HGG Community Forums

Before pastures came out, I used to plan all my breedings by hand. However, it was rather time consuming. I used a rotation system for my stallions - I made sure my mares saw a variety of stallions before they were bred back to the same stallions again. I still use the rotation system, but now I just put the stallions into the pasture and just click breed. Granted, I don't get foals the way I would like, but I like the random element, and that way, I get better quality foals than if I had done the old method. Since I still rotate stallions on a yearly basis, my mares still have lower odds of being bred to the same stallion several times in pasture. Ammit has revamped how lethal crosses happen, so the odds of getting one is lower too, but I have to admit, it does still happen, but not as much as it used to in the past.

The bonus increases over a period of 30 days. Once the mare has been in the pasture for the full 30, you get the full bonus. And yeah, that's more or less how it works.

Nobody but Ammit knows the exact numbers, but it's pretty likely that a pasture breeding would have pulled up the PT score of the 2nd foal. It never guarantees that you'll get intact foals though, if that's what you were hoping for. Spays/Geldings are not dud foals.

I had a really long-winded post about the correlation between PT and breeding ability on the old forums. The long and short version is that when you breed two horses together, the game does math twice. Once to generate the foal's breeding score, one to generate it's showing score. Both scores can be high, both scores can be low, one score can be much higher than the other, both can be middle of the road, whatever. It's clearest in perfect foundation horses, the ones with 100% breeding. Their foal PT score range is 8.9 to 10.4, which is a pretty big range. Their foal breeding scores (which are more or less invisible to us outside of papering) are probably similar, with yellow at the 8.9 - 9.9 range, and red up the rest of the way.

When you get the pasture bonus, it moves the bottom score up, though I don't know how far because I've never really paid attention. You'll still end up with a bunch of foals that have better showing ability than breeding ability.

None of that is what has been said. The pasture bonus increases the chance that a mare will produce a better foal... whether it is a better foal for it's showing ability, or it's breeding ability is still up to chance. It just raises the bottom numbers the mare has the potential to produce, so your left with more with her mediocre to high end of her potential. PT and breeding ability in a horse are not correlated. A .4 PT exceptional producer foundation still has the same breeding ability as a 10.4 exceptionally perfect foundation. The only PT you need concern over when breeding is the AFPT - Average Foal Performance Testing. Both the .4 and the 10.4 could have an AFPT of 10.5, which again is an average, and requires much more than one or two foals to gain a true gauge of her breeding potential. Same goes for lined mares. Paper level is a stronger concern than PT. I personally expect a progression like this: Foundation B > 2G A > 3G A > 4G Star / Foundation Red > 2G Blue > 3G Blue > 4G Gold. Notice how they start at the same level, and progress equally. You cannot expect progression at each generation, if you are leaving all the work up to a superior breeding ability stallion. Pairing unequal abilities leads to show ponies. Which isn't a bad thing, because show ponies make you money... to fund your breeding. But if you are attempting to see progress in your breeding stock, you'll need to break it down to more than just using a great stud on as many mares as possible. It's not just about pairing the right generations together, but about pairing the right breeding abilities together. And if you start with the same base, it's much easier to tell if your 2nd generation is of the same ability, and then your 3rd, and so on.

In summary, getting the goal you are aiming for doesn't so much rest on whether you are using the pasture or the lab, but your pairing and culling abilities, your patience, and your perseverance. I've been at this a couple years now, and while I didn't get the hang of it right away, I still haven't achieved a homebred 13 PT. Most of the ones on the leaderboards you see that have such high PTs at such low generations involve lots of boosting. And real money.

I hope that was helpful in some way lol. Pardon me if it's hard to comprehend, I just woke up :)

ALL breeding over the long run generates more show babies than breedable babies, an effect that becomes more and more obvious the higher generation you're talking about.