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BlackWyld · Jun 23, 2019 11:51 PM

So I am trying to knuckle down on this account and focus as much on the BBA as possible.

To those who have not heard it a million times before, the BBA (Black Brindle Army) is an idea I came up with a while back. Basically it is to focus on breeding lines where all the original foundations must be black brindle based. (So black, silver black, grullo, blue roan, classic champagne, etc.)
It has been a fun project and I have spent a lot of time and moola creating blinged out studs for my BBA lines and I have received so much help from all the wonderful people here collecting an army of black brindle mares to pair them with.
I am absolutely in love with this project and I cannot wait to see where it goes.
But with 15 beautiful studs and over 300 amazing mares split into about 5 sub lines it is a big project.

I am planning on selling or auctioning off as much of my non-BBA stock as possible, (with the major exception being my bootstraps, black livers and shrooms as they are completely seperate from the BBA) but I do have some non-BBA horses that am not ready to consider parting with yet.
These mostly consist of horses with sentimental or special qualities. Like horses resulting from special straws or thoughtful gifts and a few horses descended from special studs like Dance Between Two Oceans.

I love collecting black based RS and have an extensive collection of over 200 that are so much fun to play with.
Some of these non brindle RS I have spent a fair amount of time and money on that produce some of the best second gen babies out of my whole herd when paired with my BBA.
These include a yet to be bred ExPerf pearl snowflake stud (Nimphelos, so heartbroken about him. My worst GMT decisionto date.) and some nexus Storm Warning, Vault of Stars, and Catch a Blue Moon ladies.

I am not sure what to exactly do with them or if/how I can factor them into my lines.
I would love thoughts and suggestions.

Should I allow myself to make special exceptions for horses that come from a pairing where one foundie is non black brindle or should I maybe create a sub-line for such "dilutes" and play with them until they all age out?
Should I just give up on the idea of a BBA that has to have 100% black brindle foundies?

What would you do?

I am really thinking I need to get my tattoos sorted so I can differentiate.

P.S. Keep an eye out for most of my non BBA Chinchilla and snowflake stock to hit the market at some point.

BlackWyld · Jun 23, 2019 11:52 PM

Gawd!
The more I talk it out the more it looks like I am not going to manage to pare down much at all. :-S

RoseFlute · Jun 24, 2019 12:04 AM

Overthinking happens really fast when you have 50 directions to go and you try to go everywhere at once.
So I think you could put aside the sentimental horses for now and focus on culling everyone else. Once you're done making easy decisions you'll be more honed on your joy sparker and harder decisions will be more possible. :P
Also, they're sentimental. Keep them if you want, it's your game. :D
And now I'm curious, what about Nimphelos was a bad decision? Who's he?

HTRanch · Jun 24, 2019 12:49 AM

Oh, if you are getting rid of chinchillas, hit me up! Your chinchilla line is HEAVENLY!

I agree with RoseFlute. If I were you, this is how I would do it:

If you have the space, clear out two big ol' barns. Label one "Maybe" and the other "Cull." If you don't have the space, come up with prefixes that you can search easily.

Go to the search function. Deselect "brindle" and add in whatever other parameters you need to come up with a rough list of horses you are considering culling. Go through the list. If the horse is immediately cull-able, throw it in the Cull barn, or add the prefix. If you aren't sure, throw it in the Maybe barn. If you love the horse, keep it!

Sell, snip, or auction your Cull group horses and give yourself a break from going through your herd. When you're ready, re-attack your Maybe horses by going through and deciding what to keep and what to let go. Like RoseFlute said, your game is your game, and there is nothing wrong with keeping something sentimental to you, even if that horse is a pasture potato for the rest of their pixel life! I hope this helps.

BlackWyld · Jun 24, 2019 12:50 AM

@RoseFlute

This is Nimphelos

BW RS Nimphelos SNF

He happened on a whim when I decided all my First Snow mares should (logically) be het for snowflake. He was a smokey creme filly at that time.
I had been wanting a new SNF stud since, Pyroclastic my original boy wasn't making me happy, he was one of my first GMT projects and I made a few newbie mistakes that left me dissatisfied with the results I was getting with him and left me disenchanted with the snowflake gene.
I wanted a new ExPerf stud and one that would hurt a bit less as he varnished out. As a smokey creme, Nimphelos was a perfect option since he was already almost white and would still throw fun and good quality babies when mixed with my experf/expro appy pasture.
So I spent time making him gorgeous which took a bit as I waited for the right genes to pop up in the sales.
By the time he was almost finished I had realized that I should be trying to stick to brindle studs only. I made a second snowflake stud out of a Bring Back the Sun boy and then the TAoLMP was released and I was like, "Darn!".
If I had just "Held my horses" I would have not needed to put all that time and effort into a stud that does not fit with my BBA.
I have considered auctioning him but can't bear to. I will enjoy him as much as I can and try to keep to only black brindles in the future.

RoseFlute · Jun 24, 2019 12:57 AM

Oh man, that's a lot of extra everything! :O sorry he didn't work out. And yeah, he's hard to place. I might auction him? It's pretty much impossible to recoup losses at this point but he could be passed on to do some enthusiastic good.

HTRanch · Jun 24, 2019 12:59 AM

You could make him available for straws or live cover each season? You could keep him, but he would also get use that way.

BlackWyld · Jun 24, 2019 1:06 AM

@HTRanch

Thank you!

I plan to cull almost all of my original chinchilla line from my SPW stud Netflix and Chill (who has resided with Lally for some time now).
If I can unload them as an entire package (or close to) I would love to do that. Has anyone ever auctioned an entire line before?

I have 2 large barns for sorting culls for the auction house and 2 "miscellaneous" barns so once I clean some of the normal breeding season culls out I will take your advice and do that.

I have at least 150 pasture mares that need to go and who knows how many in my barns.
I am working on culling all my non RS foundies except for a pasture of expro appies, for my snowflake line, and unique experfs that hang in pasture with half my black RS collection.
All non unique experfs or expros with decent points are living out the rest of their days as showing broodies as I do a lit of lab breeding with my BBA chins and always need to keep a few extra uteruses handy. LOL

I currently have myself overloaded enough that I am not giving my second and third gens the attention they deserve and it is sad because, when I have been breeding them they have been giving me awesome results.
My shroom line jas been horribly neglected and with my foundy shroom stud aging out in a couple of seasons, I need to get on that.

RoseFlute · Jun 24, 2019 1:11 AM

Hmmmmmwell how big is your Chinchilla line? I would definitely take extraneous mares. I would also bid on an entire line if it weren't huge. :D

BlackWyld · Jun 24, 2019 1:13 AM

@RoseFlute @HTRanch
I will definitely make him available. I will probably keep all my boys open at this point.
I don't want to spend the time or money trying to create a brindle version of him so will make use of him until he ages out and just try to make better, less impulsive, decisions in the future. (Something I am horrible at! LOL!) :P

My snowflake girls are almost all expro appies anyway and will probably stay that way into the forseeable future. I don't have many appy or snowflake brindle mares and probably never will since getting a hold of red papered appy black brindle mares would be an expensive endeavour.

BlackWyld · Jun 24, 2019 1:20 AM

@RoseFlute
Including the het chins I currently have around 100 non BBA intacts spanning from 1st to 3rd gen.

A few of those I will be keeping as they originate from special foundies and a BBA pairing.

RoseFlute · Jun 24, 2019 1:21 AM

12...pages...of just intact horses with Chinchilla?
Welp. That's a big job.
So I'd say once you start on that whole thing you put together a post showcasing the most awesome examples and then let the rest into one barn to auction as a package. Probably not more than 100 horses altogether. You could make mini packages of the rest of the awesome ones, say by generation, but you'll feel stall fatigue eventually. You might be able to mix some het chinchillas into other lines and just be pleasantly surprised when you get a random Hom, but you won't have the anxiety of trying to get another whole line into order every year.

RoseFlute · Jun 24, 2019 1:24 AM

Oh, then definitely a package of like, 20. :P

BlackWyld · Jun 24, 2019 1:26 AM

@RoseFlute

Hehehehe! Have I mentioned that I am a bit chinchilla obsessed? =))
I SBA all my guys too. #:-S

About 5 of those pages are non BBA related and most of those will be culled outright.

BlackWyld · Jun 24, 2019 1:33 AM

The main non BBA ones I will be keeping are the descendants of these ladies... for obvious reasons....

BW Silver is the New Blk

FLUSHRS Galactic Thunder

FLUSH BW RS Radar System

FLUSH VoS Chin Nx

RoseFlute · Jun 24, 2019 2:35 AM

:D
I usually don't do drafts because I really love riding horses, but I'll be interested when you sell off. :P ;)

Dinascar · Jun 24, 2019 10:37 AM

I think we will all be interested if you sell any of your horses. :X
I understand where you are coming from. I did a massive cull for anything that wasn't hom sooty (or sooty plus) or had any A or A+ genes as I breed browns generally (mainly with DP). It got rid of loads of horses and meant I could mix my fantasy lines in with my regular lines. Great I thought...
But I still have loads of mares to breed! (last count 1780, most of which are not in pastures.)
I should get rid of Cream really but then it looks so good on chocolate palaminos (and with mushroom) and looks fab with wrong warp...
Chestnut isn't brown either is it? But then I have loads of lovely livers and let's face it mushroom looks lovely on livers...
I also get side-tracked really easily... too many pretty horses, lots of new genes to play with ... lol!

I have just learnt to not give myself a hard time if I don't breed everything. Pastures always get bred (but that takes one click!).
I also try not to spend too much real money on just one stud. GMTing in the lab is fine but they only get one or two special things that way if I decide I am not using him I am not so bothered.
Everything is always showing (if not breeding) anyway so I get the show bonus, and everyday I can play with something new.
Take life a bit easier on yourself. :)
PS. we all love your horses!

NowandForever · Jun 24, 2019 11:05 PM

I'd love to take some Chinchillas too! I also need to do a major cull/sale for my Blue mares and high PT BS colts. I currently have about 400 mares that are pretty much just public broods/show mares but I also have a bunch of 15 year+ girls so in the next few months I'll probably lose a bunch.

DejaRea · Jun 25, 2019 12:20 AM

I'd love access to your chinchilla overflow, on Seaswell, but still have a fairly small budget. I love finding your stuff at prices I can afford.

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