HGG Community Forums

Either way would be acceptable in my opinion. The way I would decide is based on three things:
1. Do you have the finances to breed two tiers of your line?
2. Do you have the time and organization required to put the detail in that would be necessary to make that work?
3. The number of top tier versus second tier foals you've gotten (are just the top tier enough to carry on the line, and if you care about it, to maintain diverse genetics on their own).
I'm in a very similar situation with my own line and will be making a similar decision in the upcoming months. Good luck!

If your goals include breeding for quality - Cull them. Be strict. If you try keeping the lower quality horses, you'll end up with fewer foals passing sba each generation because you'll end up with very uneven breeding quality.

I speak from experience, I kept the red 2nd gens from my special B papered foundation boys but their foals and grandfoals continued to be subpar. Had to clear them all out.

However, if quality is more of a secondary goal or not really on your radar at all, then keep the ones that make you happy simply because they do. :) You don't have to breed for quality! Just, if you do, I say go all the way and be strict.

Certainly! But you will have more to cull to meet those requirements depending on how strict you are. Decide on some minimum standards for quality, such as no yellow or C papers past foundation level, and not lower papered than sire or dam maybe, and how strict you want to be on your preferred colours. If you want to breed for quality, as a minimum standard I'd say you'd want them to pass BA/SBA. It's really up to you how you want to breed! We all have different goals

I'm not sure on the genetics yet,so not sure how well I can do on color. I've unfortunately lost a foal to Lethal White already.

How do you tell if a gene is recessive on the genetic listing? I have had FF and Ff, which would be recessive? I've read through most of the color FAQ, but it doesn't show how each one looks on the listing. Unless I just haven't found it yet.

Ok, that makes more sense than me just reading it. Thank you for the clarification. Let's see if I get it right. If I wanted dominant fallen, the coat color would have to be red based, but also I'd have to have two copies of F. If I have Ff or fF it would be recessive and not visible. Correct?

Ok. At least I know what to look for now.

I breed for colour (Grullos with assorted patterns) and quality.

I’m not as strict individually because I just don’t have the time to go through each mare to check that the paper levels are improving each generation but I do go through each generation as a whole and only keep the top 2 paper levels in each and then once the top paper level holds the Majority I will go through and snip the lower paper so that generation must be only the higher paper moving forward (usually every 3-4 generations I have a single paper)

I breed evenly (the sire and dam both have the same # of horses listed on the family tab and each column is filled completely) it’s easier to track quality and breed similar horses together to produce intact horses.

When I cull I first select all the horses in the barn and run all SBA (BA if you only have it), performance testing and genetic testing. Then I open the barn search page and clear the gelding and spay boxes, sort by consistency and flipping to the last page snip any inconsistent horses.

Next I put Grullo in the horse colour box and select not like and go through and geld everything that pops up.

Then I switch back to the barn page and paper everything (usually saving a lot of money because it’s free to paper geldings and spayed mares)

Next I go through and add my gender and generation prefix to all the intact horses. The mares get sorted into their generations barns and I do a quick look down the paper level column and snip any that stand out as being lower than the required 2 highest paper levels.

The colts get compared to their sires snipping any as good as or worse. If a stud has colts with 2 different paper levels only the higher paper colts are kept. Then they too get their prefix and sorted to the barns.

A year ago I increased my foundation herd and have continued to add more studs and mares so I am starting to have larger numbers of horses that pass my requirements so I’ve started to geld any colts that are not EE DD as grullo horses are E? D? That way all their foals will have a better chance at grullo foals.

I’m debating starting to go through my second Gen mares with the same EE DD requirement but want to run some numbers to see if I’ll be culling too many.

So if I cull for coat color now, is it safe to wait to cull for quality, or should they be done together?

Ah, thank you. This is going to kill me. :-))

They're just so pretty when they have the right colors :D

They're just so pretty when they have the right colors

That is why I do the majority of my testing from the barn page before I even look at my foals. There’s no well this ones too pretty to test/alter even tho it is obviously lower quality/ doesn’t fit your goals.

Also I always tell myself there’s always next month to try that match again and get a better one

Yes, that's exactly what I did. Still going through what I've got left for consistency. Purchased a few good quality stallions, too. Mine were C's, now I've got B's and A's. Have a few blue fillies I bred from off-farm stallions, but have to wait till they age. Hopefully, I'll get this going in a few months.

@bravo25 I keep everything above pt9, including inconsistent horses. I geld/spay as much as I can, and keep only those that I want to breed. I think my breeding/show ratio was 1 intact pr 16 show horses at one point, before the game changed to 1 month seasons and I fell behind. But todays plan is to catch up again, before next season.

I think the quickest way to to that, would be to take your biggest empty barn, and fill it with horses from foundation rescue, regular rescue, foundations created with points, and everything else interesting on the market. Make sure to geld/spay every single one of them. Then show them every and watch the daily income grow.
That is what I did when I rebuilded my show string after 2 years of absence from the game :)