HGG Community Forums

Chinchilla was the first fantasy gene I fell in love with. I have the license on HJ2, but I'm going to be winding down my breeding program over there. I enjoy looking at them more than I enjoy breeding them, so I'll just buy other people's rejects to be show ponies. Even though I won't be breeding them, having the license will still be useful because that means I can buy intacts from auction.

I also really enjoy the axioms and I have those over on HJ2. I like the variety you can get blending the different axioms together and with nexus.

Onyx was my next heartthrob, and I completely rejiggered my breeding program on HJ1 (which I was less than thrilled with at the time) to breed Onyx, watercolor, wrong warp babies.

On the other hand, while I really like plaid, I am very picky about the plaid I like (in terms of widths & colors). Since I have no desire to play around with the gene figuring out how I would breed the plaid that I do like, I have no interest in breeding it and I just buy show ponies that I like.

The first thing is really what do you like? Obviously don't go for blingy genes that you don't like, even if they're popular. Not to Marie Kondo it, but does it bring *you* joy. Then, what do you like to pair things with? I sometimes run into issues with my onyx line because I also like dun. Dun will wash out the onyx striping. If you like the phantom genes, but don't like some of the white patterns, it will be hard to get the phantom genes to show. If you don't like red based horses, skip mushroom. That sort of thing. Play around with the search and see what combos you like. Nothing worse than paying real money for something shiney, and finding out that you don't actually like it.

I thus far have only put blingy genes on foundation stallions - easier to spread the gene around quickly (50+ foals per year vs 1) and cheaper than putting it on stallions and mares at the same time. Of course, doing that, it means you can't get homozygous offspring until G3. If the gene if recessive (like chinchilla) you may not get many visibly chinchilla horses until G4 or G5. I see people put genes on mares and then make bank selling eggs, so that's an option, too. (But keep in mind you need a premium account to flush eggs from a mare.)

A good time to start breeding your own special ponies is when you know what you like. It's frequently easier to create fancy horses in the June or December timeframe, when more genes go on sale in the RGS in rapid succession... But there's not that says you have to wait for then if what you want is available.

I'm not sure I can really suggest a fantasy gene to breed or not - it's really so much up to individual preference.