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I am now considered a "big barn" I think ; I ve about 20k horses in total . I have (8) 1k show barns, and various numbers of barns for each generation and each line, my mares are permantly pastured and replaced as they age out. I make just over 1mil HB a day. My snowflakes are almost always het 2g and then hom after 3g unless there is a pretty little thing I cant spay / geld . The nice thing now is if its aga and perfect other wise you can always max it / boost it to make it better. All of my horses MUST pass BA and test SUP to parent, as well as fit into the color line i am breeding them from. I keep all my 2g showhorses, as well as all my Hom Snowflakes. I also keep anything 7g and up for show horses. 3g - 6g I tend to auction as they have a hard time competing in the leaderboards and I would be over run by foals ( I breed about 4k a month ) if I kept them all.

If a horse passed SBA and I really want to breed it, I keep it intact. The game is first of all about having fun and a good time, so that should be the main goal. You can always cull later when you have several horses with the genetics and looks that get you excited.

If you have the GMTs and you really love the foal, but it annoys you that it is AGA, you can consider maxing it out?

I am a really focused player who is heavy breeding for the best show horses possible, but I also keep a few not so good breeders, just because I love the way they look, and it is super fun to breed them

All must pass SBA in my stable, but I will keep some AGA fillies (never colts). Lately I’ll max them out if super special. My show bonus got knocked down to about 430k last rollover so I’ve been hurting for hb’s quite a bit this season: I’m hoping to start seeing a positive increase soon now that I’m keeping nearly everything to replenish my barns. I have 26 pages of yearlings alone this season.

ETA: I only breed evenly though so we have different goals. If color is more important and what you’re aiming for, do what makes you happy! For me personally, if a horse is uneven I don’t care if it passes SBA, I won’t buy it period unless it is altered. We all play how we want so do what makes the game most fun for YOU!

Same @Maribo, makes the snipping less emotional :D

Hmmmm. I think if you have 200 colts one can afford to sba without looking, but when you have 20... it can be catastrophic

Am adding the following ( sorry ) ; I only breed evenly with the exception of my bootstrap herd; these were a god send in the beginning to jump start some money. @Sharayah Stables gave me my first Bootstrap stud and his descentants are still on the Champange boards almost 3 real life years later. It was much easier for me personnaly to cull when the foal pictures did not auto generate becuase then I couldnt say OHH he is cute or She is Adorbs! I also do culls based on a couple of odd things ; First obviously is BA / SBA ; if 2g they get tossed ina show barn, 3-6g auction barn, 7g+ Show barn, second is genetics ; I have 2 main lines : BlueRoan Snowflakes and Liver ; if they arent one of those 2 colors they get culled snipped and auctioned. 3rd ; papers ; 2g - 4g must be Blue / A ; 5g+ must be Gold / Star. 4th comp testing they Must comp SUP to same sex parent. if not snipped and auctioned.The past few seasons I ve been getting a higher percentage of Colts ( even at 2g ) passing so I hang on to them intact in case I need more mares for that generation. I have 581 show foals from this season ( including the Futurity foals ) , 396 fillies (including foundation creates) and 243 stud colts that I kept from this seasons breedings of close to 4k. I did go on a bit of a create spree to replace a fairly large number of Foundation Mares aging out over the next couple of seasons, this will also give me time to "fix" or finagle some of them a little bit lol. Hope this helps, and as ever my mail box is always open !

Remember, you don't need a colt every year. I am gelding things left and right because I breed too many. If I already have a superior 3rd gen fantasy colt, the rest get gelded - occasionally I sell one. If its from a line I really want, gmtd to a filly.

As you get bigger and breed more, you will start culling more strictly simply to keep your numbers down. I'm at the point of being too big to handle my breeding herd and I'm culling drastically. Too many lines to enjoy has left me feeling rushed.

I definitely don't think I'm a big barn, so I'm not sure if this is helpful, but I am also feeling the burn of getting too big. I don't like to spend real money in the game and finding people to buy new pastures for me has been difficult lately and has limited my breeding numbers. But I also have gotten very busy this last year, so keeping my breeding stock smaller is more manageable for me. Since I'm still a relatively new player, the rules I've set up for myself are ever evolving.

Right now, I only allow myself to keep around 250 mares in each generation, and I only keep the top 30-35 best yearlings in each. (I gmt stallions to mares). With my limited pasture space, I'm constantly having to revaluate who stays a part of my breeding program. I've always bred for both PT and papers, so when I run out of pasture space, I start getting rid horses with the lower PT scores if everyone is testing the same otherwise. I have been happy with the idea that my small herd is only going to get more and more impressive this way. Though I'm going to have to start making myself new rules as I get deeper and deeper into my generations as I go!

I, personally, breed for a more random batch of genes. I breed all black based horses with TE1, aiming for all to have blue or green eyes, but on top of that, I enjoy working with all sorts of things and have recently gotten into KP, DFP1&2, Ice19, and plt. Because of that, I also take horses that have randomly ended up with less exciting gene combos into consideration for culling as well. And having such an assortment of genes I'm interested in keeps choosing stallions easy for me. I usually chose one stallion to carry on each specific gene combo I'm aiming for, and with so many genes and so little pasture space, I'm never tempted to keep more stallions than the bare minimum.

I only have a daily payout of $250k, but with such a small breeding herd, looking forward I think I'm going to use my excess hbs to buy more show barns till I max out. I eventually want to spend all that extra show money GMTing a larger amount of my breeding horses to be as spectacular as possible. :x

I think mine counts as a fairly large stable so maybe you will find my approach interesting. I have nearly 8,000 horses, about half of which are breeding stock. My current daily payout is just shy of 350k. I don't care about even generation breeding, but I do aim for even paper level breeding. I have a set amount of barn and pasture space allocated to a number of different projects. I keep notes on the goals of each of my projects and the target number of mares and stallions for my breeding stock.

For example, I have Era 13 and Era 14 projects going. Each one has a 210 slot barn that contains 200 mares and 10 stallions. They each also have a 60 slot pasture containing 60 mares. I keep a record (in a notepad file) of my goals for each project and rules for determining keeper foals. For these era project barns, I keep all females that pass SBA and they will replace the oldest and lowest papered mares in the project barns/pastures. For stallions, I keep ones that have a higher paper level or test superior to sire.

In my main barns (1000 slot) I keep mares and stallions organized by papers and breed them accordingly. These ones I'm just trying to progress to the highest quality I can. They are all SBA tested and I have various other criteria like avoiding grey genes in stallions.

I recently started some new projects where I am breeding just for specific genes. My "keeper" rules for these barns are to keep all females (even Failed papered ones and others that wouldn't pass SBA) and a handful of stallions. I am just trying to fill their 210 barns right now, and I will worry about breeding for better quality later.

As you can see from other responses here, there are many approaches to managing your stable. I think the only approach that matters is the one that works best for you. You can also try different approaches by having different barns/pastures dedicated to different goals. I recommend writing down your goals for your stable and planning accordingly.

You asked about "sustainability." If you mean sustaining growth, then yes having more horses gives you more daily payout which means more $$$ to invest back into more barn space for more horses. It is pretty easy to keep growing your stable, although the cost of IV barns keeps going up as you get more space. If you mean sustainable as in how many horses can YOU handle? That is a question you have to ask yourself and plan accordingly. If you don't want to ever deal with breeding thousands of horses each month, then don't! Even my smaller 210 era project barns are doing fine on the leader boards. You don't need 1000's of horses to be on there.

well, I have gelded some 2 year old studs and turned a couple of them into fillies. My goodness, it's HARD to decide.