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Ammit · Jan 24, 2023 4:31 AM

This June for the seventeenth anniversary of HAJ we will be hosting our very first stallion futurity.

HAJ tends towards walled gardens. Often people don't do a lot of sharing of lines. There is nothing wrong with this inherently but it is always nice to see flashy stallion ads and the culture that immerges around particularly well-promoted stallions. To help encourage members to promote and share their stallions I have created this brand-new LB category.

Here are the rules:
To qualify for the futurity a stallion must have at least 10 offspring bred and owned by players other than the owner of the stallion.
Those offspring must be the same era as the stallion, and must be five years of age.
The total number of points won by the top ten offspring of each qualified stallion count towards his futurity standings.
The number shown next to the stallion name is the sum of the points earned this year by his top 10 offspring.
Stallions do not need to be entered in era clubs to qualify for the futurity.

Note that stallions and their offspring do not need to be in the era clubs which means futurities are open to fantasy horses.

Because of how the futurities work you promote your stallion several months in advance. In this first case, you would promote in February in hopes that the five-year-olds in June rack up the most points for your era.

Prizes for futurities are significant:
Champion: 10 GMTs to the stallion owner, and 1 GMT to the owner of each of his 10 best foals.
Reserve Champion: 8 GMTs, and 1 GMT to the owner of each of his 10 best foals
Third Place: 8 GMTs
Fourth Place: 6 GMTs
Fifth Place: 4 GMTs
Ribbons to 10th place.

The first set of futurity awards go out June 28th. Then every month thereafter.

_____

An important note. If you know you are the kind of person who is going to want to obsessively quality-check the descendants of your stud, and get flustered if the lines are not to your standards please do not stand your stallions to the public. It just stresses out everyone involved. It is not fair to yourself, the people who use your stud, or me who has to deal with the fallout. Know yourself and know what you are signing up for if you stand your stallion. Stallion rules are not permitted for any stud listed on the public boards or the forums. Lower-quality offspring of a stallion does not negatively impact him on the leaderboard, or for the futurities. Just be chill with it, or know that if you can't you will be happier keeping to your own garden.

A lowest PT LB category is also coming soon if you wish to start up a low PT project in earnest now that is no longer financially punished.

Reminder: please do not post stallion ads before the 28th

Ammit · Jan 24, 2023 4:36 AM

I also want to point out that the competition is "points at 5 years old". It is not uncommon for high PT horses not to have a lot of points by this age. Don't be discouraged from promoting your stallions that are not top producers on the LB. There is frankly no way to know which stallion's offspring will land at lucky levels and nab the most points. I am guessing these will prove to be rewarding for stallions at all ability levels.

lecobb8 · Jan 24, 2023 4:41 AM

Oh this looks like so much fun! I don't know that I have the time to create stallion ads, but young Horseland me is squealing in excitement!

Brandybrookes · Jan 24, 2023 4:47 AM

Oh thank you Ammit! Ive been excitedly waiting for this to roll out. :D i cant wait to see everyones stallion ads and the upcoming foals.

Herzeloyde · Jan 24, 2023 5:16 AM

Wow! This is amazing! This is something I want to breed for! Can't wait to get my new (partially old) foundation line up

Herzeloyde · Jan 24, 2023 5:23 AM

You can already see the leaderboards
https://www.huntandjump.com/clubs.php?sf=y

Ammit · Jan 24, 2023 5:26 AM

You can see how very few stallions qualify! Not a whole lot of sharing of genetics going on.

Herzeloyde · Jan 24, 2023 5:30 AM

I see! I loved to share my stallions the last time I was active, so this is right up my alley! Do archived stallions count? I have some straws from them still, and I have created a lot of Era 6-8 foundation embryos that I can consider sell

Ammit · Jan 24, 2023 5:38 AM

Nope, you have to own the stud for it to count.

Herzeloyde · Jan 24, 2023 5:51 AM

Then I will prepare to chase this after the summer ;))

The foals need to be bred by other players also, so no university horses will count?

Ammit · Jan 24, 2023 6:00 AM

They probably do right now but I would very much consider that a bug.

ETA: Not anymore they won't! :D

Fiddler · Jan 24, 2023 6:19 AM

What's a university horse?

annismyrph · Jan 24, 2023 6:45 AM

@Fiddler a clone is a HaJ Uni Horse :)

Herzeloyde · Jan 24, 2023 6:48 AM

A horse that was cloned or merged (made a chimera inn the lab). They have HaJ University as breeder. If you search for horses bred by player ID 11 you will find all of them

Wingedeagle · Jan 24, 2023 11:23 AM

Do straws count or does it have to be live cover?

Ammit · Jan 24, 2023 11:26 AM

Does not matter how the foal is produced.

boredaf · Jan 24, 2023 12:05 PM

Thanks so much for making this open to fantasy horses! I can't wait to give it a try.

Herzeloyde · Jan 24, 2023 12:31 PM

I particularly love that this is something everyone can have fun with. Even new players can have a fair chance with this

Humboldt · Jan 24, 2023 12:42 PM

Glad to see this available for fantasy studs too. I don't do a lot of standing my studs to public but I do use a lot of outaide straws.

HorseAngel · Jan 24, 2023 2:03 PM

This is so exciting!

Starstruck2 · Jan 24, 2023 2:09 PM

I love this!

biological · Jan 24, 2023 5:47 PM

I'm so freaking excited for this, I love it so much!

One quick clarification question: will foals bred/owned by accounts associated with the owner of the stud count towards this?

Ammit · Jan 24, 2023 9:41 PM

At the moment they do but I am actively discouraging it as it goes against the spirit of the contest and I will DQ people who try to keep their lines in-house by doing that. I don't want to have to filter out foals of associated accounts but I will if it is a problem.

Taridan · Jan 25, 2023 3:15 AM

Are there any tips or tricks to make sure foals are the same era as their sire?

Ammit · Jan 25, 2023 3:28 AM

Chose mares of the same era or of a more recent era. The foals will all be the same as the stud then.

WhiteValley · Jan 25, 2023 6:09 AM

Will stallion ads need to be flashy? I don't know how to do that so I'm hoping a simple 'normal' picture and some text will entice people into using some of my best boys.

This sounds like great fun and I can't wait to give it a try. :)

biological · Jan 25, 2023 7:17 AM

Thanks for clarifying about the associated accounts, @Ammit! That's exactly what I was getting at! :D

CheshireFarms · Jan 25, 2023 8:41 AM

@Ammit This program sounds really cool, and I'm going to hate the slow burn up to it LOL. I saw a previous comment about how there wasn't that much sharing of genetics in the game. That might not be for lack of trying however.

Stallions that are able to be publicly listed, get removed at roll over. So we have to go in one at a time and list them again each month.

And if anyone is like me with closed genes, we have to list them privately in chat rooms. Unless we make a post in the form, and keep it active on the first page, no one is going to see them. Specially since they can't even search for them.

MackZ · Jan 25, 2023 8:46 AM

@CheshireFarms makes a good point about stallion ads. When they're on the first page in the forum, they usually get some interest. But if they're on any other page, they don't seem to be noticed. The "Breeding Ads and Sales" forum section helps, but there tends to be more sales ads than stallion ads. Is there any way to maybe separate the two? Maybe have a forum section specifically for breeding ads?

Ammit · Jan 25, 2023 8:46 AM

CheshireFarms if they where not removed the board would be completely flooded and unable with junk horses listed for overpriced breedings. It would be so much harder for any stud to be seen.

You can advertise closed gene studs on the forum. Also, the point is to work together with other members. It is unreasonable to expect that you can just stand a stallion on a list and get on this new lb. You will need to promote your stallion and plan to coordinate with other players as they also will have stallions they are trying to promote.

Ammit · Jan 25, 2023 8:48 AM

MackZ the forum already has different sections for breeding and regular horse sales.

CheshireFarms · Jan 25, 2023 9:13 AM

@Ammit could we do something to help make closed gene stallions more accessible? Or even horses more accessible.

For example, if I searched on the forum for "Dun Appaloosa Breeding Program" I don't get any results in the search. Even though that is the title of my Breeding Program post. Would there be a way to implement searchable Tags or something similar. If people could find our forum posts, we wouldn't have to bump them to make sure they are seen on the front page.

Ammit · Jan 25, 2023 9:20 AM

I have put out a mountain of stuff recently. I do not have the bandwidth to add even more. I think it is fair of me to ask people to actually try this out and see what works and what does not before we add more to my plate.

Ammit · Jan 25, 2023 10:41 AM

The reason why I am shutting down suggestions on how to make stallions more discoverable is simply that we don't have a stallion discoverability issue. People have more stallions than they know what to do with. The issue is not that they can not find studs to breed to it is that simply put they don't want to breed to other people's stallions. We could have the most perfect stallion-finding system imaginable and it would not solve the basic fact that there until now has been no reason to use studs from other players. The futurities are going to prove to be cooperative and any player who just expects other players to breed to their stud, just because, is not going to make it. Players will have to find creative ways to work with other members and to promote their stallions because simply putting the stallion up publicly is not going to cut it. Making stallions easier to find won't help anyone with this new leaderboard and it can't get players more interested in sharing lines.

Cavalynn · Jan 25, 2023 11:46 AM

At the moment is it not worth promoting older stallions for breeding that might die by the time prizes are awarded for this?

Ammit · Jan 25, 2023 11:47 AM

I would focus on younger stallions personally.

Fiddler · Jan 25, 2023 12:15 PM

While I can see @ammit's point ( you've done plenty lately!), I have been at the other side of the stallion debate.
Looking for (for example) a snowflake riding horse stallion at stud, I did endless searches and found horses belonging to inactive players, and finally found a stud whose owner responded to me, and the owner says " I don't do straws"
A catalog of Stallions someday would be nice. You could even make us work for it, a stallion can't be in the catalog unless he has foals that pass breeding advice, or earns a certain number of points.

I mostly stay away from licensed genes because they are harder to deal with .

aliciabruder11 · Jan 25, 2023 2:28 PM

looks like I’m gonna need to make more of an effort to do ads again. Haven’t done them the past few months or so due to time, but this may give me motivation to make them.

boredaf · Jan 25, 2023 3:50 PM

Sorry if this has been asked but if we replace a horse after a few season, say for one with better genes and would move the replaced horse to the showstring will we need to leave him unaltered to keep counting for futurity?

biological · Jan 25, 2023 4:20 PM

@Fiddler by any chance did you try posting "ISO straw" ads on the forum? It seems that those generally get a lot of responses and that avoids you having to try to comb through searches and figure out which players are active/willing to sell straws.

Ammit · Jan 25, 2023 8:41 PM

boredaf -At this time only stallions qualify. You would need to keep them intact until after you are done trying to get the awards from them.

AppleRunStables · Jan 25, 2023 9:22 PM

@Ammit maybe I can try to help a little? As you know, I have a contest going for stud ad designs right now, but I was thinking...
If people wanted to make ads for their boys and are having a hard time with making them visible, perhaps for the first couple of seasons, just to be helpful, I can maybe make a post with links to everyone's stud ad posts so there's a "library" of links to everyone's ad?
Fo example for the Year 128 stud ad contest everyone is posting the link to their ad on my contest post, so maybe something like that? So breeders can click on the one post and find the currently promoted boys for the year?
If that isn't what you're wanting I totally am cool with that, I was just letting my brain do its thing.

Ammit · Jan 25, 2023 9:28 PM

I am sure people would find that helpful and I think it is a great idea. However, I don't think it would have much impact on the futurities. Everyone wants other people to breed to their studs but seldom thinks about how rarely they themselves actually want to breed to other people's studs.

Fiddler · Jan 25, 2023 10:29 PM

Is it true that horses born this year don't count for the futurity?

Ammit · Jan 25, 2023 11:04 PM

There will be no futurity the year they turn 5. Foals born next year are the first year that count for a futurity.

annismyrph · Jan 26, 2023 4:42 AM

Do the foals have to be intact to count? And are fillies counted or just colts?

Ammit · Jan 26, 2023 7:05 AM

Nope, and I expect stallions with more altered foals will do better. Offspring can be any gender.

Tzano · Jan 26, 2023 8:05 AM

What would be the best age to not offer studs for the futurity? I have a 12 yr old who would be 17 when June comes. Would it be worth offering him up for stud?

Ammit · Jan 26, 2023 8:47 AM

As long as your stud is alive in June you are good. Each round of the futurity only lasts one game year.

SharayahStables · Jan 26, 2023 9:32 AM

Will this be for any era? I may share some of my studs more if fantasy/more recent eras are also included. Sorry if I missed an answer to this, I have a major case of baby brain and sleep deprivation!

I may make a new non-fantasy but GMT’d stud for this too!

annismyrph · Jan 26, 2023 9:39 AM

@Sharayah Stables ; from what i ve read and seen on the actual leaderboards ; there is 1 Futurity per era and each Era stands alone

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