How many foundations?

I'm trying to decide how many foundations to add to my herd

I'm basically starting from scratch with Lipizanners (Minus 6 non-foundations and the rest are going to be foundations). I'm trying to decide a good number. I just keep thinking that each generation will be halved and that freaks me out that I will run out of horses. (Haha number one fear of a horse hoarder)

Do you start of big (like 40-50). And that way you are set for awhile?

Or do you start off medium and start a new line of foundations every now and then to increase numbers? I'm just worried that will impact my stats.

Right now I have 24. But then when I breed them all, that will turn into 12. which sounds low. Or maybe I'm thinking way too far ahead since most are 0-1 yr olds...

So gimme your thoughts or your own plan of action. And how many you started off with.

I start small, just how I am. But now in the long run I might add more as taking care of horses on the recode is just so simple and fast.

I start with 10 mares and 10 stallions (20 total) and then I've added in foundations or looked for outside lines if I need to add into my lines. I've never had too big of a stat gap from a store x generation horse I believe, but I've never gotten too far. Lol

I started my herd with 8 horses and added 4-8 more every time previous herd become yearling... So that's way I will have something to breed weekly XD It also ensure that I have wide range of ages (for sale, stud, etc)

for my main string of welshies i started off with 32 because my plan is to breed each division of 16 horses till they each get down to the last foal then i will breed the two foals together just to help myself with inbreeding and picking pairs :D

i usually get bored after 5-6 gens so i think this is a good plan for myself XD if i started off too high then i will get bored faster haha

I really love Tigris's idea, and I might start that with my next round of stores.

I started with 10 vanners (bc that's how many nakota foals I had that were culled :p ) and I'm starting with 16 tekes since in 80 weeks that will leave me with one foal (hopefully high-stat and with perfect conformation)

my Arabian line, on the other hand, I just kept adding to whenever I saw pretty stores in the RC, so I have 30+ first gens that will get narrowed down to 16 foals once I'm ready to breed them in a few months xD

I am noticing that the foundation stock has low conformation scores, is this true of all foundation stock?

I generally do a handful of foundations and add new foundation stock every generation or every other generation.

IE if you start with 12 foundations, breed 6 foals and add 6 more foundations.
In the past I bred twins from some pairs and mix them back into the pool 2-3 generations later.

I plan to start another set of foundations up and lock my current horses after next breeding in order to create another multiple-generation set of stock to match with my current 1k+ pointers in order to bridge the "stat plateau" that you eventually hit when adding new foundations in on a continuous basis.

I was wondering the same thing as Sparkles.

I spent a TON of EVD today creating store horses and was not satisfied with the conformation stats of any of them. I think only 2 had over 60.

For one of my Tekes I accidentally did 64, but that cause I got them here and there and my mind switched from 32 total to 32 mares and 32 stallys XD I do anywhere from 2, 4, 8, 16 or 32 cause they will all breed down to one and I usually have a second line going at roughly the same time so that when I get down to one I can breed the two foals. If I'm still enjoying the breed by then, I start over XD locking the final product of the other two lines of course :D

On my new line of QHs I started big 50+ horses, so 25+ pairs.

I'm planing to add 10 horses every three weeks (similar to Tigris' plans).

I never breed store horses to horses with pedigrees and try to breed 2nd gens to 2nd gens, 3rd gens to 3rd gens, doing that requires a constant inflow of genes and a lot of locking.

@ Sparkles : 60 is a good conformation from a store horse because you're suppose to work toward better conformation. Honestly on beta most people thought that any horse with above 55 had good confo (from the store) and any horse above 60 had great confo and if you were really lucky you might get a horse with ~65 confo which was extremely valuable for breeding stock.

Last edited on 2016-02-16 at 05:47:47 by Aɢʟᴇᴛ