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@BlackWyld
Thank you again!
Bold Spice is always welcome, but no pressure here. I'm excited for his daughters to start breeding.

I finally have large groups of homebred stock coming up, so I've been giving away and selling much of the ones I scourged around the sales to start up with. I still have a large group of wonderful mares the community set me up to start up with. I'll always be casually on the lookout for any interesting additions but I think I have a bit of everything now.

He's a bit big for my purposes, but Aman's w8 has me drooling. That's one gene I'm still working on getting top quality, but one of my mares should eventually oblige.

This is my favorite of the 3 mares I kept so far this season.

5670885U

I'm really tempted to do a season with all my fantasy Gen 2s against my favorite star stud just to see what I can add to my bootstrap herd.

Got a 14.1PT show pony and so small :X

DC5674278

I had my first 14.20 PT foal this month. She's not as good as her dam (who is an outstanding mare bred by WildlandAcres) but I'm excited about her anyway. :)


PFR Eclipse Tutorial

Not much has changed in my breeding preferences here on the BlackWyld, I still like ‘em big and black with all the shinies, but things have definitely grown.
I am up to three 100 acre pastures now.
I still have my “Best of the Best” pasture, my old “Play” pasture now contains the overflow from my BotB pasture, and I have a third pasture that started as a 60 acre but is now bumped to a 100 acre that I use as a “Project” pasture which is currently being used to play with my overzealous Ice Project.

My bootstraps are kind of split into 3 groups now. My original top studs have since been surpassed by a few superior boys that I have either bred myself or was lucky enough to get from other players.
These new superior boys are, I suspect, right at or getting close to that natural breeding ability ceiling that there has been some theorizing about. (I may postulate on that more a bit later but the basic gist is that, unlike PT, there is a natural cap to breeding ability which can only be exceeded by boosting a horse.)

I am over the moon to have reached this point in my bootstrapping career and can’t wait to see what happens with these new studs so they now have the run of my BotB pasture ladies and my old (now 2nd best) boys have run of the secondary pasture until my next jump in quality happens.
My third group is project boys who are of various, often lower, quality as I have selected them for their specific desired genetics over their breeding ability.

I still try breed for a preference in breeding ability with PT being secondary. All colts in my main lines are still SBAed but project colts are often only BAed as they may test superior to their sires but inferior to their dams.
I am still too scared to BA or SBA my fillies but am slowly starting to play with breeding comparison against specific high quality benchmark mares and have been pleasantly surprised with the results.
I have recently added some high quality horses from players that I idolize and have been ecstatic to find that some of my own mare stock is testing as good as theirs. It thrills me!

I don’t keep any blue fillies at all anymore in my two main pastures. If I was choosing solely by PT my current cutoff would be 13.10, with my main pasture cutting off at around 13.30, but comparison testing has taught me not to judge a horse by their PT. Aaaand I am still sentimental about certain lineages. LOL
Even so, most mares are at least in the high 12s.

I finally broke the 14pt barrier in pasture this season with this boy who was sadly spelded:


BS BW 6695195

My current boys:
(I split them into their three groups in order of PT not necessarily breeding quality)

My Top Boys:


BS BW Draken Steel
I have gushed about @Wildland Acres and their amazing bootstrap lines before. They were kindly helping me find a lovely colt for my WyldWood account when I couldn’t help but peruse their lines and get lost in their wonderful herd. As I was stalking the family tabs of some of their spectacular studs I came across this boy and decided I wanted a fresh Wildland Acres influence here too and just had to have him. He has a strong influence in his pedigree from DarkStar’s studs Jack Knife and Skip Jack whom I had developed an interest in thanks to @Justa.
Boy oh boy does he not disappoint! I am vibrating with excitement to give this guy a try.
Star – 14.00pt - Perfectly Consistent
Not BAed as his sire is a very high boosted star.


BS BW PFR Darth Dunkle
@pfrsue hopefully knows how much I love her. Her kindness and generosity is boundless. This amazing boy came to be with me after a serendipitous conversation where I gushed to Sue about her herds and bemoaned that I had no roan influence in my bootstraps. True to Sue, she took a gander through her barns and it was like this guy was just waiting for me. I really think it was destiny.
He is amazing! Even though my other “Top” boys test AGA as him he the highest in breeding quality out of all of them. I adore him. He is my current favourite. He is the founder of my “Drunk Jedi” line :D
Star – 13.80pt - Perfectly Consistent
Not BAed as his sire is a very high boosted star.


BS BW Aman BiP
Oh! My beloved Aman! He was just an up and comer, my first boy to test superior to all the rest, and my newest benchmark in my original post. He carries an amazing legacy from some fantastic studs and has been doing me proud by really kicking the quality of my herd up a notch. With my new top boys rising to join him I see great things in the future.
Star – 13.80pt - Perfectly Consistent
Best in Pasture Year 78
STS - Valinor


BS BW Enlightened Shores
I was so so very excited to have an Enlightned Pride colt test STS and AGA my top boys! This boy carries on my Enlightened Mind legacy project and ensures that his influence will carry on in my lines.
Star – 13.60pt - Perfectly Consistent
STS - Enlightened Pride


BS BW PFR Balladeer
A recent surprise from @pfrsue that I am very excited about. I have been wanting to work on introducing W10 more into my BS herd and also have developed a love for Meteoric Milestone descendants as I worked on a bootstrap legacy project on my other account. Sue knew this and has been a huge help to my other account in finding MM descendants. She was sweet enough to gift Balladeer to me the other day. He fits in perfect here! He tested AGA all my top boys except Darth Dunkle.
Star – 13.50pt - Perfectly Consistent


My Secondary Boys (The old best of the best)


BS BW Rouge Aurora Sorbet
In my original post I was waiting with bated breath to get this guy into pasture and he has not disappointed. When you take the quality of @Justa ‘s Rouge lines and add extra shiny you just cannot go wrong. Slowly but surely he is adding all the rainbow shiny along with great quality.
Star – 13.0pt - Perfectly Consistent


BS BW Lunar Blitz SUP
Hom nexus and hom DP?! What is not to like?! This guy was worth the boost. He has been diligently adding all the sparkly to my lines with fairly consistent quality.
Star – 13.0pt - Perfectly Consistent


BS BW Enlightened Pride
Technically, now that he has given me a superior son, I should retire this guy but I am not sure if I am ready to just yet. He sires great quality, fancy foals and I am just so sentimental.
Star – 12.70pt – Consistent

So, you just reminded me All my best bootstrap mares have a week of pasture bonus, so it's time to drop in my studs. With the loss of my precious Mountain this last roll over, first up is Starshine Bayou. He came from Blackwyld and has been throwing beautiful babies since he got here.

U Starshine Bayou

Next up is Satin Cloud. Just one of many examples of my love for Lallyhop stock in my barns.

U Satin Cloud

Third up is Simon. Also aga my other gents though a little smaller. I have fun throwing tinies in my bootstrap herd, cause all the girls started as drafts. It's almost worth buying the 1001 tack pack. I'm thinking maybe as an anniversary gift to myself early next year. He came form Kismet's barn.

U Simon

Good luck! They are gorgeous!

I have been hitting a wall with not being able to get better quality, or even horses that get as high on the breeder boards as my old studs did, most of my mares don't show up on the breeder board either unless they are boosted now, so that method of culling doesn't work anymore. the rest of you guys are just getting too good for that! ;) Right now I am doing a cull to concentrate just the horses with the extra genes I want more of in my herd and let's see how things go from there. Let's see how things go, these are going to be my two studs for next season. Hopefully they will cross well with my core group of mares to get the color crosses I have always dreamed of getting in my bootstraps.

Tough in the WIldlands

Moelach the Terrible

Well I guess I'm late to the party here, but hi, I'm SweetGlow! I'm HTRanch's alt account and I've been around for about 2 years now.

I got into bootstrapping on this account because I needed some breeder's club awards to motivate me. After looking at all the boards I saw that the snowflake board had the least competition, so I decided to breed for those. I started out with two very low *star studs who had homozygous snowflake grandparents but who were not homozygous themselves. This was back when snowflake was still a hidden gene so I just crossed my fingers that they were carriers and got lucky! I started out with a hodgepodge bunch of foundation mares and lined mares whom I guessed to be het snowflake and just spent a lot of time going through each mare's foals and culling those that hadn't produced snowflakes yet every season. It took me quite a few months but I eventually got to the point where I had a consistent herd of homozygous snowflakes and I could begin to aim for quality without losing color.

Although I was consistently producing snowflakes, all my horses had boring base coat colors! Little did I know that a white-out snowflake mare I picked up in auction to use in her final season carried DP. That mare's daughter gave me Prince, a DP bay colt who made his mark on my herd.


Z SG6 dp Prince Blizz

Now I enjoy increasing numbers of dark beauties each season, including this incredible granddaughter of Prince!


uG LOU Phoenix Found

At some point I decided that I wanted to try aiming for a homozygous snowflake/nexus combination. @Cheers was very generous and allowed me to have Season of the Wolf for his last few seasons - I bred him to all my snowflake mares and crossed the resulting foals back to each other.


Xu Season of the Wolf

After a few generations, I now have my beautiful boy Takuskanskan. I was excited to finally get an intact nexus/snowflake colt, and so I added a 5% boost. In his very first season, Taku was the champion top producer for the fantasy breeder's club!


SG1 Takuscanscan

I should also add that SweetGlow is a very small account - I have 70 pasture slots and I don't rotate - so I only ever keep 70 adult mares at one time. My breeding expenses each year (not including comp testing) are about 150,000 total - so I end up with lots of extra cash for things like boost tokens. I've boosted quite a few of my studs along the way, so not all of my progress has been "natural", but now that I am at the top of the snowflake club every year, I'm getting bored and I'd rather see what my stock can do without help.

Most recently, I've been struggling to improve my PT scores - it seems like each month I produce a few 13.8 and 13.9 foals but never hit the 14.0 mark. However, my herd is VERY inbred just due to the nature of breeding for colors that are not common in many bootstrap herds! At the suggestion of @Justa and some other experienced Bootstrappers, I decided to try out crossing my mares to several outside studs.

I picked up Westbound from @BlackWyld. He is sired by Aman - a gorgeous boy who has already been mentioned in this thread! I was able to GMT him to be het snowflake, making it easier to maintain color in my herd while I tinker with the quality for a while.

SG2S Westbound

I also picked up Phoenician from @DreamyMeadows. Pho is seriously my favorite - you can't not love a pony this tiny and chubby! Pho is one shiny guy who will add some different colors and interest to the herd!

SG2 Phoenician

And @Justa hooked me up with Gossip, who goes back to @Xceptional's Heimdall line as well as my own herd! Since Gossip is already out crossed from my own stock, I'll likely use him to breed back to whatever foals I get from Pho and Wes.

BSx G Gossip Rogue Run

So here is my obsessive experimental plan to see if outcrossing will actually work:

For the past few seasons, I have been specifically collecting fillies from Pho, Wes, and my home bred boy Lou. These fillies must have consistent PTs and test at least AGA the current #10 mare in the snowflake breeder's club. By December I will have groups of 10 mature mares from each stud that will be bred back to Lou. I'll average the PTs for the foals from each group to see if there is any marked increase from outcrossing. Of course, different lines may outcross better together, so the results of this experiment will really only be relevant to my herd and the lines I've out crossed to, but it will be interesting nevertheless. If I remember, I'll try to leave an update on this thread in December to let you all know how it went!

Over the past few game years, I have trimmed my program significantly. I went from owning around 50 mares to only having 15 presently. It's a star-studded group of ladies though! I'll introduce my favorites:

City Lessons B Z
I recently added City Lessons to my herd (a huge thank you Wildland Acres). She is currently the top Bay/Brown Breeder's Club Mare, and is number two on the Era 0 leaderboard. I am SO excited to cross her with KS Indulgence next season!

KS Rambunctious Too
This girl tests "As Good As" City Lessons, and is superior to her dam. I suspect she'll cruise high onto the Satin and Black Breeder's Club leaderboards. I love that she's solid black and does not carry Tobiano.

KS Gilded Rose
This is definitely one of my favorite looking mares. She also tests "AGA" City Lessons and Superior to her dam.

KS Revlon
Revlon is the dam the second and third girls. She has tons of breeding awards to her credit.

I've adopted the system of testing each filly I breed against a strong "Benchmark Mare" and selling the ones who don't test at least "AGA'. It can be a little heartbreaking to sell ones that are especially pretty, but I want to keep the quality of my lines in an upward trend. The fillies I sell are still extremely good ladies, so keep an eye out for them on the sales page during the first few days of the breeding season!

The highest PT I have bred so far is 14.50. I am hoping to change that next season ;)

About my legacy project.
I decided that I really wanted to infuse my bootstrap bloodlines with a strong influence from Sty/S+/DP descendants of some of the more famous studs on HJ2 along with my personal sentimental favourites.
These include:
Dance Between Two Oceans
Mr. Meteoric Milestone
Apocalyptic Horseman
Freaky Dreamer
Khansuudyn
Daintree Oolong
Day of the Moon
State of Origin
Blackbird Song
BlueBerry
Etc.
(I am also slowly working these boys into my even lines as well.)

It all started on a whim with me bugging poor @Cheers for some higher papered State of Origin and Daintree stock because I love those studs and liked the idea of my bootstraps having pedigrees that went back to them. It then evolved into me deciding I wanted to add the bloodlines of a bunch of other studs too.
With the help of Cheers and some intensive breeding I now have some Daintree and Origins descendants that are starting to test AGA my original best guys.


BS BW DaintreeWestCount
I love this guy and the fact that he also carries Bourbon and Wildland genetics from his dam’s side. He has yet to produce me a superior son and is getting lapped by the boy below so I am not sure how much longer he will have a place in my pastures.
Star - 12.40 – Perfectly Consistent


BS BW DaintreeMoonShadow
This guy and his counterpart above have been working diligently at helping me increase the quality of my Daintree and State or Origin descendants. He has been producing slightly better quality foals than the boy above to the point where he gave me a Best in Pasture superior son last season who I am excited to tweak and introduce to my ladies.
Star - 11.90 – Perfectly Consistent

My other legacy boys are these handsome fellas:


PFR Masters AGA Dark Lord
Pfrsue has been at it again helping me in my endeavor to work more Mr. Meteoric Milestone into my stock. She has helped me with mares and eggs and straws and this gorgeous boy! I love that I am able to sneak some Confluence influence into my lines with this boy too!
Star - 11.70 – Consistent


Blueberry Song KKDeYqTn4
Another generous gift from Cheers. This guy came to live with me for his retirement and is helping me add the blood of BlackBird Song, Day of the Moon, and BlueBerry into my booties. Truly a gorgeous stud from great lines. He is evenly bred and at risk of aging out so if anyone wants straws please let me know!
Star - 11.60 – Consistent


BS WW DavkharDalainBujig
Name means "Double Ocean Dancer" in Mongolian.
This lovely boy is a grandson of Khansuudyn Suns and a great grandson of Dance Between Two Oceans. An unexpected and absolutely brilliant combo bred by @Kismet. Kismet was wonderful in setting me up with him and being patient with me. I still think I would like to clone and boost him again. He is a truly stunning stud who is bringing the legacy of both amazing stallions into my bootstrap lines.
Star - 11.40 – Perfectly Consistent

It's great to see that the bootstraps are going stronger than ever!
There has been some amazing horses, PTs and personal goals reached since BlackWyld first posted this thread.

In my own herd, I haven't seen a big shift in the top quality lately, but a very big increase in the number of horses that are top quality. I have been using comparison testing to determine who my 'elite' mares are, but I suspect that very soon I will have to start using it to also determine which fillies to keep at all.

Because my best colts and fillies have been equally good so far, I have also been able to use breeding advice to weed out the weaker mares. That will change soon, since it seems I'm very close to a ceiling in breeding ability and thus I finally got to boosting my first colt:

Fionavar BS139
His coloring is a combination of all the genes I like best which made him the perfect candidate to be the next big thing over here.

I'm seeing a lot of boosted horses taking over the leaderboards. I enjoy seeing some of mine pop up on there, but I'm not sure I'm quite ready to join the rat race! I'll be happy as long as I keep making progress while creating some awesome show ponies and retaining my favorite genes: KP, DP, tobiano and W8, with a few others mixed in for variety.

My original stud from Kintara was a tobiano KP, I managed to add a lot of W8 primarily via @TheBlueMoors letting me access her bloodlines and most of my DP blood comes from @WildlandAcres. And if you take out the @pfrsue lines, most of my herd would be gone.

I have been focusing primarily on breeding ability, but I am seeing the PT scores slowly creep up as a side effect. As I need to clamp down on the numbers more and more, I'll probably be paying more mind to AFPT than before.

I'm averaging around 300 bootstrap mares each season, and I still plan each of them's mating by hand. I try to let my studs cover their 50 mares each so I can make full use of the best. Occasionally I will replace one with a younger whose genes I like better, it's been a few months since I could do a quality replacement. I usually end up changing most of my top colts to fillies, and with this and some other tweaks I spend a fair bit on GMTing each month.

I’ve never really understood bootstrapping until recently, and it’s still a little hard to train myself to not SBA the foals :)) but I’m loving it so far! I don’t have to get rid of the beautiful foals that just couldn’t pass. I’ve decided to do bootstrapping based off your (BlackWyld) studs/herd! I love the watercolor hom Nx, and hom Nx onyx look, so I very recently started creating some. So far these are the only two I have. The filly is superior to the sire, but about AGA dam, but the colt is lesser than his sire by a whole letter. I’m hoping to get more straws/eggs soon to try and keep it going so I can bring these guys’ grades up!

BBAxWynter 6730616

BBA 6730410