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Also, I was wondering what should I be expecting/looking for in my 6th gen foals/5th gen foals. Just that they are superior to their parents?

my culling standards are mostly based on breeding in pastures with the full pasture bonus. I tend to be slightly less strict (especially when it comes to PT) for foals bred outside of pastures, though papering requirements remain the same for colts.

Gen 2 foals:
Best pasture foals are identified and consistency tested with the Auto-Alter box unclicked. Foals failing consistency are GMTd to be consistent (because inconsistent fillies will not pass SMA). Then all foals are run through Gelding Advice, Strict Mare Advice and Showng Aptitude Test. They are all Performance Tested. Geldings are Gelding Papered. Broodmares are Mare Papered if they qualify. Broodmares papering Yellow are culled. Now I start actually looking at foals for the first time.

I look at Spayed Mares and Geldings first, either culling to the Auction house or naming and keeping. I personally auction altered foals with PTs below 10.0 and keep all 10.0 and above as show ponies(at all generations). Mares producing altered foals are marked on their pages with the stallion name, year and the test the foal failed (GA, SMA, stallion papering later). Mares with 3 altered foals are usually culled. Papered mares are culled if their Average Foal PT is below 10.0. (From this point I'm looking for an AFPT increase of 0.5 per generation).

Now I run the rest of the foals through the Consistency Test. I put so many foals on the ground, I can use the extra test to weed out more culls. However, I would uncheck the Auto Alter box on non-pasture foals, as the alter rate with GA and SMA on non pasture foals is close to 95% according to the discussion that has been going on on FB.

I deal with the new spays and geldings from consistency and have noticed anecdotally this season that this tends to deal with most of my inferior PT foals. This is only anecdotal over about 1000 foals though, it will take me more seasons using this method to be more confident with that assertion. I am no currently marking mares for having foals that are inconsistent, though I am going to start watching to see if some mares give me lots of inconsistent foals....

Now I start culling the fillies that have passed all testing. Non-pasture fillies that make it to this point will be named and tattooed no matter what. Pasture fillies at gen 2 really need to have a PT of 10.0 or better,,,though I will make the occasional exception for something really special.

Colts are the hardest. In a 100 mare pasture I can expect to get 20 or so intact colts still at this point in the process, sometimes many many more than that. If I have a best pasture colt, I tend to paper him and compare him to benchmarks now. If he passes and I like his colors (or his colors can be very slightly GMTd so something special), I tend to geld the rest, gelding paper them, mark their mothers if they papered C and cull to auction or show barn. If I didn't get a best pasture colt or he just is way wide of the mark on color, I will paper and compare based on color until I find what I'm looking for. This part of the process is very expensive. I will often paper everyone, cull on paper level and then start working on comparison testing based on color first--this is where my color suffixes come in handy because I mark every intact colt after papering with their color suffix and compare the colors I'm most excited about first. Colts do not have to meet a minimum standard for PT. Because we have so many ways to evaluate colts purely on their breeding ability, I do not worry about PT for my stallions, only my mares and show ponies. I have several stallions with inferior PTs that are leaderboard producers.

Ok, this has turned into a novel.

Gen 5 and 6--
I Follow the above process. I'm not consistently breeding at this level yet but ideally I'm looking for PTs at or above 11.5, gen 4 broodmare AFPTs of 11.5 or over, gen 4 broodmares must paper Blue to remain intact. Gen 5 and up colts must paper *Star in my herd and in theory gen 6 colts should be superior to my gen 5 benchmark but I haven't accomplished that yet. Ideally I'd like my gen 5 broodmares to paper *Gold but I'm no where close to that happening yet and expect I won't start seeing gold gen 5 broodies for another real life year.

Sorry for the dissertation. Hope it helps!