HGG Community Forums

So there are 2 commonly used "methods" to breed horses in this game.

Even breeding, which is foundations to each other, the children of foundations (second generation) to each other, their children (third generation) to each other, and so on and so forth. The aim is for an "even" looking pedigree.

Bootstrapping tosses all of that out the window and aims for the quickest increase in breeding quality as it possibly can, more or less. The best way to do this is to take a Star stud, and breed him to a bunch of mares. Usually foundation, as that is easiest to get. Then you breed those foals back to their father, the star stud. You BA the colts, making them into show ponies, and only use breeding inspection on the mares. Because the stud tends to be a much higher quality than the foals produced, they will all be altered if you're not careful.

A good way to fulfill this for your recipient is to look for Star stallions and Gold mares, preferably ones that are high quality. Whether or not they're even bred will depend on their breeders record keeping or how determined you are to go back through pages and pages of pedigree to check if they all end at the same point. If the horses haven't been comparison tested (compared to a known benchmark of that paper level) then checking to see how many stars and golds are behind it is a good way to fudge a guess on whether it is a high quality one or not.

If your recipient is interested in certain genes, a good thing to do would be a horse search of stallions with those genes, sorted by paper level. Find some that are really good, papered Star, and close to what you think your giftee wants, and contact the owner asking if they have any like that horse that you could potentially buy for the GE. When I was asking for straws from studs the previous giving season, I ended up with something like 3-5 of the ones I picked out being offered to be bought instead. With bootstrap especially, there are a lot of colts left over that may never be used by the breeder, so it always pays to ask!