HGG Community Forums

Papering has nothing to do with show quality, so definately keep them :)

Ok how would you start a good show horse herd/line? How low is too low for show horse PT? I only have about 17 in my herd now and I am going to get a 30 stall barn for them and I need to fill the rest of it with better showers to hopefuly increase my showing bonus and the amount of points I earn from showing! I really need them to start paying for the breeding of my lines! Any help on which way is best? I never fully understood what bootstrapping was or how to do it either.

If you see, or get, an 'Exceptional Show Horse' herd helper, use it to create stallions which you can then geld to give them a training boost.

As for bootstrapping, it's when you deliberate breed uneven generations/paper levels to quickly get higher-PT show foals. You can do this in lots of ways, and everyone kinda has a preference.

My suggestion? Find a cheap-ish "A" papered stallion, breed him to lots of Exceptional producing mares, or Red/Blue lined fillies you're not going to use otherwise. Keep any Blue papered daughters, breed them either back to their sire or to an even better colt. (I spent some extra hbs on a couple uneven Star papered colts for this purpose, because I don't like to inbreed.) Rinse and repeat. With every generation you should get better and better PTs.

Just remember higher PT foals can take longer to pay off, so keep plenty of pointed foundations too.

But there's no hurry to start a bootstrap line, you might want to wait a while until you have plenty of quicker income like high point young foundations.

If you can create horses with points, I would do following:

First, try to get hold of all the following Herd helpers you can get:

- Exceptionally Perfect
- Exceptionally Producing (of all kinds)
- Exceptional Show Horse
- Perfect Foundations
- Great Show Horse
- Rank Specials

Because they will be more attractive to buyers. Then, when you have created as many as you can with these HHs, you can start creating from regular Herd Helpers.

Create them, breed them and sell them. Don't get attached to them, except from if you get something really special, like your dream pixel pony. Sell/auction the pointed foundations.

From my experience, pointed show horses under 200 points don't sell so fast, so send them to the public auction. Everything above you can sell on the sales board for around 70% of their Estimated Lifetime Payout, and they will usually be sold within a day or two. Auction those that does not sell within a couple of days in the public auction.

Pointed foundations with more than 5-600 points is worth doing a forum auction for, or keep for yourself

If you do this for a couple of weeks, you will soon have a very nice amount of HBs in your account. If you use these HBs to buy the biggest barn you can afford, and fill it with show horses, you will have a very good starting point to create a herd of horses for yourself, and have a stable and growing economy as well :)

Wow, ok thank you SherwoodStables! That was very helpful and thank you everyone else for your advice as well! One last thing should you spray everything you keep for showers since they will train higher except for the ones for bootstrapping? Including the ones from the HH after you breed them?

Everything you want as a show horse and you will not breed should be snipped.

How you decide to play the game is entirely up to you. Here are some things I learned when I first started based off of my different accounts.

When I first started I had 3 different accounts, and on each account I did something slightly different with my breeding program and show horses. Within a year the differences in daily payout was shocking. (This was before the creates with points feature came out.)

Account 1
I started a normal bootstrap herd. I showed all the colts, bred all the fillies. Eventually I started being stricter on fillies, but still keeping them and showing them all. At the end of the year my daily payout was about 6k. This is with me keeping everything.

Account 2
I started with a foundation stallion and bred him to foundation mares. I kept all fillies that passed BA and were consistent PT that fit my breeding program. I kept all the foals automatically spelled by BA. And I sold everything else. By the end of the year my daily payout was 8k

Account 3
Started by breeding a 3g A papered stallion to foundation mares with full pasture bonus. And keeping all the speles, and breeding the mares. 2 months later I got a new foundation stallion, then I bred him to the foundation mares. I kept all spellds, I gelded all colts that weren’t exactly what I wanted, maybe 2 escaped my snippers. The fillies had to paper better than their dams, and have a consistent PT over 10, everyone else was snipped too. I kept all the babies except the 2 or 3 colts who escaped my snippers those boys were sold. I also ended up snipping all of the bootstrap mares as well. At the end of the year my daily payout was 12k.

That’s just my experience. I’ve since combined accounts 2 and 3, that daily payout is about 70k now. And account 1 is 25k, that account is still struggling, so bootstrapping hasn’t been very kind to me. I’ve been playing about 1 1/2 years now.

Edit
This account I’m on now is an experiment, I’m only keeping/buying show horses and am not doing any breeding at all. I’ve had it about 4 months and my show bonus is 9k.

Personally I spay inconsistent fillies and colts as a way to help me keep less intact breeding stock. I’ve had inconsistent mares have good foals too. So it’s up to you.

I really like inconsistent show horses, several of my best show horses are inconsistent. However I’m not saying they are all great, but for me they’re about the same a consistent horses. In the beginning I think keeping everything that are show horses, is better than trying to only keep the best show horses. At least until you have a decent daily payout, or if they are really bad show horses.

PT wise I don’t keep any show horses with a PT under 5, preferably 7. The exception to that rule is if they have lots of points, or are placing at the top of their shows.

Hey, it's been awhile! I have been doing ok with show horses I think, I now have about 36 showers out of a 60 stall barn most over 200 points and now have Two 1k pointers from the newsletters too! I am over 20k points though so not sure what to do now? I still want to fill up at least One barn with show horses but can't create any more with points! Would anyone have any they are selling that are a little younger(at or below 10 would be better) with points at least over maybe 150 to 200? Would pay auction price at 2,600!

Try searching both the public sales list and the auctions with horse age younger than 10 and sorted by most points. Buy any that fit your budget and/or bid on as many as you can, the highest few you'll probably be outbid by others but in the auctions if you go down a few pages you have a better chance at keeping the highest bid and thus having new pointed show horses!

You're welcome! I never could create pointed show horses of my own but this is something I regularly do to up my daily bonus!

I've got quite a few horses for sale, myself, all priced around their lifetime payout, though that is somewhat negotiable. Most are not spayed or gelded, but most have at least some points, and could be used as show horses if you like. There's at least one with 500 points. Here's the link: https://tinyurl.com/y6gjs6qw

@LadyLaurana Wow, thanks there are quite a few in there that would be great! Would you do 5,000 for some of the 200 pointers who were up for 10k if I get more than one? I need a few more with 200 or so points but don't have much extra to spend right now.

That also sounds like a good idea @Bandit1119! What is a show horse exchange though?

That's fine with me, I'm in no rush. :)

Cool! Will be waiting for the auction tomorrow too!

Oh I see! Still seems like a good strategy to me! I am trying for a few in auction now so I could sell off my lower pointed showers! Thanks again!