Im currently using a farm setup, i use serial numbers on the young, i have a couple breeding zoos and a stockyard zoo. The stockyard is set to slow the aging 5x. i use it to store my overstock. it also helps me with selective breeding to prevent inbreeding. i prefer to only have one species per breeding zoo; if it can pay for itself.

i started with bison, experimented with several other species. Currently breeding African elephants and Indian rhinos; they're rather challenging. Apparently i can only have 2 adult rhinos per habitat, so i rotate the bull into each habitat. its alot of work compared to just leaving 1 bison bull in a herd of bison.

First generation is labeled A/Size/Longevity such as A9292. The next Generation is labeled B/size/longevity.

The best bull offspring are sent to the stockyard and i breed the female offspring with a new bull; or vice versus. I buy a new bull from the market if one is available or i get one from the stockyard. Its hard to find good rhinos in the market.

You know I've never thought of using saved zoo as a stock yard, don't know why. I usually tend to sell all males and buy in applicable new ones. Yours is a great idea though.

As I am still learning the game but been fairly successful with peafowls and now lions (yet I have seen when left alone they breed like rabbits (oddly)).

My first zoo, was very much finding my feet, in building and mechanics, so it's a miss match of "make this for money", "make this for just to see what the animal is like" and "make this for breeding". This is where I bred peafowls as they were easy and spawn like nothing else. I got it now to basically every offspring quad is 4x100 stats albino. You get some odd non albino and say 75% are 4x100 with 1125 gold status.

This I transferred to my new second zoo (the best pairs) and then started on Lions and Aldrabra Tortoise (who breed easily but really rare on the market somehow?). This I did with a premade workshop build specifically for breeding. I didn't look before spening all my starting money on it though, so yeah a bit of a panic trying to level the money at the start. Then I was rocking and rolling, before the lion episode last night (food was costing me 96 grand, I couldn't work out why). Then someone said "check animals and the food tab", then looked and the lions went from 4 (2 young, 2 adults) to 16!!! I must have left the game running by accident the previous play session. So they must have inbred along the way, it doesn't seem to penalise you for this? Not what I've seen anyway.

But besides, what I did do for the peafowls and now for the other two, was write down their family tree on a spreadsheet. I find this easy to know who is where and what genes they have. Then like the peafowls, my idea is to have 4 pens for each animal and do a circuit clockwise with the males. Worked like a dream for peafowls, I was knocking out around 16 per hour (grown up) on the market. If I didn't want them to breed, I stuck a contraceptive on them and if the pen got full, I put them in another large habitat for all them. Mainly the ones I know are for wild or market and not for future breeding.

It depends on the reason for breeding.

In my world zoo, for example, I have one habitat per 1 or 2 species. Breeding is to keep the supply up so I have a single breeding group ( male/female unrelated combo dependant on their breeding pattern ) And when they are close to old age, or bred several children I replace them with the next breeding group.

When I was doing the Elephant community challenge a while back, the breeding time is too long for one breeding group, so I had multiple zoo's running to distribute food costs and I switched the children around for the next generation. The timing is such that only 2 to 4 generations were bred in the time span available depending on how much I play for at a time.

Another system I have used when I have a continent/biome based zoo is to have 3 or 4 habitats for the animals being bred. 1 for females 1 for males and 1 or 2 for breeding pairs/groups. Spread about the zoo so that they get visits from different groups of guests.

I usually use the storage for current running stock. But if a zoo becomes unmanageable due to cash flow problems those animals stay there and I slowly shift them to alternative zoos.

I don't use any special naming techniques on the babies as I have them all on contraceptives and can use family group info and mate checking to see if there is any potential as a mate with another. It also messes with the realism of the zoo. But a tag for group purposes would be good. So maybe something like <Name> PZCBPxb.

I usually keep 1 of each sex in storage until I have enough for a full breeding group. If I have to buy most or all of the females, I use my own male, and vice versa. I keep all animals with 3 or 4 100s unless I am doing a full clearout to start over. I trade out all other green animals or those with high orange ( longevity,size ) and high green ( fertility, immunity). The rest are released to the wild or kept for breeding stock.

Originally posted by OldGamer:

Then I was rocking and rolling, before the lion episode last night (food was costing me 96 grand, I couldn't work out why). Then someone said "check animals and the food tab", then looked and the lions went from 4 (2 young, 2 adults) to 16!!! I must have left the game running by accident the previous play session. So they must have inbred along the way, it doesn't seem to penalise you for this? Not what I've seen anyway.

But besides, what I did do for the peafowls and now for the other two, was write down their family tree on a spreadsheet. I find this easy to know who is where and what genes they have. Then like the peafowls, my idea is to have 4 pens for each animal and do a circuit clockwise with the males. Worked like a dream for peafowls, I was knocking out around 16 per hour (grown up) on the market. If I didn't want them to breed, I stuck a contraceptive on them and if the pen got full, I put them in another large habitat for all them. Mainly the ones I know are for wild or market and not for future breeding.

The penalty for inbreeding is a bunch with bad to low fertility and immunity stats. If you keep on top of contraception within a few months of their birth you shouldn't have an inbreeding problem. Every so often I check the zoo list and give new babies contraception, sell excess exhibit animals and release/trade out new adults. And then check to see if I need to do a swap out of breeding adults and then leave them to it and go back to letting it run while considering/designing the next part of the zoo. I use the in game family tree to make sure that the animals are not within 2 generations of a relative, which is usually easy as I rarely keep a related couple for the next breeding group.

Originally posted by With Faceless Panda:

You know I've never thought of using saved zoo as a stock yard, don't know why. I usually tend to sell all males and buy in applicable new ones. Yours is a great idea though.

My first rhino farm had 12 rhino habitats. Its 120 years old. During that time, i was only able to find 1 gold male with decent stats in the market. Good breeding stock was hard to come by, and i didn't know how many generations need to pass to prevent inbreeding; so i found a need to hoard animals. i didn't like the way the rhino farm was layed out, so i created a new zoo with 8 rhino habitats and i kept the old zoo as the stockyard. i finally found a second gold male on the market; after three days of persistent searching.

Originally posted by XrystalBelle:

I use the in game family tree to make sure that the animals are not within 2 generations of a relative, which is usually easy as I rarely keep a related couple for the next breeding group.

Thankyou for the 2 generation tip, i had been wondering about that.

Originally posted by wmct276:

Originally posted by XrystalBelle:

I use the in game family tree to make sure that the animals are not within 2 generations of a relative, which is usually easy as I rarely keep a related couple for the next breeding group.

Thankyou for the 2 generation tip, i had been wondering about that.

It’s still not great and best to make sure the next generation has multiple unrelated links as there is still a chance that a gene from a common ancestor will arrive and hit the same gene block on what appears to be an unrelated pair, although I would suspect the related check would use the dna block match test to identify a relative however distant. But they may not have considered that in their coding.

When they first bought out the family tree view I travelled back through 2 of my species and found that although I had been careful the current breeding couple happened to have the same ancestor several generations back and one block of visible dna showed it. I immediately released all my animals and started afresh.

I'm still doing a bit of a mix.
My current zoo has a face and a rear. Two completely separate areas. The "face" area has all the species that people are viewing and paying for. The "rear" area is currently just a disorganised mass hippo farm. I'll get rid of the hippo farm once the event is over as they're a pain to deal with.

I'm also farming Red Pandas in the face area of the zoo because... reasons.

My current policy is to keep any RPs that have 100 for both Size and Longevity, while shunting away the 92 / 100 or 100 / 92 results to a storage zoo in Australia. Any with less than 100 in both I'm either trying to sell or just releasing to the wild now.
Actual values in Fertility and Immunity don't really matter. As long as the creatures have enough Fertility to breed reliably then any values are fine. I do a check with every new mate I buy for one of my RPs to see if they're capable of generating 100s for those two, but it doesn't actually matter what the values themselves are for the breeding process since any immunity values and most fertility values (i.e. those above 0) are equally capable of generating 100s with the right pairing.... in theory.
Apparently the odds are doubled in favour of generating homozygosity though (bad), so technically I tend to favour lower immunity values as it makes the results more predictable.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2361551151

Breeding rhinos at the newly remodeled Kungfu Zoo; inspired by the shaolin monastery.
The large building on the left is the martial arts training facilities, i will be adding some zen gardens in the open area.

The Zoo has 8 rhino habitats. Im currently using 4 habitats for my primary breeding group. although 1 male could utilize 6+ habitats with fertile animals. i can place the male in the trade center when he is not breeding. As a result he would age slower than the females, thus living longer and enabling him to breed with a second group of 4 females; 8 females in total.

i keep 8 females offspring and sell, trade, or release everything else


SInce gold males are hard to find, I use the other 4 habitats to breed unrated rhinos that i buy at the trade center. it takes a couple generations, but i am able to breed decent gold animals out of this group. This helps guarantee that i will always have a unrelated gold male for breeding; just in case i cant find one in the market. I also enjoy building stats through selective breeding.

Originally posted by wmct276:

SInce gold males are hard to find, I use the other 4 habitats to breed unrated rhinos that i buy at the trade center.

Are you keeping your trait filters at or around 60/60/40/0?

Any two Frontier animals with Size and Longevity in the Green and at least some Fertility can theoretically produce gold-tier offspring. I tend to keep those filter settings active and snag any particularly good Frontier creatures I see appear, and I can usually get at least one or two golds within a single generation for most creatures I try it with.

I haven't used the trait filter yet, not sure if i knew it was there; ill give it try.