HGG Community Forums

Hi y'all!

As many of you know, I've been working hard to improve my herd breeding quality, especially since I did that mass cull and sale several months ago. Since then I've had major breakthroughs in stallion quality at gen 3 and 4 and I couldn't be happier.

I have run into a quandary with my gen 3 mares, however, and I'm hoping some of you experienced breeders looking for a significant increase in breeding quality in each generation can help me.

I get a few Blue papered gen 2 mares but mostly they are Reds. They are all required to maintain an AFPT of 10.5 and above.

At gen 4 I require my mares to paper Blue and I am culling Reds. They have to maintain an AFPT of 11.3 and above.

At gen 3 I am hoping to transition to requiring Blue papers as well. At the moment about a third of my newly papered mares each season in this gen are Papering Blue. The stallions I am using are mostly fairly young and most mares have at least one foal from an inferior stallion in their offspring. I require an AFPT of 11.0.

Here is my quandary: I have Red mares in this gen that are meeting my AFPT requirements, sometimes by several tenths of a point. Do I cull them for Papering Red? Do I give them a couple more seasons and re-paper? Do I cull the ones that are just scraping through but keep the ones with AFPTs above 11.2?

I have mares that are up to 9 years old waiting in foal barns to get into one of these pastures just to get a shot, so replacement mares are not a problem.

Since there is so much forum traffic right now I figured this is a good chance to get opinions. Any help you can offer is greatly appreciated!