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I am a huge believer in keep all the things and geld all the things. Not because they’re bad quality but because I think of altered horses as free money.

Altered horses take up one stall each and usually don’t take long to earn enough points to cover the costs of their shows each week.

A breeding horse may not be shown quite as consistently so may not achieve their earning potential but the average mare can fill a 15 stall barn (starting price of 62,500) and cost 7,500-15,000 hbs to breed those foals throughout her lifetime. With out contributing as much to paying down the 70,000hbs she costs in her life.

But as a new player you’ll most likely want to increase your daily show bonus faster than you will waiting for yearlings to age up.

Ammit held a contest this spring on the second server to see how fast a new account could increase their daily bonus. I found the tactic that worked for me was filling my welcome pack barn with 15 of my highest pointed horses along with stuffing my pasture with my highest pointed mares

Then I would create as many herd helpers as I could as yearlings sticking with exceptional show horses, perfect foundation or exceptional producers. (Bigger barns who’ve figured out show horses are bankrolling their breeding love these since they already have points and will be good shower or breeders and will help their daily bonus from day 1.)

Until I either filled my barns, ran out of money or reached 20,000 points (total points can be found on your home page and affect your daily pay out, under 20,000 points you will be able to create horses with points)

I’d run breeding advice only (as it’s free) then sort all my horses throughout my barns by total points and any horse left in my primary barn I’d put up for sale at a profit.

At the time I’d start at 2,500hbs and add 500hbs per 100 points the horse held. Some I’d only make 500 hbs horse others I’d double my money or more.

The created yearlings will help your barn more in the beginning than your home bred yearlings that are starting with 0 points and may take months to reach 100+ points.

I’d created a sales post on the forum with a search link to my horses for sale (click for sale and put your ID# in the owners box. Copy and past the URL in the first post) and would post a reply whenever I’d added a new batch for sale. This way I wasn’t cluttering the forum with a ton of for sales ads. I only had to post the one link and it would self update without me having to post individual horse pics and hope people clicked on all the links to see if the horse was still for sale.

At the end of the week anything left in my primary barn I’d put in the Sunday auction and go back to creating more yearlings with the profits made. As I continued this process my daily points would steadily increase as I was switching out horses from my welcome pack barn for higher pointed horses. I still made sure to pasture breed all my mares but usually ended up auctioning off the foals for a 2,000 hbs profit each.

When I could afford it I’d bought another 30 stall barn (or the biggest I could afford starting with 30 stalls or more) and would continue to fill my extra barns with the highest pointed horses and auction or sell any in the primary barn.

Once I reached the 20,000 point cap for creating horses with points I started keeping foals.

By then you may have come across a colour you really liked the looks of and could collect mares to breed for that colour or decided on another goal to work towards.

If you still get pointed foundations, then absolutely! If you don't, they will still earn over a longer time if you make them younger :)

Yeah for the show horse herd helpers I usually pick yearlings since then they earn longer and better showers than breeders so geld and spay then all for the added training boost from the time they turn 2.

The perfect foundations/ exceptional producers I create 3-4 year olds.

Although on my main accounts on both servers I do create yearlings so that if I need a replacement I can do any GMT work to it over 3-4 months so it can replace the horse aging out in 4-5 months.

I let my secondary account sit over the summer and lost quite a few horses so am back down to just over the cap so need to rebuild that account again.

No, you're fine. It might take a bit for your bank balance to recover but it will. In the meantime, show everything you can. Get all those points!

Wow, that's awesome.

Do you know if exceptional showing has any hereditary component?

To go along with what SandyCreek said, showing is not hereditary. There is no direct link between a horse's showing capability and its foals' showing capability. Good breeding horses can produce foals that are good showers and good breeders, but outside of that there's no connection. This is why it's vitally important to use as many of the tests as you can. Breeding Advice is exactly what it says on the tin: it'll give you a good indicator if your horse is worth breeding or not. Performance Testing is the test that measures showing capability. Two different skills, two different numbers, two different tests. :)