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Haltanny · Mar 16, 2018 1:58 PM

Just for curiosity sakes,
What size do you aim for as a maximum size for your breeding herd, per generation and/or line? And do you consider yourself a small, medium or large scale breeder?

RoseFlute · Mar 16, 2018 2:20 PM

I currently have 4400 horses total, with 850 intact, but that's before this year's sorting, so I expect that to go down. I have about 300 in pasture, with another 50 that I bring in at their time to breed, just because I don't have more pasture space, which I don't want to buy more of because then I think I couldn't handle the bigger amount of foals. I try to keep the incursion of 4 yo mares down to a page of search, because I'm to a point of around that many rolling out of pasture at the end of each month. I can usually add to that number by deciding to sell or alter or just pull out some mares, but that might not always be possible.
I consider myself a large scale breeder, but I know there are some massive barns out there, so in the range of the server I'm probably just medium.
I find that 10-40 foals per stud is probably the best range, but then I can never decide which of my studs to sell or geld. Currently what with school, I'm just breeding the new studs with whoever they fancy, making sure the new mares are in there somehow, because then at least I get a quality check on them.

Salvistar · Mar 16, 2018 2:43 PM

For my Warmbloods I have 60 breeding individuals per paper level. Riding Horses and Drafts are more of a side thing so I only have 30 breeding individuals per paper level.

I would consider myself a medium size breeder.

This doesn't count my "retired" ones that I just put up for stud or brood each season. Also, once I hit these limits with golds and stars I will probably expand those barns and sort the stars and golds into smaller breeding groups by their average foal PT to breed similar quality individuals together.

Maribo · Mar 16, 2018 2:49 PM

I am definately a large scale breeder. I have absolutely no limit. I just aim to breeder all my mares + as use as many eggs as I get the time for every month. More babies = more breeders (to make more babies) and more show ponies (to make more money to breed more babies).

Maribo · Mar 16, 2018 2:50 PM

Right now I have 776 intact mares of breeding age (+367 waiting to come of age) and 7921 show ponies :P

Wildland Acres · Mar 16, 2018 2:57 PM

Had an oops with the search but if anyone is curious, there are 171,512 intact mares of breeding age in the game. XD

206 of those breeding age mares are mine. 28 are up for aging out at the end of the month, 38 3 year old fillies will be aging up to breeding age next month. I would like to keep around the same number of mares or possibly getting smaller, but I think we can all do math here. hehe. I will have lots of mares up for culling in a few months. My largest mare pools by far are my foundation and bootstrap herds with over 50 mares each, next is 2nd gen with about thirty mares, and then just handfuls of mares for the other generations and lines. Things can fluctuate though, as a month recently I got 5 passing 3 gen fillies, so that will double that herd for a little bit. I consider myself a medium breeder, far bigger than when I started out thinking I was going to stay under 10 mares, but a lot smaller than many established breeders.

RoseFlute · Mar 16, 2018 3:00 PM

I have 500 of age and 150 waiting. :P Somehow I have 115 studs of breeding age, plus 75 younger than 3. For some reason most of my breeding stock ages out before my show ponies do.

ConfluenceFarms · Mar 16, 2018 3:13 PM

I have 3503 total, 672 intact (including surrogate mares of which I have a BUNCH!), only 27 stallions in the breeding barn, but 75ish young colts to sort. I geld all but 5 or so every season, never more than 10 per season make it through intact.

KintaraContest · Mar 16, 2018 4:07 PM

I (Kintara) have roughly about 6400 total and about 2300 of those are intact. About half of them are horses I just haven't gone through and gelded/spayed though LOL! So a larger stable I suppose. I don't have limits!

Painted Dreams · Mar 16, 2018 5:02 PM

I have 426 intact mares or breedable age with 138 waiting to be of age. I recently upped the amount of foundation mares I have for each line because I didn't have enough breeding horses once I got into 3G and up. Hopefully my lines will be growing faster now. On my way be be coming a large scale breeder!

RubyJoFarm · Mar 16, 2018 5:37 PM

My breeding pastures consist of about 360 or so:
77-Red Foundation mares
+3 studs
29-General G2s (no "special" genes) mares
+1 stud
10-G2 KP mares
+1 stud
22-G2 thunderstruck, snf, dp, etc mares
+1 stud
27-G3 KP & normal mares
+1 stud
19-G3 normal mares + het snf
+1 stud
23-G4 mares
+1 stud
10-G5 mares
+1 stud
3-G6 mares
+1 stud

Plus barns:
45-"future broodmares" (fillies)
+9 studs in holding/grow pen
372-show animals

If my math is right (I'm actually dyslexic)... approximately 800 or so head, give or take a few waiting to be sold.

...

And that's mind blowing. LOL I'd consider myself a medium-scale. Certainly not large scale by any means.

AND AND (*) I just hit my goal of 9000 hbs/day. Looking to have about 15000 hbs/day by the end of the year.

Bandit1119 · Mar 16, 2018 6:54 PM

Total body count I’d consider my herds in each server to be medium/ large but for breeding I’d consider myself on the small side.

I am just over 2000 horses total on hj2. I have a fairly heavy hand culling so I don’t have many breeding horses (66 - 3+ Lined Mares spread over 6-7 generations. About 187 lined mares and studs total)

Back in December I decided to increase my foundation herd though so I am just shy of 500 foundations most under the age of 6. Although with the contest running all the pointed show horses have been bought up unless they are ridiculously expensive so I have a barn set aside and have been collecting all of the exceptional, perfect and great hh’s I can get my hands on and am holding them for a few weeks so that they can earn some points before selling/ auctioning them off for smaller barns.

On hj1 one of my last breeding seasons had 428 total foals and 30 stayed intact. With 7 still on the fence about keeping them intact.

Bandit1119 · Mar 16, 2018 7:02 PM

Each generation gets its own barn but I don’t set limits on how many of each although I try to keep it to a maximum of 3 brothers from each stud.

PaintsStables · Mar 17, 2018 1:25 AM

I am a large scale breeder. I have 8704 total horses today, but am getting ready to breed my last 3 pastures today. I show all of those, even intact horses, except my mares in pasture. I breed for Show Horses for my Show Bonus.

1231 of my horses are breeding age mares. I do not breed that many though, some are used for brood for other mares eggs, and some get put up for Public Brood.

763 are Stallions, but I have not bred most of them. I show all of them though.

I am still working on gelding and spaying after BA and SBA testing on some of my older horses, that have never been bred. They are just intact Show Horses is all.

Crystal93 · Mar 17, 2018 3:10 AM

I have 1962 horses currently. (Including horses for sale and auction) (26214hb show bonus).
928 of those are alters.
1034 intact.
13 foundation intact boys if all ages.
405 foundation mares of all ages.
32 lined colts of all ages.
582 lined mares of all ages.

543 mares of breeding age.
Some of these mares are used for pubkic breeding or recipient mares as they don't fit my requirements.

Im pretty strict on what makes it into my breeding plan and sba everything including test tube babies which keeps my numbers down but they are growing every season.
I dont know whether im classed as small or medium scale breeder.

DragonRun · Mar 17, 2018 6:08 AM

I am probably at the low end of large in terms of a stable. I have 8235 total horses. Of those 1736 are breedable mares, though I do not breed all of those every year. I do need to scrub my mare population and decrease those numbers, it is more than overdue. This year I will probably breed slightly more than 1/2.

Everything I breed goes through SBA and I do some rather rigorous culling on top of that. I have breed about 900 mares this year and have kept on first pass about 100 foals intact, that will decrease once I re-cull after breeding is over. Most others head to my show barns and some to auction - mainly the the PTs less than 11 once my barns are approaching full. I have been keeping 400 - 600 foals per season for the last number of months, so my show barns are still growing. I am expecting/hoping in the next number of months I will reach a balance where number lost at roll over equals number produced in a year, and my stable will be at steady state.

Haltanny · Mar 17, 2018 9:48 AM

Right now, I have 1190 horses total (not including horses in auction)

11 foundation stallions, although only 4-5 get used regularly
160 foundation mares that are used
+ around 50 "retired" mares (some are retired from breeding or egg recipients, some are Exeptional or Great Show Horses I'm training/showing to sell to small stables later)

28 lined stallions G2-G4, although only about 6-7 are used regularly
236 lined mares all ages G2-G4, about 180 are G2, the rest are G3-G4

I guess I'd be a small-medium-ish size breeder. I try to keep at least 120 alters, no more than 50 fillies and just few colts max each season. All foals run through SBA. Fillies are then culled by paper level and color. Colts are culled by paper level, color and must be superior to sire. Alters I keep anything over 10.3 PT + anything lower that's too cute to auction.

Once I get enough higher paper levels/higher generations, I'll rearrange my numbers. I don't want to get more than 350 breeding age mares total, so I'll reduce my foundation herd once my generations fill out more. I feel I'd get overwhelmed by foals if I kept more than that.

ChilliFireFarm · Mar 17, 2018 12:53 PM

I have about 950 horses, half of which are intact but everyone is shown. My horses only get 13days in pasture if they are blue (or I really like them!) and sometimes the foundations and reds only spend 10 mins in there. :)
I have about 170 foundation mares, 200 reds (which are mainly 2nd gen, I only keep a few 3rd gen reds and obviously some of those are foundation reds) and about 60 blue (3rd, 4th and finally some 5th gens). I have not bred a gold yet. I have about 60 stallions in total. I really need to cut back on the red 2nd gen girls.
It's a lot of breeding to do. I also pick up a lot of foundations from HHs (and only keep the very best of them) for my foundation stallions.
I consider myself small scale still but looking at this maybe I am into medium-sized now (at least with breeding).

ChilliFireFarm · Mar 17, 2018 12:55 PM

Sounds like my barn is similar to your's @Haltanny!

Dinascar · Mar 17, 2018 1:46 PM

I have 1250 horses again half are intact.
100 stallions from foundations (34) all the way up to 6th gen (I have a 7th gen and 11th gen which I didn't breed myself).
150 foundation mares. 100 red mares (60 breeding age) 200 blue mares (150 breeding age) ranging from 3rd to 6th gen. I only have a handful of golds from my bootstrap line.
My blues remain in pasture. Everything else is shown.
I thought of myself as medium sized but I am actually only as big as my 2nd account (Chilli).
I breed a lot more than the mares I have, as I love brindles and I have several foundation brindle stallions who keep trying for me! :)
Everything gets SBA except my bootstrap line or else I would have way to many breeding foals. :D

NorthernStars · Mar 17, 2018 3:42 PM

I only have 471 horses.
Of which 277 are show ponies.
And 194 breeding horses.
I have 25 stallions/colts
10 foundation stallions (9 B papered and 1 C Papered)
11 2nd gen stallions, 8 of breeding age (7 B and 1 A)and 3 younger colts (all 3 are B papered)
8 3rd gen stallions, 5 of breeding age (2 B and 3 A) 3 younger colts (also all B)
3 4th gen colts all are A papered and all too young to breed.
1 6th gen star stallion
and 1 uneven A papered stallion.
As for mares
38 foundation mares (30 red and 8 yellow) all
54 2nd gen mares 39 breeding age (1 yellow, 36 red, 2 blue) 15 younger fillies (12 red and 3 blue)
55 3rd gen mares 20 breeding age (9 red and 11 blue) 35 younger mares (1 yellow (who I may yet spay), 16 red and 18 blue)
9 4th gen, all too young to breed (1 red and 8 Blue)
5 uneven mares, 4 of breeding age (3 red and 1 blue) and 1 blue papered younger mare.

I've improved the quality of my foundation stock, so hopefully I'll be able to faze out the red from the 2nd gen and up in a few more seasons time.

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