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FollysFantasies · May 26, 2019 10:02 PM

I've been playing for a bit over a year. I'm definitely a sufferer of the "oooh shiny!" syndrome. I have what I think is a mid-size stable - roughly 6,000 horses.
I am, however, really bad at this culling thing. And under the new system, I should probably try to get better at it.

This is kind of a long read, but I'm going to detail my culling routine here so that others can get ideas or whatever.
What I'm hoping with this post is to start (yet another) discussion of culling practices, particularly how you are changing things with the new Lifetime Payout auction system.
I used to throw every single inconsistent foal into the auction, but now I'm wondering if I should be keeping them until they turn 10. For me, that means *more* barns, not less. At least for right now.

This has been my routine:
1) Run Strict Breeding Advice (SBA) and Performance Inspection on all foals.
2) Cull any and all foals rated "inconsistent" to the auction.
3) Cull any and all foals under 9.90 PT score to the auction.
4) Run Genetic Testing and Breeding Inspection on all SBA fails (spelds), and relocate them to show barns.
4) Cull the remaining (intact) foals for color - anything that didn't get a fantasy gene from either sire or dam gets altered and relocated to the show barns (my main line is a wild hodgepodge of fantasy genes).
5) Run Breeding Inspection on remaining foals.
6) Cull any and all foals papering lower than desired (Ex: must be B/Red for 2nd generation foals), alter them, and relocate to show barns.
7) The remaining handful of intact foals get moved to broodmare/stud barns until they age up. Once they age up, my adult mares live out their lives in the pasture.

ChrystalBlues · May 26, 2019 10:18 PM

I think I'm going to borrow your culling practice on my main account on Bluegrass. I have the same 'oh, pretty' problem :D

Lallyhop · May 26, 2019 10:51 PM

The reason I've been keeping inconsistents until they get a chance to prove themselves: half of them do better than consistents, while half do worse. If you sort by best showing, you usually see the consistents in the middle with the inconsistents split into roughly equal halves on either side. "Inconsistent" doesn't mean bad showing, it means coin flip as to bad or great, while consistent is in between. (And on that note I even keep lower PTs - as even though they level off a couple years faster, they are still entirely capable of leveling off in a good spot and thus earning points for the rest of their lives).

If you cull all your leveled off horses, though, with the new system, it should provide you quite a few extra stalls! The only ones I've been keeping (and I'm cleaning out a few at a time as not to wipe the auction system in one go) are ones that will still be valuable to my daily bonus despite leveling off and that I hope will outlive their projected lifespan of 17. That means I've been keeping any that have over 800 points, or that have leveled off in the top of their class (and thus will earn more points). Other than that, they're usually not worth keeping for daily when you can get the payoff right here and now and put it straight into IVs or pointed foals.

BellaVoce · May 26, 2019 11:46 PM

My entire herd is v small (less than 500 horses total) so my culling has kind of been developing as I go, and gradually have more latitude to be pickier with the foals as time goes on.

With my color bootstrapping herd, I take the highest papers (A/blue+) and cull any below that. I tend to be choosy after that cull, and will speld any horses below 10, to add to my show herd.

For my ExPerf line (all foundations are ExPerf herd helpers, even breeding only) all foals have to pass SBA, paper A/blue by gen2, and have PT above 10 to stay. As I move into gen3, I will likely cull any that pass SBA but don’t paper gold/star. However, I’m not sure how likely it is I’ll be able to do that, so it’s yet to be seen. My goal for that is an even bred star/gold line with a 13.5+ PT.

FollysFantasies · May 27, 2019 1:56 AM

BellaVoce, for a small stable that's pretty awesome :)
I started with primarily Yellow papered mares, so B/Red is acceptable for my Gen 2s and 3s. Beyond gen 3, I just don't know - I only have about three of them so can't see where I'm trending.
I did just turn over my entire foundation mare herd (all 200 of them) for new stock with no w20, rabicano, tobiano or other risky genes. As much as I adore the w2/frame combo, I also have some KP in my herd. So I had to cut out most of my white patterns.

BellaVoce · May 27, 2019 2:55 AM

@towdolly thank you :) I spent a few game years kind of bopping around with shiny pony syndrome, and then got down to business to build a solid stable for future me lol

ObsidianKitsune · May 27, 2019 5:49 AM

As LallyHop said, you could add culling your old show horses to that list! What I did was sort by altered, age = 10, and then you can sort by either earnings that year or points that year. The top earning horses will be at the front. The bottom earning horses are the most likely to be placing at the bottom of their class, and thus not winning much. Same for points, basically, although I feel like (not 100% sure lol) that it gives me a better list as to where everyone is placing. I leave horses that aren't leveled off, and go to about 16 years old.

Bandit1119 · May 27, 2019 11:00 AM

I’ve been here a long while and actually rarely cull (or when I go on a culling spree it only means geld/spay not get rid of) but with the new system I’m thinking I may go back to my old culling practices of actually auctioning off horses.

I never sell a foal. Inconsistent/ consistent, high/ low pt scores tell you nothing (for the most part) of how well that individual horse will be like in a show pen. Only time will tell you how well it will be.

Currently my practice is run bulk testing (less likely to cherry pick pretty horses if everyone is being tested at once and equally from a page you can’t see them from)

SBA, PT and gene testing

Open the search page, sort by consistency and intacts, jump to the last page and alter any inconsistent foals.

Change sort to not show any horses name starting with J (my prefix for breeding horses both start with J so this eliminates all horses I’ve already deemed a part of my breeding herd) and horse colour not like Grullo and on the pattern page must have 1 N (so my homo axiom or Nexus foals don’t get caught on the list) geld/spay everything that pops up on the search.

Run bulk testing breeding inspection

Open the search page and only searching mares, again sort to not show any horses name starting with J start opening pages and add their prefixes (my prefix tells me gender and generation) and adding any special gene indicators.

Then going back to the search page I change to stallions only and then I open the sires page in a new tab (not the foals page) and go to the family tab and click the link to search his foals. I alter any that papered lower than their brother and comparison test what’s left any superior to sires get it added to their notes and the prefix added. As good as or lower gets snipped. Colts that have sires with fantasy genes must also inherit that gene to stay intact (although I don’t mind if they had inherited it from their dam and missed the sires. As long as they have that fantasy gene)

I continue down the search list until it’s all cleared.

Once done I go through all my barns, altered horses get sent to the show barns and breeding horses go into their generations barn and I do a quick look down the breeding barn page at the range of paper levels and keep the top 2 papers intact (except for a few generations I’ve got a majority of the higher level then I only keep that one) and call it a day.

It looks like a lot but when I’m going through I can get through all my horses in a few horse and usually go through a few thousand in that time (hj1 has about 900 foals each season and because I have limited data and no computer I usually have a few seasons to go through when I do.)

Bandit1119 · May 27, 2019 11:01 AM

I kept everything because having more horses means more points which means my horses are paying for new barns and everything else I want to purchase.

A long time ago before the show bonuses came out and this show system came out to enter shows was super expensive and if the horse wasn’t placing top half of the class it wasn’t breaking even. To make money you had to be much more hands on with your herd and track what they were scoring compared to the average score of that show level and how many points the horse would train up each week. Then I would regularly go through and cull horses out of my barn.

Inconsistent horses were harder to predict where they would score that show (but if they managed to tie for a place their inconsistency meant that they would usually beat the consistent horse and place above it) so they’d be culled as yearlings.

Then I opened a search of my altered horses (you also had to have 3 foals before a mare could be papered so I tended to alter most of my mares after they had their 3 foals as I had more mares to test so the majority of my 7+ Year old horses were altered.) and using the age sorting I searched older than 17 (when I was doing it regularly I knew which age to put this first number at to give me 1 page of results so it would be lower or higher than 17.) I’d open everything and check to see they were still placing at the top half of their class and not loosing me money.

Then I would go through each age group (now I’d search by total points but then it was profits or earnings I think) and cull the bottom 1/3rd or so (when I was regularly culling I noticed there’d usually be a small gap somewhere around there that I’d cull to. Sometimes it was half that age bracket other times it was only 1-2 horses.

I’d go through each age and only look at horses that were levelled off and only cull those not placing well. I’d usually stop when I got to my 9-10 year olds since I’d have to start weeding through too many horses that were still training.

HTRanch · May 27, 2019 11:59 AM

For reference, I have 2500 horses.

For even lines, my culling practices are based mainly on paper requirements. Last real life year I switched my herd over to all B/Red foundations, so I require most of my 2gens to paper A or Blue (I have one C-papered foundie stud left and his foals are still allowed to paper B/Red).

Gen 1: B/Red
Gen 2: A/Blue
Gen 3: A/Blue
Gen 4: A/Blue (I have one *Gold mare at this gen)
Gen 5: Studs must paper *Star. I will only accept Blue mares with at least 3 genes I breed for.
Gen 6-above: *Star/*Gold

I used to not be so strict with my paper requirements but as I get to the higher gens there is a noticeable decrease in breeding quality from horses with uneven or lower papered lines (i.e. if their granddam was Red at gen 3).

For bootstraps, I breed them, flood my foals into the primary barn, and us breeding advice on all the colts. Then I select all and run breeding inspection, performance testing, and genetic testing. Fillies have to paper the same as or higher than their dam to stay, as well as meet my height and bone requirements for the line. When I cull my bootstrap mares, I decide what factor I'm culling for (color, height, and/or bone), open the mares in a search by inputting my ID and bootstrap tattoo, and sort by paper level. Lower papered mares get culled first.

I keep all my foals every season. Honestly, you never know how they will do until they level off. Some of my best showers are inconsistent.

Right now I'm keeping all of my older show horses too, and I haven't culled any using the new system yet. I have the room in my barns to be able to do that, though. I think I'll be using the new culling system mainly as a way to make room when my barns are stuffed. Otherwise I will still be hanging on to all of my show horses to get my long-term payout.

FollysFantasies · May 28, 2019 2:43 AM

Thanks everyone for your comments! I now have a much better idea of how some of the search functions work, and that may be the most important thing I learned from you all. Your advice will definitely help (as will those searches) as I weed out my older show horses. I was going through them one by one, which is as you know an extremely tedious process.

Looper · May 28, 2019 4:05 AM

I hadn't thought about getting Foundations papered. Budgeting hbs carefully right now so it's also hard to afford it.

My G2 just got papered and I'm still working out strategy for them. Everyone has to pass BA and be consistent and even. G2 stallions have to pass SBA. Survivors get gene tested and papered. Everyone else gets spelded unless they have special genes and I'm holding for show now. I've stopped auctioning to see what everyone does.

HTRanch · May 28, 2019 3:01 PM

@looper, I don't paper my foundations either. You can tell what their paper level is by the herd helper they come from. Random creates and most of the color-based herd helpers will paper C/Yellow if they pass Breeding Advice. Perfect Foundations and Top-Notch Producers will always pass BA and paper a perfect C/Yellow (i.e. the highest quality C/Yellow paper). Exceptionally Perfect and Exceptional Producers always paper B/Red. Some RS paper C/Yellow, others paper B/Red, depending on what kind of RS it is. You can always use the search function to see what a particular RS papers as if you are unsure. That way you don't have to spend the money to paper foundations.

FollysFantasies · May 29, 2019 1:41 AM

I paper my foundies just because I cannot stand to have un-pushed buttons or blanks in their data columns.

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