HGG Community Forums

Often the advice is to keep everything you get. What you might do is to buy horses in the auction that already have a good amount of points so your barns are working for you asap. PT level does make a difference, although it more functions to tell you how far the foal will get instead how best it is now. I think. Another variable is the consistency of the foal, because if theyre inconsistent they'll score differently from show to show and that's fewer points than if they scored at the top every time. But horses that score at the tops of their mediocre levels are more valuable than a horse that shows at the bottom of a higher level. So you could just keep everything. Hope this helps! :D

1. Get More Barn Space
Try and keep as many horses as possible, the more you have the higher your daily show bonus will be.

It would be good to try to save hb's and to pay someone to buy you a barn with real money, or use real money to expand your stall space. It's pretty essential. I believe Ammit refers to one's show team as "the bread and butter" of the game so thinning really isn't the best plan.

2. Pastures
Now, SPELDS (spayed and gelded horses) do train for longer so they should be better show horses than a mare or stallion. I would keep mares in a pasture, the annoying thing is that you have to manually move them back to a barn to enter shows twice a week. However this does "fix" some of the lack of stall space. Mares will keep there pasture bonus's as long as the leave the pasture and reenter the pasture in the same day. Like if you just swapped them out to enter a show.

3. PT
All PT is, is that it tells you how long the horse will gain from the weekly training sessions. PT *can* be a good indicator of a show horse. There have many *correlations* with data amongst players that 10.0-10.4 is a good range to have and then anything 12.5+. So weeding out anything not in those ranges is *could* be a good idea.

4. Paper Level
Paper level only determines if the horse is a good breeder. It has no impact on the horses showing ability, so it can be ignored on SPELDS.

5.Stallions
Honestly I wouldn't advise breeding to stallions that aren't ***Star and having your own stallion of that quality takes a lot of time and funding (a good goal to work towards). Seriously. I know I have a bunch of them, and some of y'all know that, but for the sake of space? Nope. Let someone else keep the stallions, and you can use the stallions of other players for breeding. Keeping a stallion intact isn't worth it. Breed to the best, or the best you can find. Otherwise? geld. Breeding to a subpar stallion isn't a better idea than getting training benefits from gelding him.

6. Mares
Mares are interesting. Some people like to shove them all in barns and make them work "double duty" as they get points from showing and also use them for breeding. Some people like to shove them in a pasture for easier bulk breeding. Heres my take on it. I breed for 2 reasons, the first being to create 15.0-15.5 horses that are *** papered OR I have *decent* mares in my pastures to breed bulk show horses. My pasture mares will never create *** horses for my breeding programs. They literally just cheaply and in bulk create new horses. I do typically keep *Rank Specials* as "surrogates". But they're labeled as the Rank Special they are or as RECIP. That way I know not to breed them otherwise.

7. Age of Show Horses
Age of show horses absolutely matters. It takes them until there 10-12 (In my opinion) to really see if they're going to be good showers, but honestly I keep most of them anyway. The horses making you money on your daily bonus ARE seasoned show horses, aka the older horses. Problem is once they turn 17+ you risk losing them in the roll over. Some people opt to sell at 17 to get any amount of money they can from them (if they're over 10 and haven't been sold the game will buy them for the horses show payouts), instead of taking the risk that they'll make it through the roll over and continue to be part of the show bonus. I would probably sell SPELDS 17+ and keep mares through 19 IF I was using them for breeding.

8. Points
Some say that they "cull" or sell anything that doesn't have *insert any amount of total show points here* be age 10. As low total points would indicate "a bad shower", I think probably more just an unlucky one. They can't all have perfect show records. But the lower point producers or the lower income producers can also be culled. Age 10 is usually the deciding factor as if they haven't been sold the game will buy them for their show payout.

9. Upgrades
If possible I would do the upgrade, either pay someone hbs to add it to your account or you do it yourself. The ability to buy eggs and or harvest them from your own mares, allows you to keep fewer or even no breeder mares. Then you don't have a bunch of brood mares "hogging" show stalls when they only produce one foal a year.

10. Pointed Foundations
Pointed Foundations are worth it to a point. I think they're best used when the PT on the horse falls into that 10.0-10.4 range (based on the correlations of statistics gathered by some players). This again doesn't mean a 6.0PT CANT or WONT be a good shower. But looks like for the most part. Pointed Foundations do really well in my opinion on the herd helpers for Exceptional Show Horse, Exceptionally Perfect, or Great Show Horses. I probably wouldn't breed foundations unless you're going for a certain era, new color line or just want to build from the ground up yourself. Foundations absolutely have their place and can be lovely additions to a barn. I personally like collecting the Rank Specials as surrogate mares.

@Poppidoll thanks for adding that, because you're definitely right. :)

I just want to add, I change my goal for my play style about once a year. You know to keep things fresh. I still haven't tried all the things I want to try. It's okay to learn what you like by learning to play the game.