HGG Community Forums

I'm pretty new so my biggest concern is showing and breeding ability at this point! Otherwise, I like black-based with white and roan. One day I would like studs that look like my real life geldings!

1) I have a list of mares and a list of stallions who are potential matches. So for example all of my foundation warmblood mares and stallions are on a list together. All my riding horse foundations are together on a list and all my drafts are together on a list. then I take one list at a time and go through the following process:

2) Say on my foundation list I have 30 mares and 5 stallions, I like to spread my mares out evenly between stallions so I would say each stallion gets 6 mares this year.

3) Then I'll go through my stallions that have rarer genes like KP, Sty+, Pearl or something like that and match them up to any mares who also have that gene.

4) once I've done the rare gene matchups I don't particularly care who is matched with who at that point so I assign each mare who hasn't been bred yet a number, 1, 2, 3 etc.

5) then I will pick a stallion who hasn't Bred 6 mares yet and use a random number generator from google to spit out random numbers. If it spits out 3, 7, 10, 15 and 21 then I breed him to the mares assigned those numbers.

6) then I renumber the remaining inbred mares 1, 2, 3 etc and repeat the random number generator process with the next stallion. Repeat until all stallions and mares have been bred.

7) then I go to my next list and start at step 2) and repeat the process for each list I have.

I should also add that I have a spreadsheet to track potentially lethal matches so that I make sure not to breed those horses together and get a dead foal.

I like the random element because I feel like then I am not making a sentimental mistake of breeding the same matches each year and I get a surprise variety of babies each year.