It's great that Poppy is hiding such a new fur! Hopefully she passes it again next week, so that we might learn more about how Bali Blue compares to Bali Seal!
It's important to take stock of what offspring your starters give you on a regular basis (ideally every week, but especially when you learn something new about what the starter hides, or when you get a different gender than what you had been getting, or when you get an offspring showing a good number of traits). Given the new development on the fur front, now is a good time to take a closer look at her offspring and re-assess.
The Week 1 kitty (still in the box) gave us 3 traits, 2 of which are fairly standard (ears & tail), plus a whisker colour that may or may not have an interesting hidden. This box is probably best left in its current state until we learn more about Poppy's hidden whisker colour.
The Week 2 kitten (8 days old at this point & named Week2Kitten) has a lot of potential; she shows 6 traits, and hides the other 3 (hiddens she got from Ricky). She shows Russian Black Fur (and , as we found out this week, hides Balinese Blue Lynx), Grape Ice Eyes (hiding Gerbera Purple or more recessive), Small Pupil, Plush Tail (hiding Big Boo Boo or more recessive), and White Curious Whiskers (possibly hiding more recessive versions of both of those traits). She hides Mysterious Eye Shape, a Shade (Flair, Porcelain, or Twinkle), and an Ear trait (Soft Fold or more recessive).
The Week 3 kitten (named Week3Kitten, and also 8 days old) is the only male produced by Poppy so far; thus he is the only one of Poppy's bloodline that can be backbred at this point, & will be one half of any sibling breed at this point. He shows 3 of the same traits as Week2Kitten (fur, eyes, and whisker colour), shows Mysterious Ears (hiding Soft Fold or more recessive), and hides the rest (hiddens he got from Ricky). He's a pretty solid choice for sibling breeding.
The Week 4 kitten (currently still in the box) has Balinese Blue Lynx Fur (hiding Ocicat Ebony Silver), Plush Tail (hiding Big Boo Boo or more recessive), Curious Whiskers (possibly hiding something more recessive), and has hiddens from Ricky in all other traits. She is currently still in the box.
The plan for next week is to sibling Week2Kitten with Week3Kitten & breed Poppy with a new partner, Sammy, which, with luck, should give us a better idea of Poppy's hidden whisker traits, as well as possibly giving an idea of the recessiveness of her hidden fur. This is a solid plan for next week; the sibling breed will give a solid kitten (3+ traits, with a good chance for 5 or more), and the breed with Poppy has good potential for learning more about her hiddens. But the Week 4 box offers some interesting possibilities starting the week after that.
The plan for Poppy going forward probably won't involve backbreeding with a sibling, although that could change if her hidden whisker shape or whisker colour proves too recessive to determine by drawing out directly. Assuming we can get the whisker info directly, and since Week2Kitten was as traity as she was, it might be an idea, once we learn about the whiskers, to use her to get more knowledge about the recessiveness of Balinese Blue Lynx (since she hides it), by continuing to breed her with cats with different furs (9-traited partners if possible).
It makes sense to use Week3Kitten for sibling breeding. He has a decent number of traits, and, at this point, 2 potential partners starting in Week 6.
The real question is what to do with Week2Kitten & the week 4 box. I see a few potential options.
Option 1 is to leave Week 4 in the box for now & sibling breed week 2 to week 3. This will probably give us the traitiest kitties we can get from sibling breeding, at least for the moment, and is fairly economical in terms of resources. The biggest disadvantage of this approach is that it will be difficult to track when the Balinese Blue Lynx fur is hiding in an OS (the OS's of this sibling breed will be pure Bali Blue only 25% of the time, and will show Black Russian 75% of the time; 2/3 of these Black Russian OS's will hide Balinese Blue, but we won't know which ones). Also, we may get better cats with another option.
Option 2 (the second least desirable of the 3, in my opinion, but not without some merit), is to stick with the sibling breed of week2 with week 3, unpack week 4, and work on uptraiting week 4. This does have some potential, but uses more resources than Option 1, and the sibling breed still has the same problem with knowing when Bali Blue is hiding.
Option 3 (the least desirable imho, at least for this project) would be scrap sibling breeding, and either uptrait just weeks 2 & 3, or uptrait week 2 and maybe try & sell week 3 (there may be a market for him, since he hides a new fur), or unpack week 4, and do some combination of uptraiting & selling the 3 cats, though I would probably uptrait Week2Kitten for sure (she has the best potential). Because this is designed to be primarily a BREEDING project, I think it best to focus this on breeding techniques, and showing the potentials in them.
A final option (one that I'm leaning slightly in favour of) is to unpack week 4, and, in week 6, sibling breed week 3 & week 4, & put Week2Kitten with a 9-traiter with a fur recessive to Black Russian to uptrait. The main disadvantages of this over option 2 are that it uses more resources (2 more live cats than option 2), and the sibling breed will be a bit less traity, on average. The advantages over option 2 are that the uptrait will give a very traity (6+ traited) kitten, and the sibling breed will give you OS's with the Bali Blue fur showing 50% of the time(half of these will be pure Bali Blue, the other half will hide Ocicat Ebony Silver), and will show Black Russian 50% of the time (half of these should hide Bali Blue, the other half the Ebony Silver).
As I said, I'm slightly inclined to like the last option, but you may have a different opinion (or maybe even other options). What do you think? Please share!
Instructional Breeding Project (Week 7 Info: MEGA!)
