HGG Community Forums

In my opinion:
Even breeding,
Advantages
Looks good, sells for better prices.
Disadvantages
More work.
Bootstrap or Uneven Breeding,
Advantages
Higher quality mares faster. Best use of pasture.
Disadvantages
Less valuable to sell.

Basically, even breeding, if done by generation AND paper level, will produce a better ratio of intact foals. Whereas bootstrapping produces a lot of show ponies, which is typically its purpose anyway. With bootstraping, if a horse has a high PT score (usually 12+) they can sell for more. Especially if they are intact. This is because the higher PT's typically make better show horses and can train longer, potentially earning more points. Points=money. I personally sell my 12-12.9 PT colts for 15k typically, and they sell well. Even breeding is an aesthetic thing almost. It looks pleasing but it is also used to progress certain lines, and as i said in
the first sentence, for more intact foals. I have 2 bootstrap pastures that i use to breed show ponies, but other than that, i breed even by paper and generation. When i started out 3.5ish years ago, i bred anything and everything and had no idea what generations were or what i was doing. (I'm amazed i made it this far lol).

But the biggest takeaway from this is, breed however YOU want to! It's your account, your horses! When i started, i bred for pretty colors! Now i still breed for pretty colors but also quality and generation. There is absolutely no wrong way to play this game at all. Hope this helps a bit :)

It’s easier to figure out what sort of quality your horse is if it has an even pedigree. A horse whose pedigree has ancestors who’s paper levels increase through the generations will most likely be higher quality than one who’s ancestors papers are stagnant or don’t progress as quickly even if they have the same paper level themselves.

What about a higher papered mare from an outside line? Would that count as uneven breeding if it's not from your own stock? Or do they consider the paper level itself to be the breeding level no matter the stock?

If you open the family tab and view pedigree link to compare

This mare is 8th generation evenly bred (inbred because I don’t have a lot of choices in the higher generations and don’t I bother tracking parentage just generations) but still each vertical column is even all the way to the end on the right.



JLg 7175060


If you look at the extended pedigree of this horse you can see right away that he is not evenly bred. The ends of his lineage (always to the right) looks like a heart rate monitor. His longest generation count could be 19 generations but if you only count to the last full generation he would be a 3rd generation.


Z 6546542

There’s no right or wrong way to breed as long as you aren’t cheating lol

I personally breed for colour (Grullo) with even generations and an advancing paper levels through the generations with no more than 3 generations per paper in an effort to continue advancing the quality of my stock.

Others prefer to bootstrap and breed the highest stud they can to a bunch of foundation mares then continue to breed the resulting fillies back to their father. This advances the papers faster than if you were breeding evenly by generations

Just throwing another opinion in, but you’ve already gotten good advice.

I *only* breed even pedigrees so I won’t purchase anything uneven, unless it’s altered for showing. Similarly, I don’t sell to/share my stallions with players who intend to breed unevenly either. Some of it is aesthetics, but also to track quality and progress.

Selling horses is not the way to make money in this game, at least not long-term and ultimately we can all breed how we want. I do know many other players like me who will only breed/buy even pedigreed horses, so breeding evenly may provide a bigger market too for those of us seeking quality and color.

Lately there has been an influx of people breeding unevenly and although it’s not wrong or breaking any rules, it makes me hesitant to share my horses because I hold them to very high standards and expect others to as well. Ultimately you can breed for color, quality, or both.. and to varying degrees of strictness (for me, every horse must pass SBA on top of having an even pedigree).

While I'm bragging up my line, I don't want to forget to thank you guys for all the help. Without all the information, this gorgeous line wouldn't have even started.

Your Chinchilla line is beautiful! Congrats on them :)