HGG Community Forums

I love this idea! Here’s mine:
I’ve been playing since April. I have 816 intact and 565 snipped (it’s a ratio I need to work on, which I’m currently doing by alternating breeding years) and my show bonus is 18k.

I keep everything that gets altered. My only current criteria to get rid of a show horse is if they’re leveled off and losing more money in their show costs than they’re making per week.

I do a little bit of everything. My main pasture is for my bootstrap drafts, and my other lines are split roughly equal between even and bootstrap. I have 13 lines, 5 of which are more serious and the others of which are more of casual side projects. Of my main lines, I currently alternate breeding years, with the only two that get every year being my pasture bootstraps (my “true” bootstraps, with the goal of high papers/pt) and my even bred mushroom line (small enough that I can tend to it every year with just a small handful of breedings).

I’m of the firm belief that both bootstrapping and even breeding have their place, and neither is “wrong”, but rather each have advantages and disadvantages. I’m happy to go into more depth on the pros and cons of each if anyone is interested.

My quality control: for bootstraps, I expect the foal to paper better than the lowest parent, with a few minor exceptions for especially nice genetics in which they can paper as good as. For my pasture bootstraps, where I’m breeding lower mares to a single higher stud, all the colts get run through SBA. If any manage to pass that, they either get sold off or, if I like their potential as a possible new sire, get compared to sire. The fillies are papered first, then decided upon based on their dam’s paper (and occassionally their genetics). For my other bootstraps, in which it might be the mare that’s higher quality or the stud, I handbreed and take each foal on a case-by-case basis.

For even breeding, I expect G2 colts to be a paper level up from their parents and pass SBA. I expect fillies to pass BA in a couple of the lines (mushroom, which I currently have very few of, for example) and SBA for the others (I have an excess of watercolor/thunderstruck). Eventually, as the even lines build up, the ones in which fillies are BAd will be transitioned to SBA a few at a time, once I have enough stock there. All 3G+ just need to pass SBA to stay, though with time I can see myself culling a few based on paper level to keep numbers manageable.

Other stuff: I denote each of my lines with a prefix that’s as simple as possible. Some people like to put a large number of the horse’s genes in their name, which works well for them. For me, the only marker I need is their “primary” genes - aka the ones I’m specifically breeding for in that line. Examples: # for gen, letter for gene - 2K is a second gen KP, 3S is a third gen snf, B is a bootstrap pasture lady, SL is another bootstrap line (shine line) etc. Foundations do not receive prefixes, as their names are enough for me to know who’s who - their names usually relate to their genes. My Snowy Knight is snf/dp (snow, night), A Bolt From The Blue is my watercolor/thunderstruck stud (blue, bolt), etc. Foundation mares don’t usually get names unless they’re special as well - general experfs are just named “experf #”, etc.

I have been playing this server since it opened, and have... well, alot of horses. lol. So I always do things the same, as it makes everything go smoother when I know what I need to do next. I also never breed untill last seasons foals are all sorted and named.

I have four (or six) main lines:
M1 = wild bay/brown
M2 = DP
M3 = satin
M4 = snowflake
And then I have a KP line and a GP line, but I use the above prefixes with them too. The lines mix and match a bit, and I also keep foals I like the looks or quality of that does not themself fit in the above lines, but can make good babies in those lines. I prefer cobs over all others, but I will buy anything that works and breed up/down from there. My 2Gs must be at least B/red, 3G at least A/blue and 5G at least *Star/*Gold.

I always start a new season by re-filling pastures with mares, but I have alot more mares than I can fit in them, so I do alot of hand breeding too. I also pull eggs from my special foundation girls every six days, and then either do a flush or a live cover at the end of the season. Then I will go through my boys for the season and update my notepad with every intact stud of breeding age I have. After that I will pick out wich boys will be used in pastures and breed them.

As I move them out of pastures I will fill my primary barn and test every foal: SBA -> BI -> genetic -> PI, and move the altered ones into a showing barn, and the rest into a holding barn untill I can sort and name them. Then I will go through and open each and every pasture bred foal to get their picture to I can add them to all breeders clubs later. I will also geld/spay any I can immidiatly see will not be used as a breeder. Then I will hand breed what is left. If I still have alot of time I will do some lab-breeding too, if not I will wait untill I have sorted and named the ones I have already bred.

After that I will enter all foals in their breeder clubs, starting with all untestable genes. Then I will go through the colts. I open the page of each stud and alter all foals that are worse quality/less of the genes I want than any colt I already have from the stud. I rarely have more than 2 intact colts from the same sire, unless they can be used in different lines. I will just mark the colts with SUP in their name. I usually require every 2G colt to be superior to an expro, but if I really want a colt from the stud I will mark them with "sup", meaning they are superior to sire, but only AGA an expro. After that I will move on to the fillies - check quality and color genetics and name them. I usually name colts last.

After all that I will move the new spays/gelds into the show barns, the mares into my "lined mares" barn and the intact colts into my "boys club".

When all that is done I pull up all mares between 8 and 12 years and open all their pages to check their AFPT. This is the scale I use (I still have some mare lag, wich is why the jump is halfed):
Foundations = 10.0 (except mares I know the quality of like RS, PF and expro - I usually do not even check them)
2G: 10.5
3G: 11
4G: 11.5
5G: 11.75
6G: 12
7G: 12.25
8G and up: 12.5

I have very few mares in the upper generations, as I prefer to breed the lower generations, because of the mare lag.

%%-

I started in May, and I am still figuring things out as I go.

What helped me a lot is having a "project" pasture. I have a couple of lines I aspire to eventually excel in (who doesn't?), but right now, I am mostly crawling around the yellow and red range. Meaning, on my "Liver, maybe" pasture, there are red and yellow mares. What I will do, is putting yellow mares only on my "project" pasture, and breed a C Stallion to them, move them back to the "liver maybe" pasture, and take the next bunch with the matching stallion. Rinse and repeat.

I feel live on my other account is much easier, because she is bootstraping, so one paper level per pasture and BOOM.

I think I'll have to bookmark this thread and come back to it in a few months :)) I'm new to the game so I'm just sort of creating horses and spending lots of money because i want everything NOW :))

I breed for evenly bred Grullos with patterns.

I started playing hj1 New Year’s Eve eve 2006 and hj2 just after beta testing ended. I use the same breeding, culling, organization and prefixes between the 2 games

Although on hj1 I was gifted a few pastures through the years during secret Santa and went and bought a bunch of pastures with game money when Ammit had her sale before moving to 1 month years so now all my breeding mares fit in pastures there. My special genes here are axiom, nexus and KP. Nexus and KP have their own pastures in each generation that I fill first then if I have extra mares I fill a third pasture. My axiom studs were just bought in the July sale so I haven’t added any 2nd Gen breeders to the pastures yet. Haven’t decided if I’ll add them to my nexus or use the third 2nd Gen pasture for Axiom.

Here I only have 1 primary pasture and I rotate 3 groups of foundations through for 5-10 day bonus and run my lined horses through usually at the end of the month but the last few months I’ve been busy so I don’t think my current group of foundations have been switched out as normal. Or my lined horses bred the last 2 months.

On each game I have my barns sorted by generation for the breeding horses (210 stall barns on hj1, still a mix of sizes here but each generation has their own barn or 2) and show horses get 1000 stall barns.

After pastures breed I remove the foals one generation at a time and either do bulk testing in the primary or send them to their generations barn for testing at a later date.

Every few months I empty the mares and studs out too so I can resort them. Unless they have nexus, Axiom or KP I think of them as floater horses and use them to fill up which ever nexus or KP pasture needs extra bodies. Until the pasture sale I kept all my horse in my barns showing but am moving towards leaving them in the pastures 24/7 now.

For testing and culling I do at least 3-4 run throughs of culling.

SBA -> PT -> genetics -> cull inconsistent, non Grullo

Paper everyone -> move show horses to show barns -> cull any intacts that are below standard (I keep the top 2 papers in each barn until the higher paper ratio is the majority then cull the bottom too) usually every third barn or so is a single paper level although I am not so quick to cull my higher Gen blues since only have a few mares total. I am working at rebulking up the lower gens to get more higher gens.

Then I go through and open all my studs that have had foals one at a time. View intact foals in search (excluding any horse names starting with J as they’ve been tested). If a stud has a gene requirement I now snip any that didn’t inherit (nexus and axiom on hj1, ice on hj2)

At this point I add prefixes to the mares and this is normally as far as my mare testing goes. Any show horses I’ve hand snipped gets its prefix at the time of snipping.

Then I finish going through the list of each studs colts and comparison test snipping any not superior and add the colts prefix.

My prefixes are 5 or less letters and my barn name has been JOLO ranch since the beginning. My naming scheme follows the following pattern:

JL - JOLO Ladies or
JS - JOLO Studs or
Z - show horse
After foundation a lowercase letter of the alphabet is added to intact horses a=2nd Gen, b=3rd Gen, c=4th Gen etc.

NX or AX for Nexus and Axiom on HJ1
IC for ice on HJ2 I’ve acquired some i8 so add 8 after if needed

Horse name or ID#

SaSa or Sa - homo or het satin
KP or kp - homo or het KP - all foals of KP horses get kp added but I don’t track kp status after until I’m absolutely certain the horse carries it (having a homo KP pop up later will have the line adjusted)


JSc IC Timeless Crows Sa

His name automatically tells me that this is a 4th Gen stud that carries ice 1 and satin and that I’ve bred him enough to actually give him a real name lol

Typically they keep their ID # unless I sell straws or eggs and people express interest in them or breed them myself and have a bunch of foals in a season with different ID# daddies or a horse has a particular pattern or look that I like and want to spread.

After adding prefixes I clear the search parameters so all of that studs colts are listed and go through and snip lower paper levels.

Comparison test the brothers keeping AGA until I get a superior brother then snip any others already tested and finish comp against the sup brother.

When finished if I still have more than 3 brothers that are AGA each other I pare those down to 3 or less. This reducing is my only variable of my culling process that changes depending on the day or my mood or the weather etc.

Some days it’s as simple as keeping the top 3 PT scores, other days genetics are compared and an EE DD colt will be kept over a het. E and/or D. I have a ton of tobiano splash rabicano mares in my herd since I find those patterns easy to acquire as foundations so different white patterns (sb2, w3 or 8) will get chosen to stay intact over a tobiano, splash rabicano brother. For most of my het KP studs on hj1 I culled any kit foals since they need 2 kit mutation to show and I want to increase the chances of it showing if coming from a het parent.

When I say cull I really only mean snip and toss in the show barns. I rarely sell or auctions any show foals although I will often give them away for presents or contests. On HJ1 I recently put a cap on buying more show barns (I already have 5 - 1000 stall barns for show horses lol, I will still buy more breeding barns when my herd outgrows the ones they’re in) I started selling off show horses as I really don’t need 5000 show horses growing my 300+k daily bonus. My bonus is down to just under 200k/day but once I’ve finished testing/ naming the last 3 pages of foals I will need to start listing horses to make room for them in the show barns and for my 650 foals due this week.

@levesel2

Finding a benchmark is one of the most expensive things to do in the game...

So I don’t have benchmarks at Foundation gen (mostly ExP/ExPro stallions, a couple of PFs).

At gen 2, I require my boys to Paper A and they all compare AGA each other. I haven’t tested one that compares superior to his peers yet, but if I do he would become my new gen 2 benchmark.

At gen 3, because I’m now at a second generation of the same paper, this is where I first really need a benchmark. So you start out just requiring colts to be superior to sire, and then you compare all your potential keeper colts that are superior to sire to each other. I do this by generation, but some others do this by line or even just by get of sire. If you find one boy in a group of similar colts who is superior to his peers, he becomes your benchmark. If you then find a new guy who’s superior to that guy, then HEs your new benchmark.

My current gen 3 benchmark is Obsidian Island, a Plaid Draft stallion. Previous to him I was comparing to Cognac and Fire, but in a routine comparison of stallions at that gen I had a colt who had compared AGA Cognac compare Inferior to Obsidian. This means Obsidian is probably 1-2% better than Cognac, so within the AGA comparison range but slightly better (yes, this is how nuanced it gets!) so I compared all of my gen 3 stallions to Obsidian at that point and everyone who passed got to keep his dangly bits.

Then at gen 4: again, I’m looking for Stars and they’re all low stars (most people breed for 3 generations of A stallions, not just 2). And then at gen 5 I’m just looking for Superior to Sire, and the same at gen 6. At gen 4-6 I’m still dealing with significant mare lag, so I will need my mare herds to catch up before I can start to see significant jumps in quality at those gens—to the point that I’m not getting anything intact out of my gen 6 Herd at all right now. But that’s ok, more show ponies for me!

Culling by AFPT is my solution to mare lag, but because your mares need to have a minimum of 3 living foals based on conventional wisdom in game, and because I breed my mares every other season instead of every season because my herd is so big (so Foundafions and Odd # gens one season, bootstraps and even # gens the next) it’s a very long game for me to cull my mare pastures.