HGG Community Forums

I try to break even with horses I breed. Everything goes through free testing, and then colts I'm interested in are papered. Anything too low for that generation (C for a 2g) is gelded, and what's left over is compared to their sire (this is where it gets pricey!), and then to each other. Up until comparison testing, the costs are completely absorbed by their auction price. The profit from the ones with no additional testing offsets the comparison testing price, and any horse that I spend more than that on is one I intend to keep.

Thanks...I guess that leads me to another question... I see era and generation both used alot, are they the same thing or what is the difference. I have read on the page about eras that is linked on their pages but dont know for sure how to tell what generations they are if that is different. What are good scores to get through the testing and is it different per generation since you mentioned a C for a 2g isnt that great...? Trying to understand all this better so hopefully I can make better decisions on purchases and sales in the future.

C paper is perfectly acceptable for a foundation horse (new creates) but personally I like to see an improvement by the next generation. So I'd expect foals to at least paper B. The better foundations are a high C, so at best he is as good as his sire, and quite possibly worse than his sire. Depends what you are wanting him for! My own personal challenge is bettering each generation as I breed along, and in my favoured colours!! So you have to decide what your own breeding plan is. You don't make a lot of money selling horses, once the show horses are making money you can have a good income, it just takes a while

First, I personally make use of all of the available testing on almost all of my horses. However, I have a huge and well established show herd which funds my breeding and testing...so I can afford to spend lots of hbs on testing.

Second--if you have more questions about testing and culling, there have been lots of threads before. You might try searching the forum using the query bar at the top right of the forum page. If you have more specific questions, we will all be happy to answer them here, but your question about the economics of testing could be mostly answered by saying that horses usually do not become intrinsically more valuable by being tested. They MAY become easier to sell, but generally I would say that having special and rare genes is generally what makes a horse valuable. However there are many many exceptions to both of those suppositions and there is truly no hard and fast rule about what horse may or may not be valuable at any given time.

Third--eras vs generations. Eras are assigned to horses at birth/creation and refer to when, in the relative time the game has been running, the oldest ancestor of that horse was created. Eras are strictly present for leaderboard purposes. As you may have noticed, the color based breeders club leaderboards are full of upper generation horses. A new player with a barn full of foundations and second generations can never hope to compete for Top Producer boards against gen 6-10 horses and players who have been around for calendar years. Thus, the Eras and Era Breeders Clubs were born--relatively new herds of horses will be able to compete in the most recent/current Era boards while older players whose breeding herds are mostly from older eras will have very few horses on those boards. This levels the playing field. Horses you breed will inherit the oldest Era in their parents' lines, so a new player may still own Era 0 or 1 horses because they bought from an older player.

Generations are completely different. Horses that you create on the create page are considered Foundations. The offspring of two foundations is a Generation 2. The offspring of two Gen 2s is a Gen 3 and so on down the line. You can see your horse's pedigree on the family tab, with each vertical column representing a generation. If there are more than 3, you can click Full Pedigree at the top and it will open another page which shows you the pedigree all of the way back.

Many people speak about breeding evenly or unevenly. If you breed evenly, in theory all of the Foundation horses in that horse's pedigree will be in the same vertical column. There are advantages to breeding both ways. Some people are seriously obsessed with breeding perfectly evenly. Others are quite lenient, especially at upper generations. Others don't care at all. This is another topic that you can search the Forum on for a more thorough explanation of both breeding styles and their pros and cons.

Fourth--my personal testing standards:
Foundation-- stallions C, mares Red, PT usually 9.0 and up, AFPT (average foal performance test, probably the best measure of a mare's breeding ability) 10.0 and up once papered.
Gen 2--stallions B, mares Red, PT 10.0 and up, AFPT 10.5 and up
Gen 3--stallions A, aiming for mares Blue, PT 10.5 and up, AFPT 11.0 and up
Gen 4--stallions A, mares Blue, PT 11.0 and up, AFPT 11.3 and up
Gen 5--stallions *star, mares starting to get *Gold, PT 11.3, AFPT 11.5 and up.
I expect an incredibly aggressive increase in breeding ability and PT at every generation. Most people expect a much more moderate rate of increase.

Fifth-- you C colt. In my herd, he would be snipped. But there is No Wrong Way to play this game. If you don't care about papering but just want to breed really cool looking Appys, go for it. However, your colt is not much better (and perhaps worse) than his dad at breeding, so if your goal is to breed better horses at each generation, you are probably better off snipping that boy and looking further.

If you wanted and weren't worried about uneven, I would use him on foundation mares if you really liked him and see how it turned out, but don't stake too much on him, I tried that with a few generations of stallions where I would only keep one colt and try again because of quality concerns. I have a series of gelded show ponies now and have completely unrelated stallions now.... but there is always they temptation with the pretty ones. That approach doesn't work without the papering and comparison options, but you could try. The fact that you can't comparison test against father makes it risky though, I'd probably geld him if I had another stallion of quality I liked.

If you're just hooked on his color but want to breed even, try searching other stallions that are available for breeding. The first part of the month is when you've got the best chance of finding 2g mares, but after that foundations are still common. There will be quite a few appys floating around, especially with the new Appleloosa HH, and I imagine you'll be able to find similar markings. I even have a couple of B papered Appys that you're welcome to have if interested, and a 2g mare or two I could put up for breeding.

Friesan I think when Appy got an overhaul a few months ago and the micro dots and large spots came out, Ammit said dot size is another one of those hidden genetic relationships. So if you can find large spot foundations, you are more likely to continue to breed large spot babies!