HGG Community Forums

And I'm always scooping up horses in the auction with a PT of 13 or higher. I find they level off in very profitable spots.

In some ways I think it’s just about building up quantity too. I haven’t had the time/interest to really look at good vs. bad show horses in my herd, but I find I keep gettIng a jump in my daily payouts after I show my big show barns. If you keep adding new foals with a decent PT (i.e. over 10), they’ll start contributing in a couple months and the growth is pretty natural.

Even if your horses level off in a bad spot so that they aren’t earning many new points, they still contribute to your daily payout with their existing points.

Of course if you really want to grow more quickly, then it’s probably worth it to pay more attention to the details and I have also seen a lot of posts confirming that 2G foals tend to level off in the profitable 7W class.

I just wanted to say that in my experience, it’s hard to grow your show herd “wrong”. Keep adding new barns and you’ll get there.

When I first started this account I did bootstrap breeding, on my forest account I did generation breeding. On both accounts I kept every speld baby I got. My forest account quickly outpaced this account and actually had double to triple the daily payout this account had. I started them at the same time. This account only caught up to the other one when I started generation breeding starting with foundations.

When you are a smaller barn you need quality over quantity. With the ability to send a horse to auction at 10, you are going to save everything until then. Most 2g horses have a PT of 10, they level off at around 11. If they are still earning points you keep them if not you sell them. A 14 PT horse won’t quit training until they are 15, they can be getting really lousy point scores while they train. They might level off in an amazing spot and gain way more points in the end or they might not. Most newer players don’t have 15 months to wait on a possibly amazing show horse.

We are still too early in the month for me to show you my best earners right now. Because I look at points earned this year to figure out my best horse.

However here is a list of my show horses over 15, look at the first couple of pages and see what is the most common PT scores, and what scores you don’t see until a couple pages in.

https://www.huntandjump.com/adv_search.php?runsearch=go&ageg=15&f_adv=points_py&stallion=0&mare=0&owner=235600&56=0&57=0&58=0&59=0&60=0&61=0&offset=50

High PT scores (typically associated with Start and Gold papers) train for longer, which gives them the change to get into high level show settings (Level 8/Grand Prix classes). But since only horses with high PTs have the potential to make it up that high, statistically, 50% will place in the bottom of their classes. So they can be hit or miss.

Lower PT horses level off their training earlier, but they can be solid little money makers at their lower levels, and they provide income while your higher PT horses are still training. Because there's a much bigger field of lower-level horses (including high PT horses that are still training), I find they are less likely to get stuck in that bottom half as consistently.

As for why to keep them, yes, you can buy a high pt horse at auction for 2500 hbs, and that is a great way to add to your show herd. Highly recommend. But if you bred your 2gs in a pasture and keep them, they cost you 500. (Papering is free for neutered horses, I didn't find PT scores helpful for low-level stock when I was starting out, especially if you are breeding from perfect or exceptionally perfect/producing foundations.). If you genetic test so you can enter breeders clubs, that's 600 hbs. So that's 4-5 show horses for the cost of one purchased from auction.

Now, if space is an issue, you may want to auction off some of your worst performers and cull your herd. I don't have space issues right now, so I pretty much keep everyone. But when I was living on a stall-to-stall basis not that long ago, I would cull my barns at the end of each month - searching for 10 year old horses, owned by me, not in a pasture, ranked by earnings this year, jump to the end, and drop those that are leveled off *and* not adding a significant number of points per show. Because you've jumped to the last page, these should be your horses are in coming in last and not adding any points. They will get better as you go to lower-numbered pages. You can sell those ones back for their lifetime payout* and not lose out on very much. Pre-lifetime payout, I'd do a little more math about show entry fees vs show prize fees and expected points gained per month, but it's not really worth the math over the of the lifetime payout.

*You can decide where you want your cut off to be. Mine use to be they'd have to be adding at least 50 points a year after leveling off (which would add about 5hb to your daily payout each month, for context).