This week, we’d like to tell you about some of the new and improved broodmare management features coming in V2.
Pregnancy Termination
We’ve previously told you that twins will be added to the game, and that if the vet determines your mare has twins, it will be up to you to choose whether to risk allowing both foals to develop or to terminate one. What we haven’t mentioned yet is that you’ll also have the option to terminate any pregnancy, so long as the mare is in the first trimester. Maybe you realized you can’t afford the foal, accidentally bred the wrong mare, or left her in pasture with a naughty stud colt—whatever the reason, you’ll have more control over broodmare management in V2.
Spontaneous Pregnancy Termination Risk for Underweight Mares
We all know that pregnancy is a calorically taxing process, and pregnant mares can lose weight easily, sometimes putting them at risk of emaciation. In V1, nothing could be done in these situations other than cross your fingers and hope that the mare foals and survives, but we’re changing that for V2.
In addition to the veterinary pregnancy termination option mentioned above, underweight pregnant mares (Thin or worse) will have a chance of losing the pregnancy. That chance will increase the more underweight she is. While losing a pregnancy is disappointing, it could be a blessing if the mare is emaciated and at risk of death. It’s better to let her gain weight and breed another year.
Embryo Flushing and Transfers – subscription only
What is an embryo transfer? This is where you collect a pre-implantation embryo from a mare and place it inside the uterus of a recipient mare to finish gestation. This allows you to get a foal from your top mare without taking her off the show circuit, and it can also allow you to get more than one foal per year from her, because she can be rebred after the embryo is flushed out.
How It Works In-Game
You’ll breed your mare just as you normally do, but if she becomes pregnant, you’ll have a very short time window—1 rollover only—to tell the vet that you’d like to flush the embryo out before it implants.
Here’s the timeline:
- Breed your mare
- Receive the pregnancy notification
- You have until the next rollover (12 real hours) to flush the embryo
You can do this year-round with your mares, potentially getting up to 12 embryos per year from one mare. Keep in mind, though, that seasonal fluctuations in mare fertility still apply, so it will be very difficult to get embryos in the off-season.
Flushing costs: $500 vet fee. The vet will cryopreserve the fertilized embryo in liquid nitrogen, much like they do for frozen semen. You can then choose to transfer the embryo to an open mare or save it for later. Embryos will never go bad.
Transferring embryos: If you decide to transfer an embryo to an open mare, it’s another $500 vet fee. All you have to do is tell the vet which mare to use as a surrogate.
Important timing consideration: Because mares typically only cycle during breeding season, it will be hard to get them pregnant if you transfer an embryo in the off-season. In fact, only 50% of transfers during the off-season will work (versus 95% during breeding season). So it might be best to wait!
Additional Details
- Embryo flushing, buying and selling, and implantation will only be possible on subscription ranches
- You’ll be able to collect twin embryos, but you have to collect both if you do. These embryos can then be implanted into two separate surrogates, allowing you to get twins without the risk, though you’ll of course have more vet fees with double the work!
Pasture Breeding and Paternity Testing
Just like in V1, if you leave a 2-year-old or older stud in pasture with a mare, there is a chance he’ll breed her and possibly get her pregnant. In V1, though, if you had two or more studs in pasture with the same mare, you always somehow “magically” knew who the sire of the foal was. In V2, that will no longer be the case.
Instead – again, this is only if you had two or more stallions with the mare – the foal will have “unknown” listed as their sire. Don’t worry, it’s fixable! Just like in real life, you’ll be able to do paternity tests in V2! For $50, you can ask the vet to test one stallion against the foal’s DNA. If he isn’t the sire, you’ll have to try again, but once the vet confirms a match, the foal’s pedigree information will fill out.
Ranch Manager Will Now Manage Broodmares
For subscription ranches, the Ranch Manager (Carl) will have a new option to manage broodmares. If you toggle this option on, he will remove the mare from any jobs, send any auto-trainers on vacation, and stop entering her into shows when she starts her second trimester. This will certainly make broodmare management easier!
Breeding Tab QOL Updates
We’ve also made some changes to the breeding tabs of mares to make it easy to see all the details about her pregnancy at a glance. For example, if you bred her last rollover and she didn’t take, the breeding tab will show a message instead of being blank like in V1.
We’ll probably think of other things to tweak or add here and there, but overall, you’ll have a lot more control over broodmare management in V2!