HGG Community Forums

Well, I can say from much trial and error that the reason your foals were gelded/spayed was because you were breeding higher level stallions (it looks like with B and A papers) to mares that were mostly Yellow or Red. Most foundations (unless exceptional) are Yellow/C, exceptional foundations are Red/B, and everything else you have to do a Breeding Inspection.

The Breeding Advice test only allows foals that tested "about as good as" or "superior" to both parents to remain intact. Therefore, if you want to be able to use Breeding Advice, your best bet is indeed to start off with either Yellow papered foundation mares and breed them to C papered foundation stallions or breed Red papered foundation mares to B papered foundation stallions. Otherwise, your foals have a low chance of measuring up to their sire.

Some people do create "bootstrap" lines to get foals with rapidly better PT scores by breeding an A or Star papered stallion to lower-papered mares and then not using Breeding Advice or Strict Breeding Advice, but instead breeding the stallion back to all the fillies, keeping those fillies, and breeding to the new fillies. The key is not to do any testing except comparison testing, since most foals will not pass.

I would also agree with you that it is a good idea to stay below the cut-off so you can keep creating new horses with points until you really know how you want to play the game and your goals. Ideally you also have a couple of show barns available too. The extra income from making new creates with points is really helpful, and building up your show bonus without those creates can be a bit of a struggle initially. I find the struggle gets better once you're making around 30,000 hbs per day, since then it gets far easier to buy new barns and keep expanding.

thanks Ammit, I'm convinced