I've been nurturing... well, everything. I only really want to place in a few boards, and I believe nurturing by species would help me and likeminded others. Instead of spending 6+ hours nurturing 15k pets, I can spend maybe an hour nurturing 1.5k. I, personally, only nurture my pets off-board-rounds. And before you say 'go use the advanced search >:(' ...that is literally so tedious and would take pretty much the same amount of time.
You can control what board you battle for, so why not nurtures?
I feel like the nurturing boards are like what would happen if your battleboard points were based on the number to that sylesti KO'd. idk. haven't gotten much sleep.

This has been suggested before, and Krin has said it won't happen because it would be too likely for certain less popular species to no longer receive nurturing because people would target nurture for essences they wanted as well as during contests for the certain boards they wanted on. With the battle boards, choosing which board to play for doesn't affect any other aspect of the game (ie whether whole species receive no nurtures and more popular species essences becoming more plentiful).

So, while I would personally love to only nurture the species I want to nurture, it really isn't likely to ever happen.

Awh, that sucks. Thanks for telling me! I never really nurture outside of boards so I guess I can see how that'd work. :/

Personally I would love this.

I think that, with careful handleing, it could be done so that the less popular species are still nurtured.

Just random ideas, some more thought out, some just thought of now.

1. When nurturing a 'less popular species' you gain the chance to get a new species of pet essence (if we ever get a new special species, that isn't found in the wild etc..). This is the only way, other than the diamond shop, to gain this new essence.

2. When nurturing by species, or targeted nurturing, you don't have the chance to gain any special items except scales. No tokens during fests, no essences, no any other potential item that might come from it. You only gain those by nurturing all pets.

3. There is an algorithm that will check out what species were most nurtured in the past X time period, and update (perhaps once a day, to prevent lag) rewards accordingly. Species that saw fewer nurtures (this would probably have to be adjusted for the fact that there are simply fewer young of certain species out there, so you could have all of one species be nurtured, but it only be 400 nurtures, and only 1/4 of another species, and it be 500 nurtures) would gain additional rewards for the nurture, such as 2x scales or greater chance of getting a non-scale reward.

4. Only allow target nurturing during boards. Any other time you have to use the methods we have now of nurturing, and if you want to target nurture, you have to do it the AS method. I know some people have said that they feel that this would give too much of an advantage, but honestly, with players who can nurture ALL the pets available in one day and do it the next, I think players that can't can honestly use an advantage, and this would be open to all players, so any advantage that one might gain by doing this, another can do as well. Also, if it is felt this does give an advantage, some of the above can be done to make it so that players who do this method will lose out on other rewards that might be offered through regular nurturing, such as the ability to gain sun tokens.

5. Alternatively, a filter, when/if the advanced search is updated, that allows to filter by 'needs nurturing' would work pretty much the same but still keep the most of the disadvantages of AS nurturing (ie having to open them in separate tabs, and having to go five pets at a time and so on) It would just allow for players to not worry about leaving and coming back and suddenly hitting all the pets they already hit, or hitting all those eggs that I always find that are ready to be hatched, so can't be nurtured.

As a person that breeds many different species, I would hate for the less popular species to miss out on clicks during festivals. Also, being able to only select the species you want to nurture takes most of the competition out of it. I do not support this option during festival boards. Outside of festivals, it might be nice to be able to nurture a specific species, in case you are looking for essence drops. I'm not sure how many people do this, so I'm not sure if it is worth the hassle to enable/disable this during festivals. If I'm looking for scales outside of festival boards, it doesn't matter what species I nurture. I fear it will be too complicated to have 2 different systems/options though.....

However; I was thinking, it would be nice to have the option to exclude up to 3 species of my choice in the nurturing grounds. Take for instance last boards: Zolnixi and Sylvorpa had way more pets that I wanted to nurture: 8-10k each as top scores, while the other species had around 1k - 4k each. Sometimes I am discouraged from mass nurturing due to this. It isn't always the same species, and I'd like the option to avoid all those extra clicks if I can. It could be a daily thing that you have to pay for. Maybe the currency is scales, maybe it is gold or festival tokens.