HGG Community Forums

1. Personally, I keep most of my neutered stock, especially if their PT tests are no lower than from 9.5 - 9.9, depending on my mood. This is a hold-over from my habits at H&J1, where I do show, though I don't here for lack of time to do the hand showing. It's my hope to eventually be able to afford a Level 5 membership here before too long.

2./3. As well as the PT level above, I decided to keep very few inconsistent horses in this game.

4. The recommended neuter:intact ratio is no less than 2:1, and 3:1 is much better. This is because showing horses is how you make money to afford breeding them in this game, and it can take a while for them to level up enough that they are making a decent profit. Not only that, I usually find that I normally get at least twice as many neuters as intacts in any given breeding year.

5. Gelding papering doesn't matter at all. Ammit just threw it in as a free test for anyone who was curious as to what a neutered colt would have papered if Lucas or Charlie hadn't gelded him before he got to papering.

Because the parameters for SAT and Gelding advice are broad ranges, they don't give very specific information about true ability. Lucas (SAT) will geld or spay a horse whose breeding ability is "much lower" than its showing ability. Charlie (GA) gelds colts whose breeding ability is "significantly lower" than their sires'. There's quite a lot of play left, so Ammit finally gave us the Comparison Test which tells us one of three things: the colt's breeding score is considerably lower than his sire's, though not low enough to trigger Gelding Advice; the colt's score is about as good as his sire's, which means anything from slightly lower to slightly higher, or the colt's breeding score is significantly higher than his sire's, making him a superior to sire breeder.

The result is, especially is breeding scores improve through the generations, that you can get a *Star colt that is still a worse breeder than his sire, and the range of possible breeding scores is so broad that anything is possible from "significantly lower than showing ability" all the way to "superior to sire." However, even a *Star colt that is significantly worse at breeding than his sire is not worth keeping for breeding, if you goal is to try to breed better horses with each generation, which is why Lucas and Charlie do what they do.