HGG Community Forums

Just an FYI, if you're looking to breed high PT show stock, that's a great plan. But the difference in quality between your foundation/2g mares (usually red or yellow papered) and a Star stallion means you will get a much higher proportion of spayed and gelded offspring.

Papering for stallions goes (worst to best) failed, C, B, A, *Star. For mares, failed, yellow, red, blue, *Gold.

You'll have the best luck keeping intact babies if you breed horses of like quality, which usually means the same generation or one off (which is the reason for even generation bias among players).

So yes... your best bet for improving your breeding lines is to start with even gens and cull. Different people cull by different criteria, but I keep a close eye on my horses' average foal PT. There's a discussion on that in another thread, but keep in mind that PT (show ability) and breeding ability are unrelated. So your stallion/mare's foal's Performance Test Scores will tell you more about its breeding ability.

If you want to get some upper generation high quality stock in your barn, you can pick up some higher generation mares at auction and breed to similar stallions. I and many other long time players regularly put horses in auction who aren't quite what we wanted color wise, but come from high quality stock. It's also really satisfying to get that first *Star colt from a line you bred from foundation yourself too, though, so it's up to you how you want to play it (and if you have the barn space, no reason you can't do both).

Do keep some altered show stock though, it's the best way to make money. My weekly bonus is currently half a million hbs, because of show point bonuses and the fact that I show a LOT of horses.

I know it's a lot to digest, feel free to ask more questions. I hope this helps a bit. :)

Is it possible for a horse to breed well and show well? That's basically what I'm currently working on. I don't really want to have space taken up by a horse who didn't pass their test and was gelded or spayed. So it is possible to eventually breed a star horse from foundation? Is it better to paper the stallions right away or to wait after a few breedings and same with mares?

Ok, when I'm breeding I'm looking at their papering and their grade. I've been breeding my top grade stallion to all my mares of that generation then testing and culling. If the stallion is a higher grade then his sir wont he automatically be better? or should I add that to how I cull?

Abbey is right. What i do is i will ocassionally keep a gelded/spayed foal ( if i like their color and if they show well) and when i get colts who pass their testing ( not including stallion papering) i will then stallion paper them and if they test lower than their sire i will geld and sell to FSYYC. But colts who paper higher i will keep and possibly sell. But i will sometimes sell them