Breeding loses money?

    • Breeding loses money?

      I have been going through the math of breeding and it looks like I am just losing money no matter what I do.

      For example, to grow a T6 ox takes 275 plants and each plant costs about 330 silver = 90,750 silver. Plus it takes 30 bloodoak planks to make the transport which cost 1,500 x 30 = 45,000 silver plus it costs about 10,000 silver to craft the transport. So, the total cost to make a T6 Transport Ox is 90k + 45k + 10k = 145k silver. However, the Ox's sell for only about 100k silver, so the breeder is taking a 30%+ loss on every ox. What is the logic here?

      I have seen some ridiculous posts like "grow your own carrots" but that is not a reasonable suggestion. Each farming plot yields about 40 plants in the time it takes to raise an Ox, so you would need about 7 plots just to feed one Ox. Also, if you were raising carrots, you make more money just selling the carrots because the 275 plants it takes to feed the Ox can be sold for over 90k silver and that is pure profit. You don't have to buy 45k in bloodoak planks to sell carrots.

      Nevertheless there are people selling Ox's for the apparently completely unprofitable price of 100k silver when it is clear from the math above you would need to charge at least 150k to about break even. So, who the heck are these people?

      Is there some secret to raising ox's cheaply that I don't see?

    • SirusX715 wrote:

      If your end to end math isn't adding up to profit, you need to take a closer look at the individual stages. A good start would be to see what the going market price is for raised, unsaddled ox.
      A Master's Ox is about 60k silver, so if you pay for planks and and crafting it is barely breakeven or losing money depending on what city you sell in. For example, right now T6 transports are 100k, so you would lose 10k on that.

      And it costs 90k to raise the ox, so if you sold it at the market rate, 60k, you would just lose 30k right off the bat.

      What's the point of your analysis? I guess the advantage is that you see exactly HOW you are losing money. You are losing 30k creating the ox and losing another 10k changing the ox into the transport.

    • If you cant understand market prices, someone has more knowledge than you do.

      People may have islands for ages now, they already paid their initial investment, they can have as many plots as they want, they have alts with focus or create them everyday, they can be buying the saddling materials from other towns cheaper and transporting them (or getting them from laborers), it can just be undercuts from people that looted oxs, etc.

      You have to do way more to understand the market than just do those basic maths.

      Take also into account that you get resources returned with focus, that would mean less planks needed. They can have associate rates and pay less fees than you do.

      It can even be some guild leader asking people to spend their focus, who knows. Or someome is just power leveling ox breeding and selling tbem cheaper to get rid of them. You gotta monitor a product for a while to see what is going on.

      One thing you can be sure of: those people are not losing money.

    • As someone who can speak a little on this generally people raise animals while having access to multiple islands.

      The golden rule of thumb is every 5 full farm islands = 1 full island of ox breeding. Now you do need a couple days for the oxen to mature from calfs to oxen. You then use the time from calf to adult to constantly grow your carrots (Which most people who are experienced have their alts pour time into their focus farming for carrots so that they can have consistent carrot farm drops every day.

      So in short you basically kill the need to spend money on carrots or plants as you call it and as far as the calfs go thats just an investment you have to make same as the islands themselves go. But at the end of it all you only have to pay for the planks to make the mount which if you just want a relaxing time of farming and raising cattle then just go gather your own wood?

      The cost for the planks rn in Thetford is 1348 multiply that by 30 and your only paying 40k. And thats just if your looking to buy planks to use for the crafting of transport ox.

      Like the people above have said you actually have to invest in multiple islands to have a chance in hell of competing with the bigshot sellers. It is worth it in the end long as you can withstand the grind.

    • DotZe wrote:

      gather and refine your own wood to saddle it.
      However, these planks still have the same value as those on the market, the fact that you gather them yourself and refine does not mean that they are cheaper or for free, they still have value as those on the market.

      RKOverdrive wrote:

      grow your carrots
      Why not harvest something, on what you earn more by selling and then buy cheap carrots or beans from the market, in the end it's more advantageous than "own carrots".

    • Is breed T6 Ox profitable? Yes. You will need 1 character with high spec/focus to cover the 9 T6 Ox you breed and 8 carrot farm plots. 1 high spec character can cover most of the focus cost of this setup.

      You start the month down ~9.3m to cover the premium cost. Carrots and planks will cost you nothing since you are growing your own carrots and farming your own planks.

      You will need 8 farm plots to cover 9 T6 ox. You need 621 carrots a day (1 T6 Ox is 69 a day). You will need to use focus on all the carrot farms and T6 Ox to be profitable.

      Every 28 days, you will breed 63 T6 Ox, get about 4 extra T6 baby calf, and have 1800 carrot seeds to sell -

      63 saddled T6 Ox sell at ~110k each = 7m total
      4 baby calf sell at ~500k each = 2m total
      1800 carrot seeds sell at ~1700 each = 3m total

      Total = ~12m.

      After premium, you would have made roughly ~2.7m.

      How does that compare to just selling the mat costs -

      90k in carrots and 45k in planks would be about 135k. A total of ~8.5m for 63 Ox.
      63 saddled T6 Ox and 4 baby calf came out to about ~9m. It was more profitable because you had 4 baby calves to sell. If you only gained 3 extra baby calf you wouldn't have broke even.

      If you decided to just do 9 farm plots instead would come out to about ~10m a month. 45k in planks for 63 Ox comes out to about ~2.8m. Carrots+Seeds+Planks would be about ~12-13m a month.


      Is breeding profitable? Yes, if you have the setup for it. Is it more profitable than the raw mats? All depends on how many T6 baby calves you get.

      Note: - Adjusted seed profits since 10k focus wouldn't have covered 9 plots even at max spec.

      The post was edited 2 times, last by Aurin ().

    • CassX wrote:

      DotZe wrote:

      gather and refine your own wood to saddle it.
      However, these planks still have the same value as those on the market, the fact that you gather them yourself and refine does not mean that they are cheaper or for free, they still have value as those on the market.

      RKOverdrive wrote:

      grow your carrots
      Why not harvest something, on what you earn more by selling and then buy cheap carrots or beans from the market, in the end it's more advantageous than "own carrots".
      Because he is wanting to make an actual profit... Why the hell wouldnt you just grow your own carrots or beans and have that account get that spec for focus and just waste money on buying a farm food you could have grown for free basically?

    • RKOverdrive wrote:

      Because he is wanting to make an actual profit... Why the hell wouldnt you just grow your own carrots or beans and have that account get that spec for focus and just waste money on buying a farm food you could have grown for free basically?
      Because when a person is talking about "profit", you can't just pretend carrots are free when you grow them yourself. You need to use the market value for carrots, self grown or not, otherwise you are just making money growing carrots and pretending that you are making money breeding oxen.
      Discord: Piddle#7413
      Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

    • RKOverdrive wrote:

      CassX wrote:

      DotZe wrote:

      gather and refine your own wood to saddle it.
      However, these planks still have the same value as those on the market, the fact that you gather them yourself and refine does not mean that they are cheaper or for free, they still have value as those on the market.

      RKOverdrive wrote:

      grow your carrots
      Why not harvest something, on what you earn more by selling and then buy cheap carrots or beans from the market, in the end it's more advantageous than "own carrots".
      Because he is wanting to make an actual profit... Why the hell wouldnt you just grow your own carrots or beans and have that account get that spec for focus and just waste money on buying a farm food you could have grown for free basically?
      Everything has its value and price, if we talk about harvesting with focus (this is in my opinion perhaps the worst way to deal with focus points (even if you have a max spec)), but even if we use focus, it is much better to harvest something that has a higher price on the market and then buy cheaper crops for feeding than to grow cheap ones, you practically lose silver.
      (but yes, it depends where you are max spec, if you have max spec in carrots, it is clear that you will not harvest with the focus pumpkins ..)

      But, if I have another option where to use focus, and I know it will earn more, why the hell would I use focus on the harvest?
      Yes, the new player probably doesn't have many variants, but even the average player after a few months of playing certainly has other (and more profitable) options for dealing with focus than focusing crops.

      And if we talk about harvesting without focus, why would I harvest carrots when there are much more lucrative options for what to harvest, sell, earn, and buy cheaper crops for feeding, and still make money on it, than if I harvested carrots for feeding .. (without focus)

    • Piddle wrote:

      RKOverdrive wrote:

      Because he is wanting to make an actual profit... Why the hell wouldnt you just grow your own carrots or beans and have that account get that spec for focus and just waste money on buying a farm food you could have grown for free basically?
      Because when a person is talking about "profit", you can't just pretend carrots are free when you grow them yourself. You need to use the market value for carrots, self grown or not, otherwise you are just making money growing carrots and pretending that you are making money breeding oxen.
      Ok but Piddle I think you on at the time I brought up just how many alts I have and almost all of them now have max focus on carrot farming. At THIS point for ME the carrots are basically free as I dont count them in my sales nor do I even sell them tbh... For the past couple months its just been me saving and stockpiling them up for when I want to just do another straight week of oxen breeding or breeding in general to power level.

    • CassX wrote:

      Everything has its value and price, if we talk about harvesting with focus (this is in my opinion perhaps the worst way to deal with focus points (even if you have a max spec)), but even if we use focus, it is much better to harvest something that has a higher price on the market and then buy cheaper crops for feeding than to grow cheap ones, you practically lose silver.
      (but yes, it depends where you are max spec, if you have max spec in carrots, it is clear that you will not harvest with the focus pumpkins ..)

      But, if I have another option where to use focus, and I know it will earn more, why the hell would I use focus on the harvest?
      Yes, the new player probably doesn't have many variants, but even the average player after a few months of playing certainly has other (and more profitable) options for dealing with focus than focusing crops.

      And if we talk about harvesting without focus, why would I harvest carrots when there are much more lucrative options for what to harvest, sell, earn, and buy cheaper crops for feeding, and still make money on it, than if I harvested carrots for feeding .. (without focus)
      Well at that point you would basically have to buy the pumpkin seeds or the desired crop your trying to sell and be stuck wasting practically 9k focus PER PLOT per farm which sounds horrible! Unless you have pre farmed spec already in which case thats all fine and dandy.

      As far as my situation goes if you have enough alt accounts then the farming with focus is not a bad idea (Especially if your a solo player like me) Because with the level of alts farming carrots will actually net you alot of carrot seeds. Which (depending on the market obviously) makes me around 1.3-1.6M PER STACK of 999


      If you harvest crops without focus then thats on you I would not want to see anyone doing that xD Just a waste of time as well as fame and seed yield which also means waste of silver...

    • RKOverdrive wrote:

      Ok but Piddle I think you on at the time I brought up just how many alts I have and almost all of them now have max focus on carrot farming. At THIS point for ME the carrots are basically free as I dont count them in my sales nor do I even sell them tbh... For the past couple months its just been me saving and stockpiling them up for when I want to just do another straight week of oxen breeding or breeding in general to power level.
      That's just not how any of this works. You spent your time on growing and harvesting those carrots. If you aren't taking that into account, then your results will always be inaccurate. Doesn't matter that you feel like it's free to you. It's not free. You are spending an hour or more of your life to grow carrots, and then pretending your time has no value.

      What you are saying with your "I feed my free carrots to my Ox, and then I can make money on my Ox," is that if someone spends twice as much of their own time on breeding Oxen, first to grow carrots and then to feed them to an Ox, they can make some silver.

      But, that misses the fact that if you only spent time on growing carrots, and didn't raise an ox at all, then you'd often end up with MORE silver. So you are making silver growing carrots, and then using that silver to ignore the losses you make growing an Ox.

      Which is fine if what you want is Ox breeding fame, but not fine if what we are talking about is making silver by breeding oxen.
      Discord: Piddle#7413
      Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

    • There have been a massive drop in income for animal breeders over the last couple of months.
      The reason for this is, the massive influx of resources from roads + labors.
      Only the high end crafter with massive specs can make a decent income, so a lot of "semi" crafters have switched from crafting to animal breeding.

      Base cost to produce a T5 horse or Ox is 310*89 = 27590 and it takes 3 days.
      If you grew carrots for 3 days you would average yield 9x3x310 = 8370.
      in order to make the same profit for a T5 horse or Ox the selling price would be 35960.

      The buy price according to albiononline2d.com is
      Ox ~ 18k
      Horse ~ 27k
      In contrast a ride able version cost.
      Ox ~ 47k
      Horse ~ 57k
      Resources needed to craft these.
      Ox 30x T5 (26 in a city) planks where 1 plank = 850. Cost = 25500 || 22100+tax
      Horse 20xT5 (17 in a city) leather where 1 leather = 1300. Cost = 26000 || 22100+tax

      So the T5 ox would cost 27590+25500 = 50090+tax to 53590.

      profit = -3000 best case.


      The horse would be 27590+26000 = 49690+tax to 53590

      Best case profit 4900 to 7310 (based on tax 2400)


      And dont forget there is 4.5% tax.

      This is also with the use of 3x focus, to avoid loosing the animal, and over 3 days !!!

      So ya it seems carrots win in this case :)


      Happy Breeding folks :P