HGG Community Forums

A lot of players retire their older breeding stock that they no longer use. Personally, I think that if you have the space/hbs to continue breeding them that it makes more sense to do that and then sell the foals than to alter them for the showing bonus. Mainly my thinking on that is that since they're likely to already be older once they're altered, they'll get less benefit from the bonus and the value of selling their foals may outweigh that showing bonus.

I agree with Elemental. If you auction the foals you get from these mares (2500 a month) it's essentially earning you an extra 83$ a day. Depending on when you snip your horses, how many extra points do you think you will get than just leaving them? A 100? That's only an extran10$ a day (if I'm right) ok maybe 500 if you only get a season or two out of them? Then that's 50$ a day. They still can earn some show bonus without being shipped.

Just my thought, but if you might want to keep the foals, or the mare isn't the best then snipping is a viable option. And also I'm not an older player so I'm curious to see what they say too.

Usually if I decide to retire a breeding horse or keep a horse unaltered because its awful as both a breeder and shower, I put JH in front of its name. "Junk Horse" only good for auction fodder. I bought several cheap low grade horses for that specific purpose.

I have lots of pasture space, so I breed all of my generations in pastures.

I do re-evaluate every single mare every season to make sure she's living up to my Average Foal PT expectations. Mares that lag below my cut off get removed from the breeding herd. If they have a lot of points or are under 10 years old and not leveled off yet, they are likely to get snipped and thrown in the show herd. If they aren't and they have papered where I want horses to for that generation, they get auctioned intact. If they haven't papered well and don't have lots of points/show potential, they get snipped and auctioned.

If your issue is more one of pasture space, I would ask three things:

Do you have plenty of young, non-breeding Age mares of your upcoming generation so that you can replace as needed for poor AFPT? If No, I would keep breeding your current generation in pastures for another season or two.

Are you able to put your potential retiree mares into the pasture just for a day to get foals out of them at the 500/foal price? If yes, I would consider keeping most of them intact, showing them but also still getting foals from them.

Is it in your budget, now or in the relatively near future to buy more pastures for your account? If yes, I would keep mares intact.