HGG Community Forums

Show horses. Lots of them and patience.

This is a long term strategy game. Some use real money to buy money or barns but for a lot of us it’s not Abracadabra poof here’s your money it’s hard work trimming our herds to make sure everyone’s pulling their weight.

Most of us older players strive to have a 1:3 ratio of breeding horses to altered horses. Breeding is fun but costs money. Breeding horses costs 500+ hbs per month (if you only pasture breed. Much more if you get into AI) and a single mare will cost you a 15 stall barn throughout her life time to hold her foals.

Show horses on the other hand sit in your barn and print money. They cost you 2 shows a week which it doesn’t take long for them to earn enough for their daily bonus to pay you back for them and start to pay for their neighbours shows too.

I always suggest taking some time to build up your show string with older pointed horses (or young high pointed creates) the older horses will earn more points per show to increase their daily pay out faster while foals will take forever to get to the point they are being productive members of your barn.

On HJ2 Amit held a contest to see how fast someone could build up their barn from scratch in 2 months (the pointed creates were the result of this contest so it was a few years ago but my strategy still applies)

I took my welcome barn and welcome money and hit up the auction as many times as I could. I sorted the auction horses in the search by total points and went down the list and bid 2,600 on every single one I could. If someone else (other than the auction bidder) had already bid on the horse I skipped it and moved on. No point getting into a bidding war that only cuts your profit. Once I spent all my money on bids I’d wait to see what I’d won or if I had time later in the day I’d go back to where I stopped on the list and continue adding bids as mine got outbid.

Now that 10+ year olds auction prices are their lifetime payouts I’d limit the search to under 10 years old. That way their daily pay out can be higher but you won’t be paying an arm and a leg and waiting forever for them to pay back your auction fees.

After the auction ran and everyone made it to my barns I altered any unaltered horses I’d won (or pasture bred the mares first) and sorted all my horses by total points and put all the high point horses into the welcome barn and entered everything that was left in my primary barn into the next auction (including the pasture foals). I continued to do this bid on pointed horses and move the lower pointed horses out of my barns to the auction whether they were intact or not. This made sure my total number of horses stayed relatively the same but my total points raised (which in turn meant my daily bonus increased)

I also converted as much money into IV’s as I could leaving enough money to make bids. When I could afford it I bought a bigger barn (I prefer the 60-90 size when starting out) then I would continue my auction bidding but put my highest pointed horses in both the welcome and the extra barn and whatever was left over in the primary barn was sent back to the auction.

By returning horses to the auction they only need to make you 100hbs when they are in your barn to break even. I tried to make sure the horses I bid on had a daily pay out of 15hbs+ so in a week or less they would make me their 100hbs.

Also since the auction has changed to pay out 10+ year olds lifetime points I would fill my barns with as many 9 year olds as possible near the end of the month and send them to the first auction of the new year and convert all that to IV’s.

If you take a few months off breeding you should be able to have a tidy little nest egg, a few extra barns and a good daily profit to pay for breedings.

I’d also buy mares cheap. Pasture breed them and auction both them and their foals off.

If you have less than 20,000 points you can also create pointed yearlings from the great/exceptional show horse herd helpers and sell those off for a profit. I used to add 500 hbs per 100 points the horse held up to 500 points. Then I would hold a forum auction for any with more. If they don’t sell within a week or two send them to the auction.

I started out buying some barns and two of my pastures with real money. I’ve also sold a lot of horses. I sold my first GMT project for barn space. During the Christmas events, I sold a lot of special horses. (Rank specials were worth more then) I sold every candy horse I got. I sold the sea horse I got during the summer events. I sell SBA passing liver foundation mares.

And all during this, I’ve been building my show herd so my daily bonus keeps going up. Anything that doesn’t meet my minimum standards for breed or show gets auctioned. I usually make enough profit off of that the fund breeding my all horses, allowing me to save up for barn space instead of loosing almost everything every season.

The addition of estimated lifetime payout and the ability to sell horses over 10 for that has been super helpful, too. I can auction underperforming show horses for their payout, both freeing up barn space for better show horses and funding more barns.