How to breed horses in The Sims 4 Horse Ranch: Hidden foal traits explained

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 The Sims 4 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.

• Check out our guide on how to get hay in The Sims 4 Horse Ranch to keep your horses well-fed and happy.

How to breed horses in The Sims 4 Horse Ranch

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.

From 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.

• Be sure to also check out our guide on how to make Nectar in The Sims 4 Horse Ranch, a great way of earning extra Simoleons.

Horse pregnancies in The Sims 4 Horse Ranch

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).

Once 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.

• For more tips and tricks, check out our guide on how to get mini goats and mini sheep in The Sims 4 Horse Ranch.

The Sims 4 Horse Ranch Foals: Hidden secret foal traits

Once 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.

There are more than one hidden foal traits you can get. During our playthrough, we 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.

So far, 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.

Check back here as we update you with a full list once we discover more! Now you should be all set to expand your ranch with some adorable foals.

Remember to check back here at GGRecon for more Sims 4 Horse Ranch tips and tricks, or Check out how to train horses in The Sims 4 Horse Ranch, complete with all horse skills and ways to level them up.