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dark star · Aug 13, 2014 11:39 AM

I was wondering how other folks are utilizing pastures in their over all breeding plan. Are they a nice way to get a bit more money out of your older horses, or are they a key part of your up and coming breeding plan. Me I love em, with very few exceptions all of my breedings these days are pasture breeding. I am actually phasing white out of my program to make pasture breeding easier.

kintara · Aug 13, 2014 7:55 PM

I use pastures to try and breed the best foals possible! I just need more pastures LOL! I have quite a bit of white still but I just get the odd one who doesn't have a live foal. For the most part the white mares will be in with the non white stally and visa versa for the white stallions

PurpleSage · Aug 13, 2014 9:33 PM

I run the same set up as Kintara. I put my top quality mares in with my best boys and let the pastures do the rest. At the moment, I am just using some of the 10 acre (smallest?) lots for my lined mares and the bigger ones for my foundies.

I really enjoy not having to think about them once the horses are put in the pastures. I allows me to focus on my special pairings that I would rather do by hand (usually because I am pulling eggs from the mare all through the season).

Winter Ridge · Aug 14, 2014 12:07 PM

I really like pastures, I don't have very many at this time, but may change over to pastures entirely, in the long run. I'm a super busy person right now, so anything that can help me to save some time is well worth it.

Thanks again Ammit!

Abbey Road · Aug 15, 2014 8:32 AM

I'm having a wee bit of a problem relinquishing control sometimes, but that's fading when I see how much better my pasture foals are... although, I had a LOT more gelds/spays this year than in the last two, for some reason. Also, I like to show my breeding stock, but I may shift over to keeping the two separate. I am keeping my white and frame out of the pastures with very few exceptions.

I have two Foundation pastures with a total of 5 stallions. This year was the first year I used the pastures for 2g studs and I made one for my best 4g stud but forgot to put him in it (doh!).

What I love best about them, besides the quality, is the fact that auctioning off the pasture rejects is almost entirely funding my breeding, and my showing bonus is just that, bonus.

OndowaStables · Aug 15, 2014 7:36 PM

I have foundation horses in both of my pastures. I use my primary pasture for my patterned dun line and I just bought one for my rose grays for this season. I keep mostly the same mares in and swap stallions each season. I really like the results I have been getting from them.

Just today, I found a new use for the pasture breeding system -- stallion culling. My best foal this year was a colt, so instead of comparing the rest of the colts to their sires, I compared them to him. This resulted in a lot fewer intact colts than I had from the pasture in previous years (a good thing since I tend to be a stallion hoarder). Then I compared my older 2nd gen stallions to him as well and cut my stallion herd from more than 40 breedable studs to 29 including the >3 year olds.

Abbey Road · Aug 15, 2014 9:18 PM

Oh good idea, using the best colt to compare!

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