Infertile Eggs

[21Phoenix]

I had this thought while I was posting in the BSA thread (among several others that my wine kept me from remembering but I digress):

 

Perhaps another option could be scripted into the breeding process. We already have: "The dragons refuse to go near one another", "The dragons don't seem very interested in one another", "The dragons breed but don't produce an egg", and "The dragons breed to produce an egg".

 

One similar to "The dragons breed to produce an egg; however, it is infertile."

 

You could then have the option of keeping the egg or tossing it. You could blow out the egg and retain the beautiful shell. This would be a nice way to collect eggs without freezing.

 

It could have the same percentage rate of refusal perhaps so it doesn't happen to often but still allows the collection of eggs.

 

Does this seem like a way to pacify those who feel it is cruel to freeze unhatched eggs?

 

Edit:

 

Okie Dokie. I added a shiny new poll to the top. Yay me! It was hard to cover everything in the poll like unbreedables an unfortunately I don't think you can select multiple answers. If you can I will go back in and change it.

 

Most recent edit to show changes and updates in the original idea:

 

Infertile Eggs Resulting as a Result From Breeding:

 

Egg-laying animals routinely lay eggs that are not viable. Obviously chickens, but also ducks, guineas, quail, and even cage birds like cockatiels have been reported to lay eggs without a male present. It is perfectly natural. In addition external factors can affect fertility. In certain breeds of chicken things like excessive feathering and rumpless birds have a hard time successfully consummating the actual act of fertilization. Things like heat effects fertility in egg laying species, but also in mammals like cows. Fertility significantly drops in the summer months because males are not able to produce as many viable sperm.

 

Lot of things affect fertility.

 

1. A younger male that has just reached sexual maturity may take a week or more to get the whole process down. Ex: Young roosters may start grabbing hens and attempting to mate with them as early as twenty weeks. But it might take up to 26 weeks for them to actually get the hang of it.

 

2. External factors such as heat affect fertility. Ex: My female ducks layed almost year round. I was guaranteed a good hatch if the weather was fairly cool outside and didn't climb into the upper 80's - lower 90's. If the temperatures reached the high 80's or above fertility was drastically affected because the drakes were unable to produce viable sperm. They would breed with the hens, and eggs were layed, but they weren't fertile.

 

3. A male : female ratio that is really off. Ex: One drake (male duck) can successfully cover 4-5 hens. Any less and he may aggravate them with his 'courting' (for lack of a better word) any more and he is breeding too many females as often as he can, so his sperm counts are low. This means less offspring are viable. Roosters are the same. Most can cover 6-8 hens, some up to 10. fancier breeds generally should be on less because things get in the way like rumplessness, to much feathering, or head crests.

 

4. Then of course their are things like sterility and fertility issues where the male isn't producing viable sperm at all. Things like feathers getting in the way, or even another male knocking the one breeding off before he can complete the process. Or the DNA simply isn't compatible. Like a moose and a cow. They could breed, but she would never be able to have a calf their sex cells could never form a living zygote. Obviously this is the reason draks aren't able to breed with dragons. Their genome is sufficiently different so that offspring would never be produced.

 

So an infertile egg doesn't always mean something was wrong, necessarily, just that all the right steps didn't happen, or something prevented the egg from being fertile.

 

 

My original idea was not meant to affect the AP at all. This is an alternative to freezing eggs that accomplishes the same thing. Collection of egg sprites. We have four possible outcomes when breeding dragons.

 

1. Egg/s produced

2. Bred but no egg produced

3. No interest

4. Refusal

 

Why not have the fifth be infertile egg? It could be split in half with option 2 or 3. That way successful clutches aren't affected at all.

 

So if the percentages were something like this:

 

1. Egg/s produced - 35%

2. Bred but no egg produced -35%

3. No interest - 20 %

4. Refusal - 10%

 

The new options would play out along these lines:

 

1. Egg/s produced - 35%

2. Bred but no egg produced - 17.5%

3. Bred but produced an infertile egg - 17.5%

4. No interest - 20 %

5. Refusal - 10%

 

Eggs produced is not affected.

 

The egg would be immediately recognized as non viable, not containing a hatchling, whatever. The message could read something like "The dragons breed to produce an egg. After candling you realize the egg is infertile. Do you want to blow the egg out and keep the shell as a keepsake?" It could give you a "Yes"/"No" option. It would require password entry to be sure. If you clicked "No" a message like "Are you sure you just want to throw the egg away?" could come up.

 

Tossing it would not dump it into the AP. The tossed eggs would be unable to be gotten much like dragons released into the Wilderness are no longer attainable. However there would not be a page showing them. They would just cease to exist.

 

Infertile eggs would not require codes as they do not need to be posted on fansites for views. Views and clicks would not need to be tallied. They don't matter and serve no function for eggs. I don't see trading being necessary. If you have an adult with my original idea you should be able to get an egg eventually. I also feel lineages would be unnecessary. After all the egg is just a keepsake now.

 

Simple is better. There is no need to make things more complicated than they really are.

 

How many eggs would you be able to collect? I would think one or two. No more. It could be a simple reason like, "You would have to build more shelves and display cases to house any more eggs and you are too lazy."

 

Infertile Eggs Result from a Gender Specific Action:

 

 

1. All female common, uncommon, and rare dragons and draks would be able to lay an infertile clutch (1-4 just like with breeding) of eggs by selecting the option as a Gender Specific Action available to all female dragons.

 

2. Unbreedable Dragons:

 

- Vampire ~ "Vampire dragons are members of the undead. They sustain themselves by drinking the blood of others. It is said that they are only "alive" at night, and seem dead or asleep during the day, as they cannot endure sunlight for long periods of time. Vampire dragons can only reproduce by changing the eggs of other dragons, puncturing the shell with theirs fangs and injecting a venom that kills the baby inside."

 

It says they can only reproduce by changing the eggs. If they can only reproduce by changing the eggs of another dragon, who is to say that the female isn't perfectly capable of laying eggs of her own? Just that they aren't fertile. I mean all of their other systems seem to work: circulatory, respiratory, digestive, skeletal, muscle, etc... Why not reproductive? They still would only be able to breed by biting the egg of another dragon and changing the developing embryo, but this would be an easy solution to obtaining an infertile vampire egg. I am not implying that they would bite an infertile dragon egg and the resulting bite would get you a vampire.

 

- Chicken ~ They would lay an infertile egg that same as any other female. We don't even have roosters in cave so that isn't really that big of a stretch.

 

- Cheese ~ As an adorable animated piece of cheese (even with no gender) it would have an ability to mold an egg from a piece of cheese; however, without the enchantment that made it's own egg viable the egg it creates would remain infertile.

 

- Paper ~ Same as cheese except their egg would obviously be made from paper.

 

- Dino ~ I have no idea if these guys even have a gender as I don't have any. Perhaps they could just find an egg and bring it back but it would be infertile, hence why they found it in the first place. It never hatched and mommy Dino abandoned it.

 

- Holiday ~ Any female holiday could either:

> Lay an infertile egg anytime of the year or,

> Lay an infertile egg in the first week of the month that their holiday falls in

 

Male holidays (Sweetlings and Yulebucks) could breed with a female during the first week of the month their holiday falls in and that female could produce an infertile egg. (I am completely open to this idea being tweaked to make it more sound.)

 

- Neglecteds and Zombies ~ I suppose a female dragon could lay an infertile egg just like the Vampire. With the Neglected she is so weak from her state of Neglect that she is simply unable to produce viable eggs. And zombies are well, dead. So any egg produced again like the vampire would be infertile.

 

Other Suggested Options:

 

1. Straight up Egg Freezing

 

2. Giving your female dragon an herb like dragonsbane to render them infertile for one week. Resulting in a breeding during that time frame producing infertile eggs.

 

3. An egg hunting type thingy similar to the Easter Event going on now (2010).

Edited April 5, 2010 by 21Phoenix

[Completely Different]

So, would these just show up randomly during breeding? I'm not sure I'd like that so much. People who are breeding for gifting, or for a specific egg, or for a lineage would get really annoyed if that one gold you've finally produced can't even grow up.

 

By the same token, I don't think that they should randomly show up in CB batches, since that would also be frustrating.

 

I would, however, like a BSA that when preformed on its parents, means that one (if any) of the eggs from the clutch would become infertile. It would allow egg collection, which is nice.

 

Still, it would mean it would be impossible to collect unbreedables, like cheese, chicken and vampire.

Edited January 18, 2010 by Completely Different

[Dr. Paine]

So, would these just show up randomly during breeding? I'm not sure I'd like that so much.

 

I would, however, like a BSA that when preformed on its parents, means that one (if any) of the eggs from the clutch would become infertile. It would allow egg collection, which is nice.

 

Still, it would mean it would be impossible to collect unbreedables, like cheese, chicken and vampire.

... How would it be impossible to collect cheese or chickens? ._. This is breeding, not cave drops. As for vampires- cave and AP.

[Completely Different]

... How would it be impossible to collect cheese or chickens? ._. This is breeding, not cave drops. As for vampires- cave and AP.

Exactly my point....if the infetile eggies came from breeding, since it would be scripted into the breeding process someway, then eggs which don't come from breeding (eg cave only, or bites), they wouldn't be collectable.

[Dolphine]

... How would it be impossible to collect cheese or chickens? ._. This is breeding, not cave drops. As for vampires- cave and AP.

Vampire eggs are caveborn if they were caveborn before bitten.

Chickens and cheese are always caveborn and have no way of reproducing, so you couldn't get an infirtile egg.

 

Maybe that BSA shouldn't go on the parents but on the egg you want to keep as an egg.

 

Like in: You blow out the egg and put the beautiful shell in a glass box.

[Dr. Paine]

Exactly my point....if the infetile eggies came from breeding, since it would be scripted into the breeding process someway, then eggs which don't come from breeding (eg cave only, or bites), they wouldn't be collectable.

-facepalm-

 

I had a moment, sorry x3 I get what you mean now.

[skinst]

A BSA for this sounds good, since then we can choose. But I'm not sure how it would work nor what common would support such an ability. (The Neglecteds or Zombies would fit this, but they're way too rare.)

 

Either way.... outside of a BSA I am not sure about. I dislike the idea of getting a really awesome egg that I've wanted for ages through breeding (say, the new speckled eggs for instance) and then it never hatching because its infertile. That would make me very upset.

 

Anyway, that's my thoughts.

[Geobreeder]

Egg freezing?

 

With different wording!

 

But we have like two topics now discussing this.

[darkshadow5392]

actually...if this is changed around a bit it might just work?

 

i have a small parrot and she lays eggs everyonce in awhile, but since there is no boy they are just little chicken eggs

what if unfertile eggs could randomly appear if said dragon hasn't bred in awhile?

 

I'm unsure how they could appear, but they'll have the option to either keep or toss, if the owner of the scoll doesn't decide in like a day or 2 ((time up for change)) they'll get a message saying this egg has been here too long and smells horrible so you throw it out

 

also for both my idea and the original idea there could be a option on the scroll that no unfertile eggs appear, so if someone doesn't want to find unfertile eggs then they just click the option off

 

if this idea goes through the eggs and cheese could be like "these dragon attempted to be like the other dragons and created an fake egg"

no idea for dinos....

vampires could be like "you bite this egg but the yolk leaks out"

Edited January 18, 2010 by darkshadow5392

[JaydaTheFox]

I like the idea of egg "freezing" being a BSA. It seems pretty logical to me, especially since some are unbreedables. I'd love to just have a vampire egg on my scroll since they look pretty sweet, and i'm certain there are other eggs that would be "collectible".

[Sadako]

It would make more sense if it was a separate action that appears only on a female dragon's page, because unfertilized eggs are laid by females who have not been mated lately. It's like chickens, farmers have to keep roosters away form hens (or keep them drugged ) or the hens will give inedible fertile eggs.

[Geobreeder]

Well every instance to date this sort of idea has cropped up everyone's hated the idea for one reason or the other.

 

And what EXACTLY be the breed to produce it?

 

And STILL it will suffer many of the same problems, except this way, you can raise a unlimited no. of drgaons to do the same thing.

 

At least before your still limited to the freeze limit no. ^_-

[Slaskia]

One potential problem with this idea (and the one in the similiar thread), is that I can forsee people using this on inbred eggs from the AP. A lot of people get upset as is when people neuter a hatchling by freezing and then releasing it simply because it is inbred (and though I personally don't care about inbreds, this activity has led me to try to replace all my inbred dragons with clean ones just so when I bred them they won't get that treatment).

 

So, this function (however it is done) would need to have limit or cool down like freezing now has. Otherwise, I would love a feature like this, as some eggs I want so badly to keep as 'eggs' (new limestone egg...autumn egg).

[Schemilix]

So, would these just show up randomly during breeding? I'm not sure I'd like that so much. People who are breeding for gifting, or for a specific egg, or for a lineage would get really annoyed if that one gold you've finally produced can't even grow up.

 

By the same token, I don't think that they should randomly show up in CB batches, since that would also be frustrating.

 

I would, however, like a BSA that when preformed on its parents, means that one (if any) of the eggs from the clutch would become infertile. It would allow egg collection, which is nice.

 

Still, it would mean it would be impossible to collect unbreedables, like cheese, chicken and vampire.

Half the chance of showing no interest, then make an equal percentage of infertile eggs. Thus the percentage of fertile eggs would remain the same.

[Nectaris]

As long as you are aware of the fact that you have an infertile egg, I do not necessarily mind the idea. If it does not alert you, then no, I do not like the idea of gifting/trading an egg that no one knows if it will hatch or not.

[21Phoenix]

The idea was that you would immediately know the egg was infertile. I too would hate to trade, be traded, or attempt to hatch an egg that would not be fertile.

 

I like the idea of splitting "the dragons don't produce anything" with this idea. That way the number of viable eggs wouldn't be affected.

[Kanakha]

I don't think I would like this very much...I mean, if I was trying to breed a couple dragons to get, say, a Geode, and it turned out to be infertile, it would be frustrating. Especially because Geodes are hard to come by, and to have the risk of the egg being infertile would only double the frustration.

Edited January 18, 2010 by Avatar Kanakha

[SlowHornpipe172]

I like Sadako's idea, that 'lay unfertile eggs' is a separate action that shows up on females' actions pages (probably with a relatively high chance of succeeding and no multi-'clutch'-es). That way any breed of dragon that you already have can give you a 'frozen egg'. As for the unbreedables... I dunno, maybe egg freezing can be an option/BSA but only for the eggs of unbreedables.

[Kanakha]

It would make more sense if it was a separate action that appears only on a female dragon's page, because unfertilized eggs are laid by females who have not been mated lately. It's like chickens, farmers have to keep roosters away form hens (or keep them drugged ) or the hens will give inedible fertile eggs.

Oh, I saw this and it kinda makes sense. But would this count as "breeding" the dragon? I mean there would have to be some sort of limit on it.

[Kila]

Females can lay eggs regardless of fertilization, right? It's how we get eggs from chickens used for consumption.

 

So why not have females have the ability to lay eggs in general, with an extremely long cool down?

 

Edit: DERP, someone was thinking the same thing and posted it earlier :B Kila should learn to read.

Edited January 18, 2010 by Kila

[Sadako]

I'm actually not sure if female birds or reptiles can produce infertile eggs when there's a mating involved unless something goes wrong, so having it as a result of normal breeding would not be realistic -I think.

 

Infertile eggs as a result of normal breeding where another dragons uses its BSA to make the egg infertile would be okay, but would be hard to explain.

 

Would be awesome as a female-only action available for all females (including unbreedables? Otherwise you can't collect their eggs.) -it could count as a type of breeding so the female has to wait a week before she can lay again.

 

Ya know where it says 'Egg' 'Dead Egg' or 'Held Egg' on your scroll? That spot could say 'Infertile Egg.' On the egg's page where it says 'Egg Laid on: Date' it could instead say 'Infertile Egg Laid on: Date'. Maybe they wouldn't collect views, as well, so it would be easy to tell the difference between a real egg and an infertile egg... Also infertile eggs would only have the mother listed, if it's a female-only action.

 

You could make them insta-freeze so that they can't leave the scroll on which they're laid. Or if you abandon them they vanish instead of going to the AP?

[Harley Quinn hyenaholic]

I prefer the freezing option. It's so much simpler and it helps clear the AP too.

[Geobreeder]

I prefer the freezing option. It's so much simpler and it helps clear the AP too.

And helps mess with the grand scheme of things...

 

... Yeah great idea.

 

Okay I think I prefer infertile eggs to freezing eggs officially.

[Fizzix]

Would be awesome as a female-only action available for all females (including unbreedables? Otherwise you can't collect their eggs.) -it could count as a type of breeding so the female has to wait a week before she can lay again.

This! I was going to come into the thread and suggest this, and I'm glad to see someone else on the same wavelength.

[Winddancir]

Would be awesome as a female-only action available for all females (including unbreedables? Otherwise you can't collect their eggs.) -it could count as a type of breeding so the female has to wait a week before she can lay again.

What about the few male only? Or holiday only dragons? I do like the idea, but not sure how this would affect things. Some eggs are just so pretty...

 

Would the infertile eggs count towards the population limit? Do the eggs have to have a code like normal?

 

I don't think this should be allowed on just any egg though. We'd get people taking the commons off the AP and freezing them all. Then the breed ratios would go way off, and it would get crazy.