HGG Community Forums

Has he been shown twice a week?

If you have the space, I'd recommend keeping everyone until they level out and you see where they end up showing. A 6 year old giving 18 hbs a day has probably 180 or so points? He's got several years of training and showing before he levels out. He might become quite valuable (both in terms of lifetime and daily payout and in terms of what he earns in every show) by the time he's 12 or 13.

I do remember when space was a limiting factor though. I tended to start with older, leveled off horses that weren't showing well (and thus aren't adding more points to their daily payout). There's no way to search or sort for "leveled off" horses, but at the end of every month, I would sort all my neutered horses by "Earnings This Year" (under Advanced Sort). I'd jump to the last page and start auctioning horses from there.

I personally would keep him. He has 7-8 more months to turn his show career around.

I usually wait to cull show horses until they are at least 10 years old, then go off of how many points they're earning midway through the month. If they've leveled off and aren't earning at least 20 points by the middle of the month, I send them to auction(if they're at least 10 years old). That way I'm clearing out the low scorers but still getting their lifetime payout.

Yes I also keep until 10 unless they are a really low pt score and just not earning points at all. The one you have probably won't peak for a couple months more

Thanks, SilverStar I’ll do that when I get my computer back. I’m not very coordinated on this tablet. Hopefully this week.

Why did you choose 14 points as the cutoff?

The horses show twice a week. Every month I buy all the exc Perf HH I can get. As I get more good point bootstraps I will probably be more fussy and keep only those I want to breed plus the higher pt bootstraps, get rid of the lower payout bootstraps depending on barn and pasture room. I want to breed even generations only for my breeding herd. I’m trying to get rid of some rank specials priced below Ammit’s price guide but they’re not selling. I’d like to sell them at least to recover testing costs which is why I don’t just auction. I think for now I’m going to use your 14 point cutoff and see how that goes. I’ve been culling at up to 200 points around age 7 and up, that seems to leave horses over 20 per day payout. I don’t know yet how that will affect my show herd though. What do you think about that strategy? Am I making sense?

You can look at their age and PT score on the barn page. If their age is a higher number than their PT score, they should be leveled off.

I don’t cull anything younger than age 10 period. If I’m that short on space or $$, I will cull up to 30 points or less earned that game year IF we are over halfway through the month, and they have leveled off. Anything younger than 10 and you are taking a hit on two counts, you don’t know if you just culled your potential best show horse, and you don’t get their lifetime payout.

Also I personally prefer show horses with a PT between 7-11.9, and 13.5+. I think too many people cull their potential best show horses. If Ammit ever makes a bulk buy option, I would have no issues buying all the “too low” PT show horses everyone sells for my show herd, and just breed a couple favorite horses every year.

Currently all the horses I hear you talking about culling, are horses I would buy for my own show string. At least anything under 10 years old.

High PT horses often take a lot longer to train up and earn decent money. So he's certainly not a dud, simply too early to tell. Once he's 13yo and levelled off, only then can you really see if he's worth keeping, before then it's just a gamble. The higher PT horses can pay out really big if they level off in the right place, but for now he'd be going through the levels too quickly to stay and earn much money

1. I don’t understand why the daily payout jumps up a lot after a cull, but it’s a pretty regular occurrence for me every time I cull.

2. It doesn’t show.

I do most of my culling/sorting in each barn’s individually search page. It makes life a lot easier.

3. I prefer to do towards the end of the month. But sometimes it’s not possible so I’ll do anything after the 15th. The closer to the beginning of the month the less chances they’ve had to show that month, even your best horse can have a bad day in the show ring, so culling after they’ve had a solid four shows that month is the best bet. Otherwise you run the risk of culling your best horses by accident.

My guess would be that culling your lesser show horses isn't what made the difference. Your good show horses continuing to show and gain points has boosted your daily payout. I don't know how much time passed between the removal of your culled horses and the jump in your daily payout, but for a jump like that, I'm guessing it was enough time for your barns to show at least once. If the horses you culled were low enough earners, they wouldn't have caused much of a drop in payout, so the increase from your good earners was more noticeable. At least, that's my guess. I could be way off base. But it makes sense in my head.