Breeding and Raising Horses

If you didn’t always dream of having your own horse ranch and raising beautiful, smart, prize-winning horses for a living, you can just skip this section! For the rest of us, it’s a dream come true.

Breeding Horses

You have several options when it comes to breeding horses. First of all, you could create male and female horses in Create a Sim (and optionally set their relationship to Mate, which starts their relationship at a higher level). Then you need to place a box stall object on your lot. Without a box stall, horses simply won’t breed! If you have a pair of oppositely gendered horses with a good relationship, and a box stall, you can direct your horses to use the Try for Baby interaction.

The romantic interaction appears when horses have a high enough relationship.

They enter the box stall, and the action is blocked out, although you can see the typical shower of hearts around the horses. Just as with Sims, not every Try for Baby results in a baby. Keep trying until you get the message that the mare is pregnant.

After a few days, the mare drops the foal and you have the opportuntity to name it. The foal will typically show characterstics of one or both parents. If the parent horses were trained, there’s a chance the foal will inherit some ability from the parents.

The Breed Mare Option

But what if you only have one horse? Or no horses? Are you out of luck? Not at all. You have several options. Bottom line, though: You need to have a female horse if you want to breed horses. You can buy a mare from the Equestrian Center, find a neighborhood mare to adopt, or tame a wild mare. But you’ve got to have at least one mare. Once you have a mare, you don’t need to have your own stallion. You can simply take your mare to the Equestrian Center and have her bred.

You get a picker window with a variety of available stud horses. You can choose among them based on looks or traits. Swell is Genius, Fast, and Friendly. These are traits I’d like to reinforce in my foals, so I choose to breed my mare to him.

I get a confirmation window that displays the cost to breed my mare to this horse, and gives me a chance to reconsider. If the breeding takes, I’ll get a message saying that my horse is pregnant, and to prepare for a foal.

A few days later, Caeli gives birth to her foal! What an exciting occasion!

Stud Fees

Earlier we mentioned that you can take a stallion to the Equestrian Center to put him up for stud. This can be a very lucrative approach if your prize-winning horse is male. The Equestrian Center has an Offer Stallion for Stud option. Saddle up your studly stallion, and see what he’s worth!

Stud service is a strictly business arrangement. The horses don’t form a relationship, and you don’t get a foal for your household out of the deal.

Even an average horse brings in a decent stud fee. Prize-winning stallions will command much more.

Notice that I paid §1,800 for Winchester, and his first stud fee earned §665. This fellow’s gonna earn his hay.

Raising a Foal

Caeli stands watch over her sleeping foal.

The new foal becomes a playable member of the household. Foals have the same needs as horses, except they lack a Thirst need. For foals, Hunger and Thirst are both fulfilled from either nursing from their mother or being bottle fed by their Sims.

Baby foals will autonomously nurse from their mothers.

Or you can bottle feed them, which is a fun activity that builds your relationship.

Foals don’t like to be separated from their mothers (what if there was a tiger around?!?), nor do their mothers like to be separated from their foals. They each gain negative moodlets from the separation, lose Social quickly, and generally aren’t happy until they reunite.

What happens if a foal is permanently separated from his mother because of death, sale, or adoption? That’s pretty hard on a foal. The foal will miss his mother until he either gains a friend or higher relationship with a household Sim, or ages up.

Horses have a horse-to-horse horseplay interaction.

How long it takes for your foal to mature into a horse depends on the settings you chose in the Options/Gameplay menu. Even if you set long lifespans, you might want to make your foals age up in a reasonable amount of time. Or, you can keep them babies for a long, long time. It’s up to you!

Eventually your foal matures into a grown horse.

Aging and Death

Horses have three age levels: foal, adult, and elder. You can set pet life spans in the Game Options menu, but unless you turn off aging entirely, pets will eventually die of old age. The Grim Reaper arrives, mounts the horse, and gallops away. To help your horses live longer, feed them lots of horse granola gourmet pet food, or purchase the Animal Expert Lifetime Reward (Sim) or the Young Again Potion for Pets (horse). You could also clone your favorite horse with the Clone Voucher Lifetime Reward (horse).

Recipe for Horse Happiness

Put your horses in their box stalls at night and direct them to eat, drink, and nap. This should keep their moods in balance and make them ready to train and compete the next day.

Have your Sims exercise and train their horses every day. If your Sims can’t exercise them, direct the horses to Gallop Around, Train for Racing, or Play with Horseball to fill their Exercise need. Horses with the Agile or Fast traits need even more exercise.

Make sure to enter horses in each day’s competitions at the right time. The more wins your horses rack up, the more valuable they are, and the more valuable their offspring will be.

Clean your horse’s hooves once a day for the positive Hygenic Hooves moodlet. It doesn’t take long, and lasts a long time. Brush your horse daily also, and make sure to provide lots of hugs and other affection.

Give your mare a little time off from competitions when she has a foal. Spend the time nurturing the foal as much as possible, so it will gain positive traits when it ages up. You can build a dynasty of exceptional horses this way.

Especially if you have multiple horses on a lot, get the Celestial Salt Lick Reward Object early. It bestows a positive moodlet on any horse who licks it.

Horses love carrots and gourmet horse granola treats. Grow or cook their favorite foods.

Horses get positive moodlets from playing with the Horse Ball, splashing in the water trough, and eating fresh hay from scattered bales.