HGG Community Forums

Pedigree
While not every player feels this way, many like to breed horses that have even generations on both sides of their pedigree. Some players also like to keep it within the same Body Type (ex. Ponies). Based on the current trends, an Even Pedigree is valued more than an uneven one.

If you scroll to the bottom of the Pedigree, you will see if this horse had any offspring. This is important to the seller because a horse that has bred already can not be Genetically Modified. In addition to this, you can look at the quality of foals a horse has been producing.

Some might favor an unbred horse, while others might favor a proven breeder. While neither garners more value than the other, I like to market them in a way that highlights this feature. I used the Owner Notes to keep track of the best offspring from that season, that way people looking to buy can see they are a proven producer of quality horses.

Records
Records work in 2 ways. They can tell you what price you purchased your horse for if you are going to sell, and they can show you what other people paid before you purchase a horse. This is important to establish a history of value. Using the Search Tool, you can look up Specific colors, or Somatic Tattoos and check the sales history of similar horses. Records only show you sale history, but not breeding fees. Not only does this help you from being overcharged, but it also helps establish a market value for a horse you might want to sell.

Control Panel
The control panel is where you will do all your Testing as well as set Fees for Breeding and Selling. This is also where you can place Owners notes for other people to publicly read. (See Below)

Age
If the horse is too young to breed, the buyer might not want to spend so much, due to waiting for their investment to mature. And if the horse is too old, they get less breedings out of them, and run the risk of dying off at a certain age. We’ll discuss pricing young horses more later in this thread.

Since age has no factor in the horses ability to pass on their traits, a young horse of breeding age should be considered more valuable than an older horse. Additionally the older horse is more likely to have been bred regularly, and you may encounter their name in many pedigrees depending on the breeding program. A younger horse has been on the market for less time, and may be a better fit if you are establishing a breeding program.

Daily Payout
Every horse you have contributes a little towards your Daily Payout. Some players look at this, but it’s really more of a slow return on your investment. Horses that have been showing longer, have earned more points, and typically have a larger Daily Payout. For more information on this see here: https://www.huntandjump.com/forum/discussion/31645/basic-information-for-new-players/p1

For more information on Pricing based on Lifetime Payout, see here: https://www.huntandjump.com/forum/discussion/comment/219553#Comment_219553

Testing Scores
Test all your horses. Not only will it tell you how your breeding program is going, but it also puts the buyer at ease knowing you did all your testing and produced a horse that will not be gelded. Buyers beware of purchasing horses that have not been tested.

Buyers beware of purchasing horses that have not been tested.


Strict Breeding Advice is only available on Premium Accounts, the test holds the offspring to a higher standard than Breeding Advice. Horses that have passed SBA and are ranked Superior when doing a Comparison test should always be considered more valuable than horses that have not been SBA tested.

Owners Notes
Owners notes are a great tool to take advantage of. On your horses Profile Page, under the Control Panel tab, there is a button that says "Edit Notes". These notes will show up on your horse's profile page, and come in handy when you want a pass along a message about your horse or breeding program. If your horse passed Strict Breeding Advice, put it in the notes. If your horse tested Superior to their Sire or Dam, put it in the notes. If your horse was the best foal of their Sires season, PUT. IT. IN. THE. NOTES. Notes are there to help market your horse.

Somatic Tattoos
Most horses come with Tattoos, some are game generated, and some are Player Made. Tattoos can also show you if any of the genes were modified.

Here is a list of all Game Generated Somatic Tattoos. These are called Rank Special Herd Helpers.

To find this list again without the link, it is under the My Stable Section. Click “Member Home” and scroll down to “Account and Stable Management” then select “My Herd Helper Collection”.

Everyone of these Herd Helpers can be searched by copying the name, and pasting it in the “Tattoo Name” box of the Search Tool. Why would you want to search for this? Well each Herd Helper has a different combination of genes, or breeding & showing qualities that you might find useful for the foundation of your breeding program.

Each Herd Helper is on a Foundation horse, and as a Foundation horse, some of them give you better breeding bonuses than others. These are the Basic foundation types for breeding and are ranked as follows.

Top Notch Producers: All horses have 100% breeding ability. They will be great sires and dams.

Perfect Foundations: All horses will have 100% training ability, 100% breeding ability, and perfect consistency. They will be great at showing and producing foals.

Exceptional Producers: These horses will be exceptionally good parents compared to other foundations. They will have greater than 100% breeding ability.

Exceptionally Perfect: Not just perfect, but exceptionally perfect. These horses can train higher and produce better offspring than normal creates. They will have greater than 100% breeding ability and greater than 100% training ability. They also will have perfect consistency.

Exceptionally Perfect foundation horses are considered more ideal for their ability to pass on breeding & showing bonuses. However they show up in a more limited range of genetics than the other Herd Helpers, so they are often used as a starting horse for Genetic Modification.

I value an Exceptionally Perfect horse at a higher level than an Exceptional Producer because of their Perfect Consistency and 10.4 PT. When bred together, they often produce Consistent offspring with higher PT.

Genetically Modified Horses
Players have the ability to modify the genes of unbred horses. Some genes are basic and common, while others are more Rare, or Limited Edition. The horse's ability to pass on these genes is going to influence their value. A horse with 2 copies of the same gene will always pass 1 copy along to the offspring, this is called a Color Guarantee.

What does this mean? Well with the new Search Tool, we can specifically look to see if there are other horses just like ours. You may have a horse that is Homozygous for another gene, so that foal will always inherit a copy of that gene. Maybe this gene is rare, or not seen in that Pattern Combination yet. Maybe your horse is Higher Papered, or Higher Gen'd, maybe they are Consistent and pass down a Higher PT score. Know your horse's worth, and market it.

At the time I wrote this, there were 111 homozygous DFP1 horses in the game, and the only 2 that were publicly being bred were mine.

Someone put a similar horse up for $250 hbs
Just because someone else did, doesn't mean you need to as well. If you have the quality, market that quality. People don't always look for the cheapest thing to buy, because we've naturally learned that cheap doesn't always mean better in real life. We are more inclined to buy something in the mid-range. But don't go crazy with it. If one stud is $250, and another is $100,000 that doesn't mean the mid range for your horse should be $50,125 hbs. You might need to narrow down your market using the Search Tool, and advertise to a specific audience (on the forum or in chat).

Keep in mind, if players are looking to breed a specific line, they will need to add new blood. A less expensive Stallion is more likely to show up in a horse's pedigree. And is more likely to show up in horses being sold or auctioned as well. So making sure you have access to new bloodlines that are quality horses is important to prevent bottlenecking. That cheap stallion may have been around for many breeding seasons, which may give your horse the advantage of being the new guy.

Like Public Studding, the market will influence this. Using the handy dandy Search Tool, you can narrow it down a little more to see if there are any similar horses currently for sale, and what their stats look like. You can also look in the horses Records Tab to see if there is any sale history. This may help give you a baseline to start.

If you are selling a horse that is currently Breeding, and the market has been actively breeding to them, take into consideration what kind of money you might miss out on if you sell your horse. Now I'm not saying your Stallion should sell for $20,000,000 because he can breed 50 horses every season from the age of 3 to 19 (16 years x 50 coverings = 800 Breedings @ $25k each). Because the value of that stallion is going to degrade over time. The genes he carries are going to be more common through breeding, or will become more readily available on the market.

If your horse was open for public breeding last season, look to see how many players purchased services from that stallion.

For my horses, June and July saw lots of breeding and selling of Straws/Eggs because this was a new gene, and only foundation horses of breeding age were on the market. The Colts that were born in June, have now aged up enough to breed this season, and the 2nd Gen Mares won't be of breeding age until September.

At the time of writing this, I had one of my 2nd Gen Stallions on the Public Market for $100,000. I also had him in a Color Chat at a discount for $75,000. I came to this figure because I thought it would be realistic to get 4 public breedings out of him, additionally I didn't have a need for him as I bred higher testing Colts of the same generation. While I wrote this article, he sold in the Color Chatroom for $75,000 hbs.

You want to make sure you made a profit when selling or breeding your horse. If you spent money on an outside stud, include the Stud Fee in the foals price. And if you have testing available, test your horses and include that in their cost. If you are selling the horse, factor in the full amount into their Fee. But if you are putting your horse up for Public Breeding, spread the cost of this horse over a number of breedings.

Check List
Stud/Straw Fee = __________
Vet Bills = $1,000
Pasture Breeding = $500
Straw Collection = $500
Egg Flush = __________
Creating an Embryo = $2,000
Creating an AI Embryo = $5,000
Genetic Testing = $100
Performance Testing = $500
Breed Testing = $1,000
Comparison Testing = $4,000 or $8,000

If you read this entire thing, thank you. And I hope you leave here with a little more understanding on how to Value your horses. The new Search Tool really helps us see what is on the market without having to search through pages of horses that don't meet that criteria. Whatever money you put into a horse, make sure you include that in your Sales Price/Breeding Fee. And take advantage of the Horses Notes, Forum and Chat Rooms to help market your horse.

I realize everyone has a different value to horses, I value some horses higher than others because of the lines I'm trying to work with. But I want to make sure that you know the value of your horse. Money is important in this game, it provides you opportunity to buy higher quality horses, to Comparison Test more, and even be able to trade in HB's for Special Game Items that you would otherwise have to buy with your own real Money. So don't short change yourself.

$1 = 100,000 hb's is the standard conversion rate.

1 GMT from the Upgrades tab costs $5
1 GMT from the IV exchange tab costs 125,000 hb's

Thank you for that input @Mistylynn91 I will look into this and make an update. I haven't looked at Life Time payout or Daily Money earned in my horses, so this is something I will need to explore.

Most of the RGS genes and pastures can only be purchased for real money, so it cannot be compared to the GMT value. There is reliance on another person being willing to exchange their finite resource (money) for your potentially infinite resource (hbs).

I'd say the majority of members are using their in-game cash to buy IV's and converting to GMT's for large purchases such as KitM and Snowflake, this has $0 value as they earn all of this money through their show herds, selling ponies, etc.

$3.25 to purchase 25,000 hb's, that's $13 to purchase 100,000 hbs - and tbh buying game cash through the upgrade store is very bad value as it is in most games.

It's not unreasonable to charge 100,000 hb's for $1 worth from the real money only store, and whilst a few people are willing to on occasion do this for free or cheap, this is the standard rate (at least since I joined).

TLDR: For you to break even (i.e be able to 'cash out') your DPF1 stud would need to earn you 3,125,000 hb's in stud fees over his lifetime.

You'd have enough HB's to buy $30 worth of genes off another member or invest into 25 GMT's. With these 25 GMT's you could buy; 2x Snowflake ($15 from RGS) and 1x DP (maybe $5 from RGS). So really, the value of a GMT would be 66,000 hb's (30 - 20 = 10 (33%) provided there was 0 incentive for the person making the real cash purchase.

@CheshireFarms I know the current going rate is 100,000hbs, we should (at least for now) use that in any calculation.

RGS genes are all over the place;

Snowflake (like your example) is $7.50 from the RGS lab (750,000 HB's at the current rate) but 1,125,000 if you buy it through Gene Mod. So actually the 1:100,000 hb's works in the in-game buyer's advantage here as a straight swap would leave the real cash purchaser out 4 GMT's. (33% but can't buy part GMT) :))

Pearl (the only other gene both in RGS and Gene Mod right now) is $2.50 from the RGS lab (250,000 hb's at the current rate) but 225,000 hb's if you buy through Gene Mod. So the real cash buyer would be out (10%) worth if using the funds to purchase their own Pearl gene.

New players joining the game are now able to make Foundation horses from Daily Herd Helpers (DHH) with Points already assigned to them. A percentage of these points become daily income for your stable, and help finance your startup. The amount of assigned points is at random, but sometimes you can get really high point earners. Because the resources out there are not very clear for new members, make sure you understand what to look for before selling/auctioning/removing any of your horses.

As horses show, they gain more points, the greater the number of total points in your stables (counting all horses), the more money you can earn every day. So keep this in mind if you start selling your foundation stock.

Lifetime Payout is a little tricky to understand as a new player, so I'll do my best to explain it. There are 3 parts to a horses points. They are: Total Points, Daily Payout, and Total Lifetime Points.

Total Points
This is the total number of points a horse has currently earned. Some horses are created with points already on them, these are foundation horses created from Daily Herd Helpers. You can read more about this here.

Daily Payout
Daily Payout reflects a percentage of the Total Points, divided by 7 (7 days in the week). This is what the horse will earn you as a daily bonus from showing. If you want to check your Daily Payout (from all your horses added together), you can go to "Member Home" and scroll down to "Performance Overview".
Current Lifetime Points
The Current Lifetime Points tell you how much money a horse will earn you over its lifetime (until it's 18th birthday). This can change over time based on the horses showing history.

How Do They All Work Together
If a horse is in your stable being shown (2x a Week), they will earn points as long as they do not come in last place. This is reflected in their Total Points. Check here to see how shows work. A percentage of those points become the horses Daily Payout. The more points earned from Shows, the greater the Daily Payout. At the end of the day when the game Rolls Over the Daily Payout amount will be subtracted from your horses Lifetime Points.

This horse started with $10,810 hb's and after 3 days of paying $47 hb's from Daily Payout, they now have $10,669 hb's to earn until they are 18 years old.
If the horse starts to perform better in shows, that number will change. But this is the general idea of how these 3 things work together.
This horse has not shown, or was newly created/bred and did not have any points. They will have to earn points through showing.
This horse has 15 total points, and earns $2 hb's a day. If they stay at $2 hb's and you continue to keep them but not show them, they would have earned you $888 hb's for sitting in your account and looking pretty.

*Pro Tip: If using your Pastures to Breed, rorate them each season so they earn some show points to make you more money. Breed one month, and then show the next. - Thanks to @Corvus
This horse has finished training (see "Leveled Off") and is currently 10 years old (not shown here). Now that they are 10, I could put them in Auction for a starting price of their Current Lifetime Points, and get a quick payout. Or I can keep showing them, to get a slower return, but possibly make a little more on my investment.

While this is a slow return for your money invested, and sometimes you might not even make your money back. Lifetime Points do play an important role in pricing out your horses.

Suggested Pricing for Basic Foundation Horses with Points
This suggestion does not take into account any uncommon or rare genes the horse might have. The common practice for selling pointed Basic Foundations, is to set the sale price for 1/2 the Current Lifetime Points. So if the Lifetime Points were $12,000 hb's you would set the minimum sale price for $6,000 hb's.

Keep in mind any fees you paid out to get this horse. So that $6,000 price tag might earn you $1,900. Which is not enough money to replace the horse you just sold. In reality, making and then selling horses isn't a stable way of earning money in this game, but that is a entirely different thread.

If you are selling a Basic Foundation Horse with Lifetime Points, my suggestion would be to see if you could recoup 30% of their Lifetime Payout ON TOP of whatever the horse cost you in creating it (including the testing fees). So if the Lifetime Points were $12,000 hb's you would set the minimum sale price for $3,600 hb's + Creation Fee ($2,500) + Testing Fees ($1,600) = $7,700 hb's. This allows you to earn $3,600, and if the new owner keeps the horse for the rest of their lifetime they will earn at minimum $4,300 hbs.

While the new owner would not break even right away, they could make more on their investment by breeding and showing over time.

*Pro Tip: The standard ratio of 3 showing horses for every 1 breeding horse is the best habit you can get into, but let's face it, breeding is more fun! - @ConfluenceStable

@DarkFrost I was gonna mention that too, but didn't want my original comment to get too lengthy.
@CheshireFarms that looks good to me so far. I just know I made the mistake of not paying attention to pointed foundations when I was brand new. I sold everything for like 3k hbs flat out, no matter how much money it earned me. I had to spend several months catching up on my show herd.

I like bargains myself, but @bravo25 is about right as far as the most I would pay for DP or snowflake. I'm normally willing to pay slightly higher for points or exactly the right genes to go with those two, as well.

The market is not set in stone :)

Fashion and trends are also factors that adds to the desirability of the horse. Snowflake and DP are both old classics that a lot of people breed for and want in their herd, therefore a lot of people are willing to pay more for those genes.

To base the stable economics on horse sales and breeding alone is not a good strategy in the game. Trends comes and goes, and suddenly everyone goes crazy after something different. New and old open genes are often more sought after than closed fantasy genes because they have a bigger group of potential buyers.

I also think that many people breed mostly for themselves, to get a herd that they love, and are happy to help other players out if they can. I never sell lined horses, unless someone ask me for a specific horse, and that horse happens to be one of my more open lines, and I trust the buyer. But when I do, I usually give them away for free, because they are priceless to me (so it is impossible for me to put a fair price on them, for emotional reasons), and I love to help other people.

@ConfluenceStable can you explain the daily payout some more, because I've never made $20k in a day and my horses I created stoped coming with points a long time ago.

To be fair, I had a really hard time understanding that aspect of the game. And still do. Lots of my foundation horses were sold without taking points into consideration (didn't really know too - might have to make a entirely different thread for the new player now).

Yes, I really like how you created this post, it is so well written and amazingly done!!

Here are two links that explain how to use show horses and points to build a strong game economy. The first one was written by me, and are not nearly as structured as yours. This was written after Ammit made the change that allows new members to create foundations with points, and the first part is based upon selling and buying those.

I started a side account to try out the technique myself, and when I played this with dedication, I managed to build a self sustaining account with 2000 stalls, all bought for game money within 2 months, just by thinking strategically.

https://www.huntandjump.com/forum/discussion/41800/new-member-let-me-give-you-150-000-hbs/p1

The 2nd post was written before the pointed foundation change, but the information is still valid, and is about the strategy for established players and players who have reached the 20 000 points held mark and are ready to move on further into the game.

https://www.huntandjump.com/forum/discussion/27151/attn-new-players-want-to-know-how-to-make-money-to-support-your-hj-habit

And there is of course nothing wrong with selling and breeding horses for a good value. It is a good side income for a small barn who is in the phase of building a sustainable economy, besides - it is very fun.
But doing it alone will not get you far in the game, if your goal is to build a self-sustaining economy, where your horses pays for the barns, IV and all the in-game purchases you want and need

And about pricing horses for sale; the easiest way to find out their value, is to do a search for similar horses for sale, and see how they are priced. If there is a huge gap between the highest price and the lowest price, maybe try something in between, close to what you would pay for the horse if you were buying.
If nothing similar is up for sale, try to search the forum, or just set a price you are comfortable with.

If they don't sell within a reasonable time (f.ex 2 weeks), then the price is probably higher than what people are willing to pay for the horse, so if you still need to sell, you can either lower the price or try an auction, either the public auction or a forum auction.

If anyone is looking to buy show horses, here is some guidelines on how to find good prospects: https://www.huntandjump.com/forum/discussion/comment/205382#Comment_205382

You guys are absolutely right about the 20,000 being total points held, and yes it was a typo! Sorry about that! If you want more detailed explanations about how the points total is calculated to make the daily bonus, you'll have to find one of the "math" folks. I am mathematically challenged, but I'm pretty sure that what is in the Basic Information For New Players post is correct (https://www.huntandjump.com/forum/discussion/31645/basic-information-for-new-players#Item_15)

Also, just as a 'fun fact'; Before Ammit made the changes for the new player bonuses (which includes the Acheivement Awards, the pointed creates, and the $2 upgrade for new players) she ran a contest that had us ALL entering. The challenge was to see how quickly we could go from a brand new account, with no upgrades or infusions to being able to buy a Basic Upgrade with IVs. It was insane! A pointed show horse on the sales boards was grabbed up in seconds, and that is when the bootstrapping method came into general play. I THINK the winner did it in 2 months.

I believe you get whatever the lifetime value is, so if horse had 2501, that's what you'd get. I do not believe you can get less than 2.5k.

I expanded on Pricing Horses & Lifetime Points: https://www.huntandjump.com/forum/discussion/comment/219553#Comment_219553

Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions to add.

I included the example of selling a horse for 50% of their Lifetime value, but also added a suggestion at the end to set the price to 30% the Lifetime Value + fees involved in creating the horse.

Edit, I just saw the post where most of this is already explained, I somehow missed it. But at least here you have real examples.

About points and current lifetime value:

The current lifetime value of a horse is always just current. The option to sell horses back to the game from the age of 10, and get their current lifetime value back, was created to help the mega size barns (barns with 10k+horses) to downsize, as we put a lot of pressure on the server.

The lifetime value of the horse is calculated from the amount of points a horse have in the given moment, and estimates how much money the horse will pay out in total until the rollover between 17/18 years, when the horse have 20 or 25% chance of dying (I can't remember the exact %).

The current lifetime value does NOT take into consideration the amount of points thee horse may gain in the future.

So if you need a big chunk of money, or stable space, you can take advantage of the option to put the horse in the public auction when he is 10, but in most cases he will earn you a lot more if you just keep him in your barn, because he will probably still be gaining points in every show he he enter which makes the daily payout larger.

As the horse ages, the lifetime value of the horse goes down. That is because the game assume that the horse will die when he turns 18. From 17 and until he dies, the life time value will always be calculated for one month, because thee game always assume that he will die the next month. But remember that in reality, there is just 20-25% chance of him dying.

Here are some examples with horses with the same PT and consistancy.

This 10 year old horse, with a PT of 13.5 and 718 points, which give a daily payout of 77 hbs could be auctioned today, for a life time payout of 17402 hbs. A nice amount of money.


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But I keep as many horses as possible, so fast forward until she is 17 year old:


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This horse, also with 13.5 PT score continued to gain points, and have now a total points of 3136, which gives a daily payout of 336 hbs. That is a lot more profit during the 7 months then I would have gained if I sold her as a 10 year old.
She was lucky, and leveled off near the top at her level, which means that in every show she gets more and more points. The game calculates the life time value as if she is going to die on the next rollover, but there is a higher probability that she will survive, and continue to accumulate more points.



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This one also have a PT of 13.5,but leveled out further down at her competition level. But she still gains points every time she shows, and give a nice contribution to my bank account.


If you look at the first horse I posted, the 10 year old, you will also see why foundations created with a lot of points, especially those with exceptional showing abilities, are so valueable. There are yearlings created with more points, than she have gained in 10 months.

In the long run she will probably be the most profitable, since she will go further in competitions than a foundation will, but in short term (the first 10 months) the foundation will be more profitable. That is why the advice is to have a variety of show horses. Some will pay you big money later in life, other will earn you a good, steady income over a longer time.
The higher PT-horses will run through the lower classes, and never stay long enough at one level to accumulate a lot of points, until they level out in the high classes, and suddenly gets a lot of points in a very short time.