Padooko Play

Breeding guide

A racehorse's story doesn't end when its racing career does. In Padooko your best horses take on a new role at stud: they pass their speed, their character, their favorite ground and their tier on to their foals. A yard that breeds its own line grows stronger without depending on the market. This guide covers the whole breeding cycle.

Who can go to stud?

There are two routes:

A horse under four can't breed at all. On your yard cards, horses ready to breed carry a STUD badge and a BREED button; horses over four that are still racing show a RETIRE TO STUD button.

When to retire? Horses peak between four and six. Retiring a champion at its peak early means giving up its race prizes; retiring a horse past its best gives it a second career. Decide based on the horse's future on the track.

The stud book

Retired horses don't take a stall and don't eat; they live in the stud book. The book has a capacity (shown in the game as "BOOK · n/12"). When it's full you can't retire another horse; to make room, you can sell a horse from the book. The sale takes two steps and shows the horse's cash price right there.

Choosing a mare and a stallion

A covering needs a mare and a stallion.

Every season a handful of visiting stallions stand on the stud page, and every player sees the same ones that season. A visiting stallion has a stud fee, and the fee grows with the stallion's quality. A covering with your own stallion isn't entirely free either; there's a small foaling fee. Padooko Plus members also get access to visiting Legend stallions.

The match: what makes a good pairing?

For every pair, the stud page shows a match word. The match describes how well the two parents complement each other. The general rule: two horses with different strengths make a better pairing than two that are alike. Pairs whose distance preferences differ somewhat, whose running styles complement each other and who between them cover more surfaces get a high match.

A high match widens the range of the foal's potential: in other words, a good pairing raises the chance of a foal better than its parents. It's a lottery, not a promise, but it's an opportunity.

Close relatives

Breeding two horses that share a parent, or a parent with its own foal, is close-relative breeding. In Padooko it's a bad idea: the good surprises in the foal's potential are cut back while the bad ones stay, and the foal is much more likely to be born with a fragile build. The foaling report says so plainly. To widen your line, visiting stallions and the market are good sources.

What does the foal inherit?

A foal gets a blend of its parents:

After the birth, the foaling report opens: its "What came from whom" section shows which parent the running style, the coat and the traits came from. The foal's hidden traits appear on the report as "?"; they come to light as the horse races.

The foal grows up

A foal born at your stud is a newborn, and it has to grow until it reaches racing age at two. Since one game month is roughly one real week, that takes a few months. Meanwhile the foal takes a stall and eats, so you need a free stall in your yard before you can breed. Breeding is an investment that takes patience: once the foal starts racing, it's part of your yard for years.

For those in a hurry, the market regularly offers stud lots: older stallions and mares that can be bred right away. Their age makes them cheap, and they're a fast way into breeding. See Market.

Selling a home-bred horse

If you sell a horse born in your own yard to the yard's cash counter, the offer depends on what the horse has won on the track: a newborn foal's cash price is low, while a horse that has earned through its career gets more. So "breed and sell straight away" is not a way to make Doko. To find out what a home-bred horse is really worth, put it up for auction to other players at the market.

Quick breeding tips