Breeding - How do you keep track of your projects?

[dancing_serpent]

I have a couple of breeding projects going on and I'm having trouble keeping track of them. When to breed, which dragon to breed to which partner to avoid inbreeding, and so on. I keep forgetting about these things. The only project that's easy to track for me is my purebred red dorsal one.

So my question is, how do you keep track of your projects? Do you have a spreadsheet or something? I'd like to organise my breeding a bit more, so I don't always stumble around, and maybe actually manage to finish something.

Comments

[codyne]

I use a combination of spreadsheets for keeping track and and image files for planning. I use Open Office for my spreadsheets, because it's a free program, and it works really well. A lot of people use Google Docs, which is also free, but I don't like having to be online in order to use it.

Here, I uploaded my lineage spreadsheets to Google Docs so you can look at them:
Lineage spreadsheets

Each tab is set up for a 6th gen even-gen project. So, there are six columns, with the CBs listed down the 6th column. Whenever I get an offspring, it goes in the 5th column next to its parents, and so on, until it's done! When a project is finished, I move the tab to the end, so if you go look at those, you can see what it looks like when it's all filled in.

I do it in right-to-left direction so it will match the way the Dragon Cave lineage pages are laid out. Most of my projects I take to 6 generations, so the template is always the same. But you could just as easily start at the left with the CBs in the first column and work left-to-right. Then you wouldn't have to know how many generations you were going to take it to start with.

Checkers are a bit more complicated because I'm always rearranging the pairs depending on who gives me which color and who refuses whom and so on. So, if you look at the Fire x Brimstone tab, you'll see there are some extra columns on the right. This is a male Red x female Brimstone checker. When I do checkers, I like to collect all my CBs first, then breed all the 2nd gens, then match them up and breed all the 3rd gens, and so on. That way, it's easy to switch pairs around in case of refusals, and I can keep breeding all the pairs until I get the right number of reds and brimstones to proceed to the next generation. So, the template isn't really that useful, because I'm always switching things around. Instead, I just write down the pairs and their offspring in columns. The first block of names are the CB pairs and their offspring. That block is finished. The 2nd block, underneath, are the 2nd gen pairs and their offspring. That's what I'm working on now. I have 2 reds and 3 brimstones so far, yay! I haven't put any names in the 3rd gen column of the template yet, I'll do that when I've finished breeding 3rd gens and am ready to match them up.

For planning out lineages, I took a screencap of a Dragon Cave lineage page, imported it into a graphics program, and erased all the dragons so it would just be a blank page with the outlines for the dragon images. I also download all the lineage images for the different dragon breeds and keep them in a file. Then, I can just use the blank page and copy in various breeds and arrange them to see how they'll look. That's how I planned out my Gaia and Event lineages. For example, here's a little piece of one:

Anyway, that's probably more than you wanted to know! Feel free to copy any of my templates into files for yourself, and let me know if anything is too confusing.

[dancing_serpent]

No, not confusing at all. This is pretty much what I'm looking for. *g* Thank you!

What I take from this is that it actually takes quite a bit of work and planning to keep track of everything, but worth the effort to avoid frustration.

[codyne]

Oh, good. Glad it's helpful!

Yeah, it takes some effort to set up the files, but once they're ready, it's so much easier to keep track. I generally keep my lineage spreadsheet open when I'm breeding so I can easily see which pairs need to be bred and record their offspring right away.

[krait]

I'm hardcore old-school, so my answer to this is:

spiral-bound notebook.


:D It helps somewhat that I'm a lazy, or at least intermittent, breeder, because I don't 'schedule' when each should be bred, I just breed when I have scroll space. (I tend to kind of alternate between raising broods of abandoned eggs, raising broods produced for breeding projects, and raising broods produced for trade.) When I do have space, though, I just hit up the notebook to see where I left off, and go from there. It works pretty well. Maybe I could scan a page?

[krait]

I should add, too, that I custom-sort so that I can put all CBs at the top of their breed group, all 2nd-gens under that, etc. Many groups I also apply naming conventions to cue me ("Regal" is always CB, "Resplendent" always 2nd-gen, etc.) and make a neat if subtle theme. For projects that are going to be particularly large and involve a lot of participants, especially those of a breed(s) that I'm using in other projects, I include a reminder in the name: a Magi named "Something Something Ember", for instance, is part of my Magi/Ember project, and I won't accidentally breed it to one of my Magi/Magma dragons when working on that project.

[krait]

Oh, hey, I have a Harvest lineage that's identical to that one!

Would you be up for a blood swap sometime?

[codyne]

Actually, I think I got that harvest from you! I don't own the parents, anyway, so I can't breed 3rd gens. I'd be happy to breed you a couple of 2nd gens from my Winter Magis, though, if you'd like.

[dancing_serpent]

I'd love to see a scan!

Yeah, I'm also more the intermittent breeder - mainly because my head is full of other stuff and I often find myself thinking "oh hey, there's that Flamingo/Thunder lineage that still needs a bit of work, when did I breed them last?". *g*

[dancing_serpent]

I custom sort, too, though more by breed than by lineage project so far. For my army of Red Dorsals I have a reverse sort - the highest gen on the top, the CBs down at the bottom.

I've been using naming cues, as well, but just something simple like CB or 4PB added to the name. And I delete those cues when I got the egg I wanted from that pairing. Again, only doing this with my red dorsals.