I thought maybe there could be a filter for what species you want to nurture. Im next to 100% sure that theres a chance of getting an essence from nurturing sylestis and the essence you get depends on what species it is. Im pretty sure that would be a nice help to some players. (Including me!)

if getting a chance to get an essence from nurturing a specific species is true (maybe krin will tell us) then i'd totally agree!! ^^

You can indeed get essences from nurturing, and it does indeed depend on the species nurtured.

HOWEVER.

During festivals, there are nurturing contests that some players (myself included) take very seriously. I nurture everything that comes my way, but a lot of people target nurture - meaning that they go into advanced search and put in the time and effort to nurture every eggling/hatchling in a species.

If we could select a species from the hatchery, it would completely discredit the hard work of those target nurturers. Anyone could go into the hatchery and quickly nurture every pet in a species - a few hundred pets through the hatchery really doesn't take that long. The nurture boards would be absolute CHAOS.

The people who put in the time to target nurture seriously deserve the prizes they win.
If anyone could nurture all the pets in a species in less than 30min, target nurturing would be a thing of the past and everyone would be able to get the most points for the least effort. It just wouldn't be fair for the contests.

With that being said, it is possible to use advanced search to target nurture in the hopes of getting an essence, too. You should know that the probability of getting an essence is very small - less than 1%, in fact, if my calculations from past essence drops have been correct.

Oh yeah, I forgot about the nurturing contests. I guess that kind of rules out this suggestion. Oops.