HGG Community Forums

For Future reference ; if a horse is ever labeled ( untested ) on its home page ; they have not been tested. Some of the higher leveled mares dont get tested because as the generations go up it becomes exponentially more difficult to get foals to pass Breeding Advice.

The paper tells you the raw quality of a horse. Breeding advice tells you how they compare to their parents. This mare is gold quality she just is not great quality compared to her parents.

I really love dark horses, and would like to breed horses that can win. How's that sound?
Although the leopards are awesome too! what you wrote really helped.

Uneven breeding or bootstrapping can help raise foal PT faster than even breeding, but a key part of that process is not testing aside fromcomparison testing because the foal is highly unlikely to be better than both parents and this is what testing assesses. A foundation horse with yellow/c or red/b papers bred to a 6th generation gold/star papered horse likely will not have any offspring that can be even as good as that 6th gen horse. But odds are the foal will be better than the foundation parent.

That said, even breeding can also produce high quality foals, it just tends to not be as fast. But there are lots of testing options and a lot of people only even breed since the pedigree looks nicer and it’s a little easier to tell how the quality of your horses is improving.

I’d say think about whether you want to start out bootstrapping or even breeding. Both approaches can produce foals who do very well in shows and get a lot of earnings (higher PT horses do compete in higher level shows but they might not win those shows. A lower PT horse that consistently wins lower level shows can actually make you more hbs than a high PT horse that isn’t doing well in its class). Of course the highest PT horses do get on the leaderboards and when they consistently win, they have the best earnings.

Once you decide your approach, you know whether to get all foundations to start with and test, or if you want to mix in some higher generation horses and only comparison test.

If you do decide to go with even breeding, let me know! I’ve got a couple black appaloosas that I’m happy to share straws or put up for breeding, but they certainly aren’t right for bootstrapping.

thank you Annismyrph and Crowsnestridge for your sage advice. It's a lot to take in and to be honest, I don't know which way I'm going (I've been at this for almost a week now!). I think I'll know more past mid month, where the mares and stallions I've lined up produce and then I'll have an idea of how bad my ideas are.
thanks again