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I am still newish but this is what I do with my bootstrap.. I now have 60 all gold mares in pasture with at least 11.90 PT and majority are in 12s with foal crop coming out at high 12s, low 13s. I just put my 2nd crop of fillies by my top herdsire in pasture and rotated the last of the blue mares out.

Get the highest star stud you can find and afford!! I don’t care about color personally but make sure my boys don’t have any frame or risky white/kit genes and can be safely crossed to a wide variety of colors/patterns.

Mares don’t matter as much but it certainly helps with foal quality if they are papered blue and gold. Foundation, yellow, and reds will do as well but you will reach your goals faster if you have a good base of quality mares. I SCOURED the public sales and auctions and built a core herd of golds/blues and filled in the rest with yellows and reds.

Cross said stud and said mares and BA or SBA only the colts. Send any geldings to auction if you are low on space. Keep the fillies and let them grow up. Any filly that papers better than their dam and have a higher PT gets rotated into pasture as soon as they are of age and I rotate lower papered and lower PT mares out and either sell them or chuck them in a barn depending on age. I am also automatically culling at 11.70 PT or below at this point. Any filly culls, I usually keep and put in barn so they can start accumulating points but the geldings, I usually toss in auction if I need space.

Keep putting the fillies back to their sire and you will see your foals’ quality starting to climb rapidly. Keep any of those fillies who test superior or have better papers/PT than their dams and rotate them in as they come of age. I SBA all my colts but have started getting 2-3 that pass from my slightly lower star boy. Ultimately I will start SBA all my foal crops and keeping only those who pass but it will be a while yet as my lead sire is a very high star/PT and everything by him will flunk out at this point. I am hoping in 2 more months, I will start having fillies that pass SBA then I will start looking for a superior son to him to replace him.

Keep only the best of the best. I don’t bother comparison testing my BS herd as my fillies are obviously better than their dams with higher PTs but when it gets to the point that PT scores and quality are about the same across the board, I’ll start comp testing and eliminating those who don’t pass muster.

I have really enjoyed the wide expression of colors and weights I am getting in my herd but am slowly shifting them to mid weight cobs purely because that is what my boy is and breeding like to like begets like :) Bootstrapping is basically free for all.. whatever floats your boat!

I hope this is helpful and not overly winded!

Personally I never cull my show horses by PT, I keep them all. I also keep anything I’m not going to breed and speld them, and add them to my show herd. This year I had 5 extra colts that were superior to sire, and tested as good as my benchmarks. Instead of selling them they were gelded, and put in a barn. The same goes for fillies. That has been what has helped me the most with my daily show bonus.

Also Inconsistent PT doesn’t mean they will be bad show horses. This mare is my 15th highest pointed horse with 2,190 points currently. I would have missed out on a great show horse if I’d culled her because of her inconsistentsy.

Zz2252117 LL M

If you don't mind having small guys DinaChill (my alt) has some lovely studs that are pretty high she would be willing to sell you. I have some larger guys and lots of mares. I am probably going to move away from bootstrapping and leave it to DinaChill at some point. Once again this season I did not breed all my mares as I have way too many!

Wow thank you everyone! @TheBlueMoors this is perfect!! Tha I you so much. @JustaSaddletramp @Dinascar and @NowandForever I appreciate any help u guys can give me, I'd u have any horses u don't need I'll pay well for them

@Apollo - I'm having space issues, so I can offer you some horses too. I'll pop some up in my chat for you!

@NowandForever, my bootstrap herd isn't specific for size or bone or anything like my even draft lines so anything would be perfectly fine. I do love satin and pearl, and have some closed genes that I own as well, thinks like wrong warp, and watercolor. Thank you so much @GeneverGinger I appreciate it!! And @Dinascar I will have to go through the auction and bid on some, thank u