Assumes you’re okay with inbreeding. If not, the principles still apply, but everything takes exponentially more time.
Describes the workings of the genetics behind a pet’s visual appearance, not the genetics of goal descriptor values.
A pet’s genetic traits go in this order:
primary breed - default scale - ears - head - whiskers - feet - legs - tail - body - coat - tongue - eye color - eyelid color - fur color 1 - fur color 2 - fur color 3 - fur color 4 - fur color 5 - marking factor - spot factor - marking 1 - marking 2 - leg extension - body extension
The key to breeding mixies with traits from various AC breeds is in crossing over, and the resulting genetic recombination. This is when a parent pet passes along a gene set which contains traits from BOTH of their gene sets, instead of wholly one or the other. Here is a visual example:
Consider a second generation pet, with a gene set from a Calico mother (bold red) and a gene set from a Tabby father (italicized green).
Typically, a pet will pass along one of its two gene sets “as is”. In this case, it would be either completely Calico or completely Tabby. But the magic happens when they pass on a little bit of both!
Notice that the new gene set is not mixed randomly- it is entirely Calico genes until the “crossing over” occurs, and then it is entirely Tabby genes the rest of the way. Repeating this throughout successive generations is how we isolate traits from one breed (say, a Persian tail) onto a pet that is otherwise entirely another breed.
https://reflettage.wixsite.com/yabiko/download
Genepoolz
Gives a nice visual display of a single pet’s genetics.
https://thorzpetz.neocities.org/downloadz/petzchecker
Petz Looks Checker
Creates a spreadsheet of the genetics of every pet in a folder.
https://ratshack.neocities.org/text/petz/petzutils
PetzA Batch Breeding Fork
Allows you to quickly produce many offspring from a single breeding pair.
Step 1 - Decide on a goal pet.
Example: Alley Cat breed - (90) scale - Tabby ears - Alley Cat head - Alley Cat whiskers - Chinchilla Persian feet - Siamese legs - Orange Shorthair tail - Orange Shorthair body - Maine Coon coat - Alley Cat tongue - 64 Orange eye color - 244 Black eyelid color - 95 Brown fur color 1 - 15 White fur color 2 - 45 Cream fur color 3 - 125 Dusty fur color 4 - 15 White fur color 5 - 100 marking factor - 100 spot factor - B+W Shorthair marking 1 - B+W Shorthair marking 2 - (11) leg extension - (0) body extension
Step 2: Adopt all the necessary AC petz.
Example:
Alley Cat (primary breed, head, whiskers, tongue)
Chinchilla Persian (scale, feet)
Tabby (ears)
Siamese (legs, leg extension)
Orange Shorthair (tail, body, body extension)
Maine Coon (coat)
B+W Shorthair (marking 1, marking 2, fur color 5)
Note: Chosen AC petz will pass down their seed-specific traits. If you want a sheepdog long tail and not a bobtail on your final pet, adopt one displaying a long tail.
Step 3: Combine the genes.
Example breakdown of Step 3:
Note: To keep things simpler in my head, I work from one “end” of the gene set to the other. Here, we’re starting with breeding in the Siamese leg extension to an Alley Cat.
Step 3.1: Breed the base breed pet with a breed containing a trait you want. The resulting offspring should have 1 gene set from each breed.
Step 3.2: Breed the pet with half base breed half trait breed genetics back to the base breed about 100 times.
We’re looking for an example of “crossing over” at the point where we want the introduced trait.
Highlighted line shows Alley Cat markings with Siamese (11) leg extensions.
Notice gene set 2 has leg extension 11 with all alley body parts. We don’t care about the color mutation present because it’s on the gene set we’re going to breed out in the next step, and even if it wasn’t, we can mutate it again to something desirable later.
Step 3.3: Breed the pet with the crossed over trait back to the base breed about 100 times in order to have it cross over AGAIN, one trait over, so only the isolated trait remains of the introduced breed.
Note: We can skip this step since the final trait, body extension, is 0 in both breeds. But like 99% of the time this step is necessary.
Step 3.4: Breed the pet with an isolated trait in one gene set to itself about 10 times. Here, we’re not looking for crossing over to occur. We just want the offspring to inherit the “isolated trait” gene set from both parents.
Step 3.5: Repeat steps 3.1-3.4 for every trait you want to be different from the starting pet’s breed, replacing the “base breed pet” with the latest correct offspring from step 3.4.
See the example repeated steps below:
Breeding the (11) leg extension Alley Cat with a B+W Shorthair to get full B+W Shorthair markings on both gene sets as well as the 15 white fur color 5. We can do this all together since all 3 traits (fur color, marking 1, marking 2) are right next to each other.
Breeding the above to the full 11 leg extension Alley Cat.
Note that we don’t care that the entirety of the coat color section was crossed over, because as long as the 5th color is correct, the other 4 can be mutated later.
Breeding the above to the full 11 leg extension Alley Cat.
Notice how the 11 leg extension we bred in earlier has crossed back over onto the same gene set that has the B+W Markings.
Breeding the above to a clone of itself.
Breeding the above to a Maine Coon for coat texture.
Breeding the above to the Alley Cat with B+W Shorthair markings and 11 leg extensions.
Breeding the above to the Alley Cat with B+W Shorthair markings and 11 leg extensions.
Breeding the above to a clone of itself.
Here’s what the above pet looks like visually.
Breed the above to an Orange Shorthair for the tail and body.
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.
Step 4: Breed for color mutations.
Step 4.1: Breed your fully shaped pet to a copy of itself about 100 times.
Step 4.2: Select a chosen color mutation and breed the pet with the mutated color in one gene set to a copy of itself about 10 times.
Step 4.3: Select an offspring with the color mutation in both gene sets and breed it to a copy of itself about 100 times. Repeat the previous steps.
Step 5: Success!
Fun facts and helpful hints:
The COLOR genes EXCEPT fur color 5 (eye color - eyelid color - fur color 1 - fur color 2 - fur color 3 - fur color 4) can MUTATE to other colors in offspring.
The fur color 5 gene does NOT MUTATE! It is a special color saved for the muzzle/jowlz certain breed heads/coats have.
A pet will only display a separate (fur color 5) muzzle coat marking if the breed head AND the breed coat it displays naturally display one.
The EXTENSION genes (leg extension - body extension) are SEPARATE from the leg and body genes. This is why some Tamsins and other Dalmatian mixies cannot pose exactly to purebred Dalmatian standards despite having dali bodies and legs.
The FACTOR genes (marking factor - spot factor) can MUTATE to a LOWER number in offspring.
The WHISKER gene only affects whether dogz have Chihuahua whiskers or none.
The TONGUE gene affects the color of the tongue. Catz have different shades of 70’s pink, and dogz have either 70’s pink or 1 red.
Don’t forget to regularly tree trim as you breed, or the game can start to lag significantly.
Due to the nature of (pseudo)RNG, sometimes you’ll have to breed several batches to get the correct combination or mutation.
Keep your lines safe in a folder and backed up in case of a mistake or file corruption so you don’t have to restart.
Be sure to close Petz before mass-deleting files from the Adopted Petz folder or the game will get mad.