HGG Community Forums

Here on the BlackWyld things are slowly evolving.
I still breed for shiny black based horses, the bigger the better.
I am still more of a sentimental breeder with my main lines so my herd is just moseying along as I let each beloved stud live out his entire lifetime with many lovely ladies before replacing him. Since some of my main lines have reached the natural breeding ceiling I have splurged and boosted some of my newer boys.
I still don’t really bother with double boosting unless I am working on bringing up quality in a special breeding project fast. I just can’t keep up with some of you guys that have cornered the double boosting market, so to speak. I am happy just plodding along as I am for now with my horses averaging around 13 and 14 PT.
My interest for my ice project is sort of petering out as I am now getting some nice quality mares to muddle in with my main lines.
I am now just starting to slowly play with introducing DFP 1&2, KP2, Sunshine, Snowflake, and nd1 into my boots.
I have also taken interest in (become obsessed with) a couple of legacy horses, particularly a mare called Tagamon thanks to This Thread created by @HunterUnderSaddleGirl, and also Skip Jack for no particular reason I can explain. LOL!
I now am running 5 pastures for my bootstraps. Three 100 acre pastures for my best quality boots and my watercolour/ice/fantasy projects, a 60 acre pasture for my new DFP project, and a 30 acre pasture for my Tagamon project.

I have just started sorting my mares against a three tier benchmark system and assign them the following labels: A, B, C, or X.
A mares are right at the top of the natural breeding ceiling.
B mares are a step down (approximately 5%) from the natural breeding ceiling.
C mares are a step down (approximately 5%) from the B mares and are only retained if they carry optimal genetics from projects that are still lacking in higher quality mares.
X mares test inferior to C mares but are being retained because they hold genetics or lineages that I am trying to incorporate into my lines.

Here is my current stud lineup (In approximate order of breeding quality):

The Main Boys:


BS BW Dickey Bird BIP
13.70 PT – 5% Boost – Perfectly Consistent
My darling Dickey Bird continues to fill my pastures with amazing foals. He was the stud I wasn’t looking for but could not pass up when he showed up as BIP and a grandson of the wonderful Dixon. That he harkens back to Skip Jack as well makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.


BS BW Avon
13.40 PT – 5% Boost – Perfectly Consistent
I had been looking for the perfect boy to replace Aman as my new Into the West line stud and kept falling up short until I found an older mare with the perfect lineage for the line languishing in a barn. I cloned her and boosted that clone and here he is! I can’t wait to get this cutie into pasture! I am sad that his PT ended up lower than the horse he was cloned from.


BS BW Littoral Nirvana
13.60 PT – 5% Boost – Perfectly Consistent
Nirvana will be doing his part to keep the legacy of one of my Enlightened Mind line going strong in my boots.


BS BW Tagamons Doubtless
13.20 PT – 5% Boost – Perfectly Consistent
I cannot begin to express how excited I am for this amazing boy!
I have mentioned that I had become a bit obsessed with a mare named Tagamon. HUSG was incredibly kind enough to entrust me with a few of Tagamon’s eggs and this incredible boy is the double boosted (aka a boosted clone) product of one of those eggs paired with a straw from @pestilenttempest’s phenomenal stud, OneFinalDoubt. He is at least one or two steps above the natural breeding ceiling. I did not expect to ever get a Tagamon offspring of this high quality, even with boosting. I cannot wait to try him out this season and cement Tagamon’s legacy in my herd for many seasons to come.


BS BW PFR Darth Dunkle
13.80 PT – 1% Boost – Perfectly Consistent
This is dear Dunkle’s last season and I am sad that I still have not found one of his offspring that will be a suitable replacement for my impromptu “Drunk Jedi” line.


BS BW PFR Balladeer
13.50 PT – Perfectly Consistent
I don’t know if I intend to replace him but have loved the Mr. Meteoric Milestone genetics that he has sprinkled throughout my herd.

The Fantasy Boys:


BS BW Rouges Iced Aurora
13.10 PT – 5% Boost – Perfectly Consistent


BS BW Sexy Heart
13.00 PT – 5% Boost – Perfectly Consistent


BS BW RogueSpaceGossip
12.60 PT – 5% Boost – Perfectly Consistent
The newest addition to my fantasy ice project.

The DFP1 Boys:

Trying these two out this season. Still have a loooong way to go.

BS BW DFP1 8396110 STS

BS BW DFP1 8396122 STS

I just started bootstrapping a herd last game year. Got a lovely stallion from the very kind HiddenCreek:

https://hj2.huntandjump.com/horse.php?horseid=8223975

I've been accumulating mares, either from rank specials or from people selling warmblood mares, and I'm planning to just breed until i have 29 red or above mares, then spay the yellow mares for show. Then I'll continue breeding for higher papered mares and once i get another *Star stallion I'll switch him out for Trendy.

I'm doing this herd along with breeding a light and a heavy program that are color based, so it's a slow process, but it's fun so far!

@pestilenttempest That's a solid show bonus! What sort of maintenance do you have to run to keep it going? How many new foals?

I've been cutting my boot lines down the last couple seasons, slowly phasing out all the Era 0s in favor of my Era 3 line. (If anyone is interested in any of my Era 0 breeders, feel free to pm me.) This season I've cut back to just one stud, my best era 3 boy, and 50 mares that are mostly era 3s.

These are the boys getting their chances with my ladies next game year:


Straitjacket KHA42 l

Coltaine FIN43 b

Otto LEO47

Quintessence MEA41 M

Rhovanion MEA43

Pax KHA43
And if I like what they do, this one will join them when he's all grown up:

Soren LEO45

I am now in my second season of using mainly non-boosted (breeding cap level) studs and I find I'm really enjoying being able to use SBA to automatically identify all the foals of the same quality as the parents.

That said, there has been a very definite drop in the PT scores the foals are getting - which was probably to expected considering I was using only double boosted sires before. I used to expect my mares to have an AFPT of 14.0+ to stay in the herd, while now a foal scoring 14.0 is fairly rare. It makes things complicated when culling for sure. Not nearly as significant as the drop in PT scorss, the percentage of keeper foals is a bit down too - which I suppose will help in that I have to sell/retire less adult mares to make room for new.

I now have another boy superior to my previous pasture stallions.... WHat's even better? He is a son of Faulkar and the DFP2 mare that I was excited about a few seasons ago! Now I have cleared out all dfp2 mares that do not meet my normal quality criteria which makes more room for higher quality mares and in turn better foals!
Where Is He KEEP

Question.

How do you know when you have hit the breeding cap? I breed bootstraps on bluegrass, and haven’t had any superior foals in over 7 months. All of my mares test aga to their dams, brothers, and best of pasture foals. They don’t test aga my two stallions, one is single boosted, and the other is a double boosted son of the first stallion. If I boost a foal once they test aga my single boosted stud. If I clone and boost again they test aga my second boy. Thoughts?

I’m always happy to sell colts that hit breeding cap for comparison testing on this server

Maybe ask an older bootstrapper in your sever?

I originally bred 2 double boosted together and found there was an absolute ceiling. I keep a few around to make sure I know where cap is every season. I only boost/double boost if they hit max cap/max pt so it’s pretty easy for me to keep track.

Also remember there’s always that 1% wiggle room that aga/superior can sit between. I don’t think it makes much of a difference in the end.

@pestilenttempest Thank you . I’ll go breed for one of those foals.


Edit. It appears I hit the breeding cap. Follow up question.

If I breed my cap horses together ie cap mares x cap stallions will their foals pass BA?
The aren’t passing right now, but I’ve been breeding them to stallions 5%, and 10% past the cap. So I feel it’s a no brainer why they aren’t passing.

I’ll get them sent out later tonight.

Anything boosted is “above the Cap” so their foals cannot pass sba as a foal can only be at the cap.

@lallyhop

7692231

here you go. He's at my benchmark for boosting, out of two double boosted parents.

Thx @LallyHop I’m really excited to see how he goes and I’m really sry for assuming lol I should know better than to assume my grandma would be disappointed in me for assuming lol

Just making a couple moves over here lol. I merry Christmased myself a premium subscription so I've now made my first boosted clones in both of my boot herds, and im chomping at the bit to see how they do!
I SBAd mares on every level, I had to cut down somehow lol. Didn't hit my boot mares quite so hard, but still ran it on my lower PT mares and cut alot of them out of the breeding herd.
I was thrilled to see how all my boot boys did on the LBs this season! They're holding their own, I couldn't be more proud.