HGG Community Forums

They both were worse for breeding than their sire.

I expect they were both neutered by Breeding Advice or Strict Breeding Advice, whichever you used.

I don't think you can really judge them before you test them. That's what the test is for. If you mean judge the parents before you breed them to try and get intact offspring, matching breeding ability is all you can do, but you will never have a pairing that never throws spelds. That's not a bad thing, the offspring might be really good showers, so they're still good horses then. The only way I've seen that you can get a very low speld rate is breeding fully pasture-boosted foundations. I get about 1 or 2 spelds out of a hundred that way. Hand breeding and even the 15-day boost equivalent bonus given when AI breeding can't guarantee that the foal won't be altered. The foal's breeding ability always lands within a range that starts just below the parents ability to just above the parents ability. If it happens to land just below or as good as, the foal will be snipped by SBA. So if you're hand breeding, not pasture breeding with the boost or AI breeding with the automatic 15-day bonus, it's pretty much always 50/50 if the foal will pass or get snipped. It's random where the foal will land within the range of the parents' ability to produce, and part of that possible range will always be worse than the parents, without a pasture boost to clip that end off.

Actually, so far I don't use the pasture boost, I use it so I have lower cost breedings. But I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth that one pasture full of the 30 day boost and sacrifice other breedings.
Pastures for real money are beyond my budget.

Thank you for your help and your explanations.

So you get one pasture full of mares that have the boost, while the others don't? Yet you still get the pasture bonus, am I understanding right?

6 pastures? Gak give me a few years to save up that much.

Do horses in the pastures show? Auto-show only lists barns.

Ok, thanks. So, pasture horses can't raise their points then?

Is that the way it works in real life?

Well, I know with dogs, a brood bitch can end up with slightly bigger teats and a thickened waist. My female couldn't be showed because of a fault, but boy did she ever throw some awesome puppies. The fault wasn't genetic, so her pups didn't get it. But yeah, that's a tough call to make deciding which would be better breeders.