You're going to need a lot of money, patience, and luck if you want to raise chocobos. The payoff is that you can breed chocobos that can fly, swim, climb over mountains and go to places normal vehicles can't reach. You would also want to do this to get the almighty and all powerful Knights of the Round materia.

a) Go to the Chocobo Farm once you've accquired the Highwind. Enter the house (not the barn) and talk to the person there. Choose the first option, then choose the top choice. Doing this will let you purchase one of the stalls in the barn. You'll need to purchase all six, but they cost 10000 gil a pop. If you want, you can do the process with only four stalls, but you'll have to kick out the chocobos you don't need to make room for the newer ones. Another thing that you will need is the w-item materia. This materia allows you to dupe the sylkis greens making an otherwise expensive project very cheap.

b) Leave and get on the airship. Fly to the northern continent and land near the lone house surrounded by grass (it's exactly to the northwest of the farm). Equip one character with a Steal (yellow) materia and keep walking around on the grass until you fight a very large red Kangaroo type monster. Try to steal from him until you get a Carob Nut (you'll get a message with an exclamation mark if you stole something). Run away or beat him, then repeat the process three times so that you have three Karabu Fruits. You can also get this item from the same enemy if you go to the tip of the penninsula near the excavator's village on the Northern Continent where the dark grass is.

c) Now, go to the chocobo tracks near the Gold Saucer (by the shore). Equip someone with a Chocobo Attract materia and walk along the tracks until you enter a battle with a Chocobo. Don't kill the chocobo, but do kill the other enemies. When the battle is over, press X to dismount and select the top option to make the chocobo return to the farm. I suggest you collect 4 chocobos at a time to raise your chances. Go back to the farm and talk to Billy. Select move chocobos. You should pick a chocobo that Chocobo Billy says is "Good." Make sure it's a male.

d) Go to the tracks on the Southern Continent, near the forest where you found Cloud in Disc 2. You can get "Great" chocobos here. Just repeat step (c) to catch one. Now go back to the farm and talk to Billy and move the chocobo. Make sure the chocobo is a "great" one, and make sure it's a female. Now, before you start breeding save the game!!!, chances are you're going to reset a bunch of times.

e) Do you have the correct type and gender? Talk to Billy again and choose the breeding option. Choose one of the chocobos by walking up to it and pressing O. Pick the top option, then repeat with the other chocobo. When you get another choice, pick the top option. A list will appear. Remember the items you stole from that Kangaroo in the north? It will appear as the item 7th from the top (there should be a 3 next to it since you stole 3 items). Choose the top choice.

f) Hopefully you got a green Chocobo! If you got a blue one or a yellow one, reset and try to mate the two chocobos again (repeat step e). You'll want a blue chocobo, but if you get one right now, it's harder to breed a green one. Keep note of your chocobo's gender--it's important.

g) At this point, you can't mate the yellow chocobos again or the green chocobo until you fight some battles or waste time. If you don't want to wait, repeat steps (c) through (f) and try to breed a Blue Chocobo who is the opposite gender of your Green Chocobo. If you have time on your hands, though, waste it and come back later. You can re-breed your two yellow chocobos and try to get a Blue Chocobo. Either way, it will take _a lot_ of tries, but you save the trouble of capturing and renaming chocobos if you waste some time and just re-breed your two yellow birds. Remember the item that you used (Carob Nut), will now have a '2' next to it since you already used one. Don't worry, it will still stay in the same place on the menu.

h) Okay! Now, you should have a Blue chocobo and a Green chocobo of opposite genders. If you caught another pair of yellow chocobos, you won't have any more stall space and you'll have to let the two yellow ones go. If you simply breeded them again, you'll still have two stalls left open. Since the Blue chocobo is a newborn, you'll need to waste some more time before you can breed it to the Green one. Hop in the Highwind and fly back to the house on the grassy patch in the Northern Continent. Talk to the chocobo sage and choose the first option. He will offer to sell you items; buy one Sylkis Green, and dupe it 99 times with your w-item materia. You need to feed your two new chocobos 60 greens each, and thats alot easier with a w-item materia. You also need to race them up to the "A" class in the racing (win 3 races in the "C" class and you go to"b" win three and you go to "A").

i) Get back in the Highwind and return to the Chocobo Farm. Breed the blue and green chocobos together. With a little luck, you'll find a black chocobo in one of the empty stalls the following day. Yes, you may have used up your last Carob Nut, but you won't need anymore. Once again, take note of your black chocobo's gender.

j) There's an elongated island with a forest on it northeast of the Chocobo Farm. Go into the forest and wander around until you run into a tiny monster wearing boxing gloves (Goblin). You can steal a Zeio Nut off of it--you only need one. After you get it, fly to the chocobo tracks on the west edge of the Northern Continent and capture one; you can get "wonderful" chocoboes here. Then go back to the farm, name your "wonderful" Chocobo, and put it in the stalls. If it isn't the opposite gender of your black chocobo, reset and try the naming process again.

k) Feed 60 sylvis greens to the "wonderful" chocobo and 60 to your black chocobo . Now for the real fun part--you have to get an S-rank class for both the yellow and black chocobos! It will take 3 races past "A" class, but when they're both at race ranking S, leave the Gold Saucer and return to the Chococbo Farm.

l) Now, breed your yellow and black chocobo together. This time, use the Zeio Nut (it's at the very bottom of the list). It may have to retry a few times, but you'll end up with the gold chocobo eventually. Now you can go anywhere on the World Map!

YELLOW CHOCOBOS can go anywhere you can normally get to on foot. The sole advantage is that a chocobo is a lot quicker than walking.

BLUE CHOCOBOS can walk along rivers, but they can't go past waterfalls. They can also walk in shallow water, just like Cid's airplane could.

GREEN CHOCOBOS can run over mountains, even the pointed mountains by Nivelheim. They can also dash over _most_ cliffs and drops.

BLACK CHOCOBOS can walk along rivers and move around in shallow water. They can also run over mountains and cliffs. Unlike the blue or green chocobos, the black variety can go over any cliff or drop: even walk up or down waterfalls, enter the canyon surrounding the Ancient City, or walk _over_ the ice forest that you have to traverse in Disc 2 after the snowboard scene!

GOLD CHOCOBOS can do everything a black chocobo can--they can also walk in the ocean, allowing you to go anywhere you want, even into the dirt pit surrounding the Gold Saucer (just like the Saucer vehicle). Truly the ultimate in transportation!

In case you didn't know about it, you can rotate the chocobo you're viewing when using the various options in the Chocobo Farm by holding the R1 or L1 buttons :)

Unlike chocobos that you capture and ride around on, the ones that you ride out from the Chocobo Farm are a little tamer. They'll stay where you get off them until you ride them again, and you can do this as much as you want and return them to the Farm whenever you want (although you can only have one chocobo out at a time). If you're riding a chocobo and you try to enter the Highwind, you'll find it in the 'Chocobo' area of the the ship. You'll automatically be riding the chocobo when you land the ship, too.