Chocobo Breeding Tips

A quick guide to getting the best kinds of chocobos in FF7. Having trouble getting a particular colored/gendered chocobo? Read on!

Preparing for Chocobos

To start on this quest, you need to be able to reach the Chocobo Ranch, the Gold Saucer and the Chocobo Sage's house. This means that you have to possess the Highwind, because all three locations are on different continents. Having the W-Item materia is a great help too, as it will save up your money by using the item duplication glitch.

So, here's what you need to get started:

Get the Chocobo Lure materia. You can either buy one at the Chocobo Ranch for 2,000 gil, or wait until CD 2 and get one for free near the fence of the ranch. We recommend buying one the first time you get there, and levelling it up throughout the course of the game. This will make it easier to get chocobos.
Rent some stables at the Chocobo Ranch. They are 10,000 gil apiece, and you can rent up to six. Having all six stables will making breeding far easier.
Get a lot of Sylkis Greens. These special greens are bought only from the Chocobo Sage, at the outrageous price of 5,000 gil. You will need a lot of them to feed the chocobos you'll catch and breed, in order to improve their statistics. This means that you will either have to be filthy rich (selling mastered All Materia nets you a TON of gil), or use the W-Item duplication glitch (select the item you wish to duplicate, pick a target, select any other item, cancel, select, cancel, alternate between select and cancel for continues duplicates)
Getting three Carob Nuts and one Zeio Nut.
To get a Carob Nut, you can either trade 500 GP at the Gold Saucer's Wonder Square for one , or Steal them from a monster called Vlakorados. It can be found on some islands, south of the Bone Village (it has around 30,000 HP,use gravity materia to finish him off easily unless you steal the item then run).
To get a Zeio Nut, you need to fly to the northeastern group of islands on the map, and search for one covered with forest. In the forest, you can encounter Goblins, and Steal from them the valuable nut you're looking for.
Once you've done all that, you're good to go.

Catching the right chocobos

To catch a chocobo in battle, you need to kill every monster except the chocobo. In fact, you can't touch the chocobo at all or else it will attack you and run away (forget about multiple targets attacks. Well, don't really forget it, since you can obtain Chocobuckle that way). The chocobo can also leave by his own without any provocation: to prevent that you have to give him some Greens Gysahl Greens work just fine: don't waste any of your high priced Sylkis Greens). You'll catch the chocobo if it's the only one standing at the end of the battle. Fairly easy to do at high levels.

Once you catch one, you can mount it and ride it around; you can ride it around and then dismount. If you have rented at least one chocobo stable, you'll be given the opportunity to send the chocobo back to the ranch after releasing it. The chocobo will automatically travel to the ranch, and wait inside the fence. You can only send four chocobos to the fence this way. After that, you need to go back to the ranch, and either release some of them or transfer them to one of your stables.

You will need two different types of chocobo for the first round of breeding, a good and a great. To be sure you get the right results, catch two of each.

Gold Saucer Area: You can find either Average chocobos or Good chocobos. Since we want the Good sort, we're only interested in chocobos that we meet in an enemy group with two Spencers - you can feel free to run from the other battles with a chocobo, because they will always be of the Average type.

Mideel Area: You can find either Fair chocobos or Great chocobos. We want the Great ones, of course, and they come along with Spirals. Again, run away or simply wait until the wrong chocobo leaves and defeat the monsters it was with to try again in the next encounter.

When you have the four chocobos its time to head back to the ranch. Save your game before you go in.

Talk to chocobo Billy and ask him about moving Chocobos. Make sure you get a male and a female of both good and great. If you didn't get the right genders, just reset your game and move them again.

Good Chocobo:

Great Chocobo:

Mountain and River Chocobos

In order to breed the kind of chocobos we want, the couple destined to mate has to be in the finest shape possible. And for that, there are two things to do: raise their stats, and advance their class at the Chocobo Square.

The fastest way to raise the statistics of a chocobo is to feed him or her with a large amount of Sylkis Greens. If you feed one 90 or so, you're guaranteed to maximize its statistics.

To advance the Chocobo's class, you'll need to race it at the Gold Saucer, and win races. Note however that not every chocobo can advance to the S class: Yellow chocobos can reach B class, but rarely A class, while Blue, Green, Black and Gold can easily reach S class.

Race the chosen chocobo couple to at least Rank B (higher ranks aren't necessary, but seem to improve your chances of a colored chocobo). You can race the other two chocobos if you want to at this point, but its not necessary. When you are done, return to the ranch and talk to Billy about 'Mating Chocobos'

IMPORTANT NOTE: before mating any chocobos, save your game. If you don't get the chocobo you're looking for, reset and restart. Also, newly born chocobos and chocobos who just gave birth to a new one can't mate again right away: you'll have to spend some time before they can. Sometimes, just racing at the Chocobo Square to level up your chocobo's class will be enough, and sometimes it won't. Take it easy, spend you time on another sidequest, then go back to ask Billy if they are able to mate.

To get the Mountain/River chocobos, these are the proper combinations:
Mate a Good chocobo with a Great one with a Carob Nut to get either a River or Mountain chocobo.
Often times when you mate a female Good chocobo with a Great male, you will get a River chocobo. Vice versa, you often will get a Mountain Chocobo.

Repeat with more Good/Great combos to get the other color in the other gender. After that, release the parents and any other yellow (non-special) chocobos in your stables.

Are you still not getting the desired chocobo (gender or color), here is a GREAT tip, brought to you by Silent_Fantasy:

Everytime you enter the ranch, the sex of the newborn chocobo and the type (depending on what 2 your breeding) changes.
example that i tested with.
had 1 A class (also fed it 90 selkis greens) great female
and 1 A class (90 slekis greens also) good male
bred them with carob nut
got a male green.
waited to breed again to get my femal blue.
bred them again in same fashion.
got another green male. but i had saved it befoer i done this. but everytime i loeded up and went back in i got the same thing. a green male.
but i went in the next time, exited, then went back in. then i got a blue male.
loaded again, did the same thing, got a blue male again.
loaded again, but went out 2 times and went back in and bred. got a green something (cant remember) but after i exited and went back in 5X in a row, i got the bird i wanted. and they changed everytime, but only if i exited and entered.
thought this might help some of the newer chocobo breeders. as i was at the time. lol
(this is NEVER mentioned in any FAQS or anywhere i can find chocobo breeding tips. so i think i found something thats not known by many even after all these years. =D )

so the tip is, save before you breed. know what 2 colors of birds you can get with your combination of choices. and if its not the bird you want (gender or type) then just keep entering and exiting till you get the bird you want. they tend to go in a certain order, so keep up with how many times you enter and exit. as you could skip the type and gender you want.

This works AMAZINGLY well, thanks SF!

Black and Gold Chocobos

Now that we got the first half of the breeding done, lets wrap it up with the two rarest chocobos, the black and gold chocobos!

Feed and train your Blue and Green chocobos. Make them reach class A at least, class S if possible. Shouldnt be too hard if you can afford (or glitch) a ton of sylkis greens.

Mate the Blue chocobo and the Green chocobo with a Carob Nut to get a Black Chocobo. Remember if you don't get it right away, try reloading and entering/leaving the ranch a few times.
Take note of the gender of your black chocobo.


GOLD:
Catch a Wonderful chocobo of the opposite sex of your Black one. They are found in the chocobo tracks near the Icicle area. They are only found with two Jumpings, run away from any others.


Feed and train your Wonderful and Black chocobos. Make them reach class A. Essentially what you need is nine wins amongst the parents.

If your Black chocobo still isnt ready to mate, just get into a few random battles then check again.

Mate the Wondeful chocobo and the Black chocobo with a Zeio Nut to get a Gold chocobo.

Congrats, you now have a gold chocobo, you can go anywhere! Go pick up yourself a Knights of the Round in celebration.


Hope this guide helps!

Make sure you see two of these bunny things:

[DynamixDJ]

You don't need a Good and a Great. You could use 2x Greats, 2x Goods or a Good and Great (it doesn't matter which sex).

[plzhavmercy]

Is there any benefit to breeding more gold chocobos? Can the children become faster than their parents? You can breed a black and gold to make another gold with a zeio nut, but the child will only be like at 147 speed.

[dchlebek2]

You are the fucking. Man. The one thing that always gave me trouble with chocobo breeding was that I could never get a river and mountain chocobo of the opposite gender. Thank you so much.