HGG Community Forums

Well first off, congrats, these are definitely fine-looking foals!

I am by no means an expert, but I'd say it really depends on what you are looking to achieve. Breeding the fillies back to the sire would be uneven-breeding while breeding to this colt would be even-breeding and give you the option to stay even or go uneven in the future. But building up an evenly-bred line is a different process than uneven/bootstrap breeding.

If you are thinking of selling horses in the 4th generation or so, I think many people value evenly-bred horses that are superior to their parent (not so much if they haven't tested AGA/Superior). Of course, I know many people like buying unevenly bred horses too for their looks and as great show horses. So either can work.

Now, I'm guessing that building up an evenly bred line would be pretty difficult here - simply because you don't own the sire and dam. If you did, I'd say keep breeding until you have a larger group of foals to work with and then it would be fine to get breeding advice and paper them and risk some getting altered. But I understand why you don't want to take that chance since you can't just breed a bunch more next season.

I've really found (through my own mistakes) that if I am not strict on testing my 2nd gen and making sure that my fillies are all at least as good as (ideally superior) and my colts are superior to their sire that my 3rd gen does not consistently improve. I got a bunch of 3rd gen foals that were about the same as my
2nd gen rather than improving and so I altered a bunch of horses and went back to breeding my foundations to get better 2nd gen horses. It is hard to be that strict if you can't go back to your foundations and just get more foals.

If you did want to evenly breed, in the long run it would probably be best to get a foundation stallion that you own so you can produce 2nd gen foals in your pasture. You could find a het snowflake foundation stallion that hasn't been bred and then GMT him to be hom snowflake or find a hom snowflake stallion for sale that fits your budget.

Once you're producing your own 2nd gen horses, you'd have more 2nd gen fillies to work with, even if they're just het snowflake. Next you could breed those fillies with this colt, and still have a 50% chance of getting a hom snowflake 3rd gen foal (snow/- , snow/snow). You'd also be in a position to test all your horses to make sure they keep improving, without being too worried if some get altered.

I'm not sure if you want your line to always have the snowflake visible with Lp, or if you want to keep the other fancy genes these foals have as well. But these are also things to think about.

There might be an easier way to accomplish all this, so feel free to disregard me if someone else has better advice. I've also never really tried bootstrapping, but I'm sure that someone can give you recommendations for that approach.

sorry incorrect topic

OK so I just went through ALL of my Homozygous Snowflakes and I added their generation to their name. So now I’ll know who to breed to who! I think I’m going to put all of my Uneven bred ones in Auctions. Unless I like their coloring. Then I will keep them just for Fun! LOL

Great Advice! I’m going to go back and add their Paper Levels now.