A big part of the game My Horsez is breeding foals. What color are you going to breed for? How many skills do you want your foal to have? Are you breeding for patterns? There are many different possibilities and challenges. Players do need to watch out for inbreeding. But what exactly is inbreeding, and why would you want to breed without it? Let's take a look at how it works!

In My Horsez, you can easily recognize inbreeding by looking at the pedigrees of both the mare and the stallion you want to breed. If the same horse names appear twice or more in both the mare's pedigree and the stallion's pedigree, there is inbreeding. This can lead to an increased chance of a miscarriage. The severity of the inbreeding determines the chance of complications:

1. No inbreeding

The pedigree contains no duplicate names. The miscarriage chance is 1 in 50.

2. The parents' pedigrees contain duplicate names

If the foal does not get any duplicate names in its pedigree, but the pedigrees of the foal's parents together contain at least 1 duplicate name (inbreeding combination), then the miscarriage chance is 1 in 10.

3. The (to be bred) foal's pedigree contains 1 duplicate name (inbreeding horse)

The pedigree contains (at least) 1 duplicate name. The miscarriage chance is then 1 in 3.

It is important that you learn how to check for inbreeding. You do this before you put your horses in the pasture. Another option is to put the horses in the pasture; you will then receive a notification of how much inbreeding is taking place. Checking this is easy to do by comparing the names in both pedigrees. If you see that the same horse names appear multiple times, it is an inbreeding combination and you have a chance of a miscarriage.

But how does inbreeding work in the real world? Well, inbreeding refers to breeding animals that are closely related to each other. In the real world, inbreeding can lead to genetic problems and health issues in animals. Imagine you have two dogs from the same family that are bred together. Their offspring have an increased risk of genetic defects because they inherit the same weak genes from their parents. This can lead to health problems and a shorter life expectancy for the offspring.

So inbreeding plays a role in My Horsez and in real life. In My Horsez, you can easily avoid inbreeding by making sure you have multiple horses from different parents. So if you have several horses that are not related, it should all work out fine!