HGG Community Forums

Just to elaborate - it means the mare isn't worth breeding if your goal is to breed better breeding and showing horses.

However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't breed the mare if you have other goals in mind! Some members get a kick out of trying to breed the worst-performing foal they can or, maybe, the gene is really important and you want to improve the line by breeding to a decent quality stallion. So, don't feel like it means 'never breed this horse ever' - it just means, depending on your goals, there might be better options out there!

Thanks for elaborating, y'all! I was in a bit of a rush earlier, shoulda taken the time to sit down. Exactly as they say, Dje! You certainly can still breed them if you wish. It just generally is an indicator that the mare in question is not as high of quality as they could be, so if you're trying to go for quality lines you likely should not be using a bunch of failed mares.

The way breeding ability/papering works is that there's a hidden number assigned to each horse. This hidden number (called "breeding ability") comes in the form of a percentage - so a Perfect Foundation create has 100% breeding ability. An Exceptionally Perfect create has 105% breeding ability.

These numbers correspond to papers. C/yellow is below and up to 100%. 101%-109% is B/red (so an ExPerf is a mid B/red). 110% plus some is an A/blue papering. No one knows where the number for star/gold is. Likewise, no one knows for certain how far below 100% a failed/show only papering is, we just know it's low enough that they don't regularly make good breeders. If I had to guess I'd say it might be 90-95% or so.

When you breed two horses together, the game takes their numbers, runs them through a secret algorithm, and randomly assigns a number to the foal based on the possibilities that could come from the number pairing in question.

So, for example (these numbers are not the real ones, just an example) - if you pair a 99% (random create) with a 105% (experf) you might possibly get a foal worse than the lowest parent or better than the highest, so let's say maybe your range is 94-112 (again, these numbers are pulled from a hat ;) ). Say you got a failed foal from that breeding - well, better ouck next time, it was probably the low end of that range. But say you got lucky - maybe you got an a/blue foal - that would mean it was probably 110 or 111 or so. Most likly, however, you're probably going to get a foal between the parents, so maybe a 101 or 104 or so. A b/red, but not guaranteed to be better than both parents, just likely better than the low one.

Some people (including me!) like to take this further and go with huge range differences - so pairing a 100 with a 120 or higher (what I'm assuming a star probably could be). This is called bootstrapping, and it's when you pair a star stud with foundation or otherwise low mares. The foals usually turn out somewhere in the middle. With this technique, you can put red, yellow, or even failed mares with that star stud, and you can get red and blue fillies - which you then pair with the same or another star stud when they grow up, and once you repeat a couple times you can get gold mares a lot faster than even breeding. This is one of the ways you'd be able to use those failed mares - if you like the genes they carry and want them in your herd. :)