HGG Community Forums

Even generation horses are usually sought out over uneven because they look neater (pedigree) and are usually better quality.

I've owed/bred uneven horses for a while and can say that the uneven horses are usually the ones who fail GA and MA. The ones who pass and stay intact usually have lower paying Colts

(Niece wants me to draw a house, might add more)

Edit* basically even bred horses are better quality. They produce better and more intact foals.

Example time :D I learn best with example so that's how I'll show it.

This colt is an uneven intact colt. He's very pretty and PTed decently but got a B

His pedigree isn't awful but he is getting culled from my breeding program. His sire is even his dam is not

This mare is what I call an even uneven which means both parents are even bred but their generations don't match.

She makes gorgeous foals with fantastic PTS but she will be culled by next season

Now here is an example of a really bad pedigree. I got her as a gift and absolutely love her but her breeding is so bad

One more explanation is this: you are most likely to get lots of intact foals when you are crossing horses with like (similar) breeding abilities. Now, obviously, we don't really know the breeding ability of our horses. It can be hinted at with Papering and Comparison Testing and Average Foal Performance Testing, but only Ammit knows the hidden numbers behind all our Pixel Ponies!

So, you have to guess. It's pretty easy to guess that a second gen mare from a Rank Special stallion and a regular create mare is probably going to be about as good as a gen 2 stallion from a regular stallion and a Perfect Foundation mare (assuming everyone on both sides passed all their basic/free testing).

But what if you have a mare who is the offspring of a Gen 7 *Star papered stallion and a regular create foundation mare? Will she be gen 2 quality? Gen 4? Gen 6? There is no way to tell without just picking a stallion and breeding her. It's completely a shot in the dark, and if you don't own the stallions it may be an expensive one.

Building my herd, generation by generation, is a time consuming and frustrating process, but when I have those break throughs in quality it is so exciting! I have a few slightly uneven horses in my breeding herd, mostly at the upper generations. They don't bother me, but they are held to the same high standards as every horse I own. I have found that owning wildly uneven horses is largely unprofitable for me--they are too unpredictable and just don't do well in my breeding herd. My show herd is a whole different story, but I stick to breeding even personally.

@cheers or @ammit
(going along with your example)

If you bred a high generation *Star stallion to a foundation mare and the resulting "Crossed Generation" foal passed all the tests and you keep her, if you repeat the process and breed Cross Gen foal to another high generation *Star stallion and just keep repeating, etc.
Would the offspring eventually become "quality" horses, or would it not ever get better?

(thanks, and sorry, it's 4:40 AM.. I apologize if that didn't make any sense at all haha)

Jahdaz--I think what a lot of people think is that breeding foundation quality mares to high gen stallions is a shortcut to getting high quality breeding horses--that you should be able to do it in less "generations" than if you breed even and cull ruthlessly. I think everyone who has really tried to do that has found that it's not true, Instead it is an incredibly frustrating venture that, yes, might pay off it you stuck with it over calendar years, but would be much more difficult that breeding the highest quality horses from even generations together that you can manage.

You can do that strategy. I thought that might be a smart way to go once. I found it dissatisfied having so little control over the stallions though, I like being able to know better what quality the stallion is before I buy it, and them here is the problem of what to breed the daughters to, since I wouldn't use any of the colts to continue this breeding strategy. (I have one that papered and compared mid B from a very nice 7g stud. That doesn't even cut it quality wise from two foundation stallions for me anymore). So you have to buy more stallions, which is understandable, but then you are at the mercy of how much the breeder was going for quality. Also there are many fine stallions up for breeding, though it is probably best to ask the owner before breeding foundations to them. I know I prefer it when people ask me before breeding lots of foundation mares to my high gen boy. I still do that strategy somewhat. I bought a really nice what I thought was 7g stallion early on when he was going through the auction with no bids, though now that he is breeding age I still have no 7g mares, and the rest of my stallions only go to gen 4 quality, so I breed mares 5g and up to him. Though this morning I looked at him and I think he is actually 8g... so yea. Still have no clue what to do once his fillies come of age. Since it is a narrower quality disparity I hope that will be better, though I am still hoping that one of my foals turns out to a nice quality 5g boy one of these months. I still pay more to quality than actual generation in my "generation" groups. They tend to be even though.