HGG Community Forums

I would definitely recommend getting rid of breeders, not showers (unless you have some showers with low points that are really performing poorly).

As for your mares (and studs, too), I’d look at how many you have now, how much space you need to make, and come up with a number of how many you need to get rid of. That’s your minimum number.

Now, to make that number, decide which bunch you want to cull from - just go back and forth until you get enough gone. Whether that’s culling lower papers or culling genes you don’t want/lack of genes you do want, it’s up to you - probably a mix of both. You can also look at AFPT - even though premium calculates it automatically, you can just calculate it by hand. It’s just the average foal PT, nothing else. You do want to look at similar circumstances, of course - a foal from a mare with no pasture bonus and a lesser stud will be way lower than a bootstrapped mare at full bonus.

In the end, there’s not usually “one answer” for the best way to cull - it’s a mix of things. You need to decide if your gold mare with no genes you like is better than your blue mare with most of the genes you like, and if you need to cull 50 or can get by with only culling 30. :)

You should have a MINIMUM of 3 show ponies per breeder. I generally say you should have 3 established (leveled off) show ponies per breeder.

If you have at least half of your bootstrap mares At Gold, I’d consider snipping or selling most of your Blue bootstrap mares. Or snip and sell all of the blue bootstrap replacement fillies you’re waiting on getting old enough to breed.

How is your show bonus? If you’re struggling a bit there, I may be able to replace some of your young show ponies with established guys with nice nightly bonus contributions.

If you want to trade young show ponies for some 10 year olds with at least 500 points each, send me a PM. I will get you hooked up! I currently have nearly 8500 show ponies with a bunch more to come as I cull pasture foals. I’m always happy to help out a newer member with some show ponies!

Also remember that high PT score does not mean great show horse.

There are lots of low PT horses that are rocking in the show rings and high PT horses that are floundering.

PT score tells you approximately how long a horse will train for (they level off around the time their age reaches their PT score) and how many points a week the horse will add to show score per training.

It’s best to have a wide range of PT scores in your show herd.

The low pt earn less points per training session so then the horse takes longer to level out of each level giving them more time to pick up points before they level up into a lower class placings.

The high pt earn more per training session so the horse can have large jumps in their show score and level out of each level before they can place well. They tend to rocket through the lower levels and take a while to find their legs and start to show nicely and pick up points. The higher shows give more points so once they reach the higher levels they earn more points per show.

I never used to cull before a horse had leveled off (giving it time to find its legs) and then I would only cull starting at the oldest and work through each age bracket and cull the bottom few lowest point earners (at most bottom 1/3rd). I wouldn’t cull any horse from any age that was still training and not leveled off yet.

Since the show system changed to give a bonus for all points held I rarely cull a show horse and woukd rather skip a breeding season to save up for more barns (this was especially easy for me being used to the 2 month seasons of HJ1 I’d often breed one game one month and the other game the next and alternate.) I have a fairly strict colour/ consistency requirement for intact horses so I get many more show horses than breeding foals a year (around Christmas I looked at my seasons ratios and it was roughly 450 foals, 28 intacts left before I had gone through my colts with a fine tooth comb to trim them down. I think I had like 18 colts)

My show horses usually earn enough to buy themselves a new 1000 stall barn by the time I fill up the last one. Of course it took a long time to get here as I started just after beta testing and by the time the show bonus came into effect I had a large show herd already

Thank you for the advice! I usually just cull low PT shows because I never have enough room to keep any! I have noticed though that some horses seem to show better than others, regardless of their PT, so I suppose that makes sense. I just love breeding so much, I have definitely been focusing more on keeping blue mares rather than keeping show horses.

I suppose I'll have to do a mass auction and get rid of some of my girls. I try and always buy some nice show horses out of auction, so at least I'm on the right track there!