How to breed horses in The Sims 4 Horse Ranch
You'll need to know how to breed horses in The Sims 4 Horse Ranch if you want to have foals with special racial traits on your ranch.
There is a unique hidden trait that only ranch-bred foals can get in Horse Ranch, so check out our guide below for everything you need to know about breeding horses in the game.
This includes horse pregnancies, time scale, how to prepare for foals and more.
How do you breed horses?
Once you are friends with your horse, you can get it to breed with another horse on your lot by choosing the following options (of course, you need one Mare and one Stallion to successfully breed).
- Click on the horse.
- Click Friendly Interactions and More Choices.
- Click 'Encourage To...'
- Then 'Encourage to Breed with...'
- This will bring up a list of available horses; choose the one you wish to breed your horse with then watch the animation of the horses nuzzling.
Click to enlargeFrom the same menu, you can also encourage your horses to socialise with one another, although this requires you to be good friends with the horse of choice.
Once the horses have bred, it will take some time to choose the interaction again.
How horse pregnancies work in The Sims 4
Click to enlarge
It can be tricky at first to know if the breed interaction was successful. Usually, you will receive a purple notification that your horse is expecting a foal within three in-game hours if successful.
It's worth noting that during the time your horse is pregnant your Sim will not be able to go for rides with them or take them for Community Jobs.
Horse pregnancies tend to be shorter than Sim pregnancies, once our horse received the confirmation notification that she was pregnant, she went into labour exactly one day and 6 hours later (for a total of 30 in-game hours).
Click to enlargeOnce in labour, you can urge it forward by calling your horse to its bed and then choosing the interaction to 'Soothe into Labour'.
You can leave your horses and they will eventually give birth regardless, choosing the above interaction will help hurry the process along, however.
Hidden secret foal traits
Click to enlargeOnce born, your foal will have a mixture of traits from each parent, they will also inherit physical attributes from both.
Our foal above, inherited its coat, Friendly and Energetic traits from the Stallion, whilst it inherited its hair colour and Independent trait from the Mare.
Our foal also gained the Breedable Trait 'Playful' which means it gains boosts from playing with toys and Sims.
Click to enlargeThere is more than one hidden foal trait you can get. During my playthrough, I have discovered the following secret traits:
- Playful – These horses love playing with toys and other Sims!
- Curious – These horses are naturally more curious and enjoy exploring objects and using Horse Jumps and Barrels.
- Hardy – These horses are born to run! They can train for long periods of time without getting fatigued and work up a horse-sized appetite.
There doesn’t seem to be a way to influence which hidden trait you'll get, but rather it will be randomly assigned at birth.
Remember to check back here at GGRecon for more The Sims 4 tips and tricks, or check out all the Horse Ranch cheats, how to train horses, and how to get mini goats and sheep.
