM)Charles Courtois Wrote:  11-03-2014 05:26 PM
For next week, I’m going to switch up Arti’s partner!

What happened to Arti - did he reveal his hidden fur yet since he is now 65 days old?

[Charles Courtois]

Sorry for the long interval between the post for Week 5 and this one…rl got the better of me for a couple of weeks. This week is much better, so I’m hoping to catch up on my posts by the end of the week.
Week 6 brought the first breeding of Arti with her new partner, Oliver. The hope was that Oliver would give us more information about Arti’s hidden fur, shade (if any), and whisker shape. Here is the result of their first breeding together (and Arti’s sixth overall):



Not exactly the result we were hoping for! Arti passed only one of her hidden traits this week, and it was one of the traits that Oliver isn’t well suited to give us more information about, since his shown Big Boo Boo tail (which is also Week 6 kitten’s shown tail) is more dominant than Arti’s hidden tail, which is Curious or more recessive. For the sixth consecutive week, Arti failed to pass her hidden fur! This kitten could eventually be used to breed back to Arti or one of her daughters hiding Arti’s hidden tail trait to reveal Arti’s hidden tail, but since this kitten has only 1 shown non-genesis trait, we will only unpack him if we find no other way works. So, no new information from this Week 6 breeding.

We also have the second breeding of Week 1 kitten and Week 3 Kitten to consider this week. Remember, I’m breeding these cats together to see if they will reveal Arti’s hidden tail trait. Here is the result, which I named Week 6a Kitten:



This is actually a fairly decent 5-traited cat! Let’s look at the traits one by one:

1. Fur
This kitten shows Abyssinian – Fawn fur. Both parents show Genesis Diamond IV, which they got from Arti, and hide a fur trait that they got from Sydney. Remember that Sydney is either pure Abyssinian Fawn, or he hides Siamese Flame. From this kitten, we can tell that either Week 1 Kitten, or Week 3 Kitten, or both, got Abyssinian – Fawn from Sydney. One parent may have received Siamese Flame, in which case this kitten will be hiding it, but we don’t know for sure.

2. Eye Colour
This kitten shows 18-carat Gold eye colour. Week 1 Kitten (Mom) also shows 18-carat Gold, which came from Arti, while Week 3 Kitten (Dad) shows Genesis Meadow, which also came from Arti. Since Sydney’s eye colour is known to be pure Mercury, both parents hide Mercury from Sydney. Since Genesis Meadow is dominant to 18-carat Gold, which in turn is dominant to Mercury, Week 6a Kitten must have received 18-carat Gold eye colour from Mom, and Mercury from Dad, which is her hidden eye colour.

3. Shade
This kitten shows Flair shade. Both parents received Natural shade from Arti, and a shade (Flair or possibly Glitter) from Sydney, which they are hiding. Since Week 6a is showing Flair, at least one parent (maybe both) got Flair shade from Sydney. Whether one of them has Glitter shade hiding (at most one of them does) is unknown. If one of them does, then Week 6a’s hidden shade is Glitter; otherwise her shade is pure Flair.

4. Tail
Again this week, At least one of the parents passed their shown Curious tail trait, so Week 6a Kitten shows Curious tail as well. We don’t know whether this kitten hides a trait other than Curious, or even if her parents do at this point. So again, no new information about Arti’s hidden tail trait this week.

5. Whisker Shape
This kitten shows Curious whiskers. Mom shows Guitar whiskers from Arti, and hides Curious whiskers from Sydney. Dad shows Curious whiskers from Sydney, and hides Arti’s hidden whisker, which is unknown, but is Curious or more recessive. Since Guitar is dominant to Curious, Mom passed her hidden Curious whisker shape to Week 6a Kitten; Dad passed either his shown or his hidden whisker shape (we don’t know which). The net result is that Week 6a Kitten shows Curious whisker shape, and hides whatever whisker shape Dad passed to her (which could be Curious, or something more recessive).

We’ll leave this kitten in the box, but even though she didn’t reveal Arti’s hidden tail trait (which is the whole point or the Week1 Kitten/ Week 3 Kitten breeding), she does illustrate an important point. Notice that she shows a fur and a shade that came exclusively from traits that her non-starter grandparent Sydney passed to her parents. This highlights how important it is to use quality cats when breeding with a starter, because the traits of the starter’s partner will pass on to later generations, and the better that those traits are, the better the future generations will be.

At this point, we still know that Arti is hiding:
18-carat Gold eye colour,
Curious tail or more recessive,
Rounded ears or more recessive,
2-Tone Black and White whisker colour, and
Curious whisker shape or more recessive.
Since Arti is a starter, she will also be hiding some non- Genesis fur (which Arti hasn’t passed in the first 6 breedings).


Anyways, that’s it for this post. The next one should be in a couple of days. Check back here then, feel free to reply to this thread with questions/ comments, and good luck with your kittehs!

---

News about her hidden fur (and other unknown hiddens) will be coming soon... possibly in the next post!

[Charles Courtois]

This time, I’d like to talk a bit about patience. Patience is one of the most important assets that a good breeder has. We are all at the mercy of the KittyCatS! random number generator to a degree. A good breeder understands that, and knows that there will be times of good luck and times of bad luck. Generally the bad luck needs to be endured until the good luck happens. When the good luck happens, you ride it as hard as you can for as long as you can. Sometimes your luck will seem to be awful, and then one breeding will change everything.

Let me tell you about my 2013 RFL starters. I had 8 of them, and after the first few breedings, I thought they were a waste of time. The most recessive fur any of them hid was Burmese Platinum. All of them hid dominant eyes that had been around for a long time. Most of their other traits were pretty dominant too. I took a careful look at their pedigrees and figured out where the unknown hiddens were, and set up backbreeds where I could to learn what they were, because I didn’t have much hope that anything useful would come from them, and figured that with any backbreeds I set up that could pull all of a starter’s hiddens, I could just auto-repartner them, and my time spent on them would be limited. As it turned out, they weren’t the waste of time that I thought they would be, since one of those backbreeds popped the first Swanky whiskers on the grid! What I had thought was a relatively bad set of starters turned into what was probably the best set I ever had, simply because I remained patient and did what was necessary to discover what my starters were hiding.

Speaking of starters, let’s take a look at Arti’s 7th breeding, her second with Oliver! Here are the results:



This time, Arti passed 3 of her hidden traits (fur, whisker colour, and whisker shape), and 2 of them give us new information about Arti! Let’s take a closer look at their kitten, Week 7 Kitten:
1. Fur
Finally, on the 7th breeding, Arti decides to pass her hidden fur! Week 7 Kitten shows Siamese – Lilac fur. Her non-starter parent, Oliver, shows Balinese – Cream Lynx, which is significantly more recessive than Siamese – Lilac, so the Siamese – Lilac must have come from starter parent Arti, and must be Arti’s hidden fur. In fact, her hidden fur was even significantly more dominant than her previous partner Sydney’s shown Abyssinian – Fawn fur, and we would have learned her hidden fur even if we had kept her with Sydney, once she finally decided to pass it.

2. Whisker Colour
This is the one trait that Arti passed that we already knew about. Week 7 kitten shows 2 Tone Black & White whisker colour, which we already know is Arti’s hidden whisker colour, and hides a whisker colour trait from Oliver (most likely Black), since Oliver’s shown Black whiskers are recessive to @ Tone Black & White.

3. Whisker Shape
The main reason I changed Arti’s partner from Sydney to Oliver was to hopefully learn more about Oliver’s hidden whisker shape. This time that decision paid off! Week 7 Kitten shows Wavy whisker shape. Non-starter parent Oliver shows Swanky whiskers, which are recessive to Wavy. Therefore, the Wavy whisker trait must have come from Arti, and must be Arti’s hidden whisker shape. Another mystery solved!

This kitten isn’t hiding any mystery traits from Arti, so we will keep the kitten in the box for now.

Now, let’s take a look at the third breeding of Week 1 Kitten and Week 3 Kitten. Remember, these siblings are being bred together in an attempt to learn more about Arti’s hidden tail trait. Here is the pedigree of their kitten this time, which I named Week 7a Kitten:



This time we got only 2 traits from this pairing, and the result tells us nothing new about Arti’s hidden tail trait. Let’s take a closer look at the 2 non-genesis traits:

1. Eye Colour
Week 7a Kitten shows Mercury eye colour. Both parents inherited their shown eye from Arti (18-carat Gold in the case of Week 1 Kitten, Genesis Meadow in the case of Week 3 Kitten), and hide Mercury from their other Sydney (Sydney’s eyes are pure Mercury). So, in this breeding, both parents passed their hidden Mercury eye colour trait, so Week 7a Kitten’s eyes are pure Mercury.

2. Tail
Week 7a kitten shows Curious tail. Both parents show Curious tail, which should be from Sydney, and hide an unknown tail trait which should be from Arti, and will be Curious or more recessive. In this case, all that we know for certain is that at least one of the parents passed their shown Curious tail trait; the other passed either their shown or their hidden (we don’t know which). So we haven’t learned anything new about Arti’s hidden tail trait from this breeding.

Oliver has done what he can do for us in terms of revealing Arti’s hidden mystery traits, so for the next breedings, I will switch to another cat, Jonas, in the hopes of learning more about Arti’s hidden tail and ear traits. Here is Jonas’ pedigree:


Jonas’ ear and tail are both significantly more recessive than either Sydney’s or Oliver’s, so we definitely should be able to learn more about Arti’s mystery hiddens if she should pass them.

After this pair of breedings, we now know that Arti hides:
Siamese – Lilac fur,
18-carat Gold eye colour,
Curious tail or more recessive,
Rounded ears or more recessive,
2-Tone Black and White whisker colour, and
Wavy whisker shape.

Hopefully we’ll learn more next time. Good luck with your kittehs!