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Pastures are pretty much exclusively for breeding, yes.

What were you expecting them to do?

I should probably clarify that they don't exactly increase stats.

What happens is that every horse has a breeding ability stat that translates into a range of offspring it can produce. When you leave mares in a pasture, that range will shrink over time, up to a maximum of a 30 day bonus, which means their worst foals will be better than the worst foals of equivalent mares that didn't get a pasture bonus.

So for example if you had two mares that were identical, who could produce foals with performance scores between (very loosely, hypothetically) 12 and 13, and you put one in a pasture for 30 days and left one out, the one in the pasture might (very hypothetically) instead produce foals that were between 12.3 and 13.

So overall they aren't better, but your chances of getting foals that are in the higher end of the range increase.