They're certainly harder to provide for than horses, but not quite as much as your description would make it sound. They have slow metabolisms. They need to eat a lot, but certainly less frequently than horses do. A wyvern can go weeks between feedings.
That said...well, the truth is there's only one type of selective breeding I know of, and it's on a very limited scale. There's a certain country in my world where a very rare and specific color of wyvern is reserved for royalty. So there's rarely more than two or three at a time in existence. It's not what you'd call an extensive breeding program. Definitely not comparable to the way people breed horses.
As for hatching, I don't know many particulars. My wyvern was hatched shortly after I myself was born, so I wasn't really in a position to take notes. But successful integration, as you put it, isn't really a thing - at least, you make it sound like hatchlings are raised to be integrated with older wyverns. But hatchlings are raised very closely with humans as part of the taming and acclimation process, and it's a process that can take a decade or more. Usually it's either the person to whom the wyvern belongs - where I'm from, it's not at all uncommon for a person and their wyvern to grow up together, and that's what happened with mine - but for mounts meant for more general use than personal ownership, there are people who specialize in that rearing process. It's important for wyverns to develop that strong bonds with humans.
Besides, as I understand, they're not particularly social or nurturing with each other in the wild, so they don't exactly miss the company of their own kind.
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Date: 2021-02-15 07:37 pm (UTC)That said...well, the truth is there's only one type of selective breeding I know of, and it's on a very limited scale. There's a certain country in my world where a very rare and specific color of wyvern is reserved for royalty. So there's rarely more than two or three at a time in existence. It's not what you'd call an extensive breeding program. Definitely not comparable to the way people breed horses.
As for hatching, I don't know many particulars. My wyvern was hatched shortly after I myself was born, so I wasn't really in a position to take notes. But successful integration, as you put it, isn't really a thing - at least, you make it sound like hatchlings are raised to be integrated with older wyverns. But hatchlings are raised very closely with humans as part of the taming and acclimation process, and it's a process that can take a decade or more. Usually it's either the person to whom the wyvern belongs - where I'm from, it's not at all uncommon for a person and their wyvern to grow up together, and that's what happened with mine - but for mounts meant for more general use than personal ownership, there are people who specialize in that rearing process. It's important for wyverns to develop that strong bonds with humans.
Besides, as I understand, they're not particularly social or nurturing with each other in the wild, so they don't exactly miss the company of their own kind.