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ellieroseek · Apr 5, 2017 10:38 PM

So today I bred all my foundation pasture horses, which have grown considerably in number since last breeding season, as I've gone a bit crazy with herd helpers, and I've been inundated with intact foals! Which is kind of nice, since last season I had a lot of altered foals. Anyway, I've finished testing everything and to my surprise, I have a lot of B papered colts. Actually, I have a lot of colts in general. With my previous season, I was just aiming for B/Red papered horses to keep for my 2G herd. But now I feel inundated with them and don't even know where to start deciding who to keep and who to sell.

What makes you decide to keep a foal apart from paper level? PT score? Colour? Consistency? How strict is everyone?

How many stallions to you try to have for each generation herd? At the moment I have 20+ B papered 2G colts from this season alone and I don't even know how many I want to narrow down to! Haha.

Basically my herd is getting bigger and I don't know how to stay on top of it. (Send help!)

RedDeeFarms · Apr 6, 2017 4:29 AM

I am going through similar problems. This was my first official breeding season. I've done 2 waves of breeding so far and I've gotten a decent amount of intact vs altered foals; mostly colts. Since I'm still finding "my way" I've notice I'm becoming more strict. I have 2 "lines" going and It helps me cull some of my guys. I go through and do all the necessary testing. Then I'll go through and do the comparison tests on all my colts. I will only keep superior colts and auction off anything else. Then go back through to see which ones met my goals for the season. I plan on keeping all fillies as long as they paper red and fall within that specific line's guidelines (dark/liver chestnut or certain size).

ElementalStables · Apr 6, 2017 6:09 AM

Comparison testing can help you figure out which of the colts are better than others. At this point I'd concentrate on weeding it out based on whatever criteria you want to use - do some better meet whatever genetic goals you may be going for, do some comparison test better than each other/their sire, etc. - rather than concentrating on how many colts you want to keep at this point. Once you've weeded them down to all ones that are good and meet your goals, you can try to figure out from there approximately how many you want. Or you could even keep and breed them to figure out their AFPT and cull based on that (assuming you have the room to keep them and breed them for a little while!)

Bandit1119 · Apr 6, 2017 10:05 AM

I use all of the available testing in the order they are at the bottom of the barns.

First off I cull by colour. I breed Grullos so right off any other colours get snipped.

Next I performance test and snip inconsistent horses.

Next I go through Breeding advice and strict breeding advice and breeding inspection.

I go through my stallions and look at their foals and snip the lowest papered colts of each then I comparison test each colt against its sire and then brothers. I keep superior to sire and aga brothers. Some studs I get tons of superior sons so I will sometimes snip foals based on inherited patterns and keep the ones with the most patterns or 2 copies of patterns.

I have all my barns sorted by generations so with the new paper column I can see at a glance all the papers of a generation and if I still have too many stallions I snip the lower papers of each generation.

If I still have too many colts I will snip all but the top few PT

ElementalStables · Apr 6, 2017 10:14 AM

Bandit, what's the thinking on snipping colts by PT, since PT doesn't affect breeding? Is it just so that you have SOMETHING to decide based on, since that's only after you've snipped based on all the relevant features?

Bandit1119 · Apr 6, 2017 4:42 PM

Yes, by the time I'm snipping for PT it's because I have like 20 colts to cover 5 mares and I just need something else to snip by because they are all one paper level, appropriately patterned and aga each other.

ellieroseek · Apr 6, 2017 8:35 PM

I think half my trouble is that I don't have a specific goal, other than I just want to breed nice quality horses. I still haven't decided on any specific colours or lines yet. Part of me feels a bit bad getting rid of some based on colour alone! haha. But I don't think my hbs can take me spending all the money to comparison test them all, so maybe colour and PT is a good place to start.

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