Silver Foxie Sox

My Accounts

Main Account (#72281):
This account contains all my active programs right now, and all the breeds I'm working on.  If you want to reach me, it is also the best place to message me, as I log on more often to that account than I do to these ones.  I've been breeding Gypsy Vanners on this account since the old game, although my first horse on the game was an Arabian.  Please be patient if I am slow to respond, as sometimes I take time off for health reasons.

Secondary Account (#73122):
This is my account for retired horses that are living out the rest of their days until they fly off to horsey heaven.  I learned a while back not to rehome or sell horses that I use in my program, as not only do I have no control over whether someone leaves the DC on horses I bred, which makes them hard to track in peds, but occasionally someone also overuses a horse so that I have a hard time avoiding my own bloodline.  Therefore, if I don't want to run into it somewhere else later on or have its name changed, I just let it age here, and send it to riding schools or shows to build money, experience, and points for this account.  That frees up my main account to focus on just the newest generation.

Archive Account (#73108):
Not only is this the one that maxes me out at the 3 accounts EV rules allow for, but it's also the most special of all my accounts.  This is where I preserve the very best of the best in horses that I'm not ready to give up in case I want to breed them back into my program later for some reason.  This site contains horses that are a bit legendary in the history of my herd, such as Keith, the best Gypsy Vanner stallion I ever had (he was so nice I used a spectral drought and time twister to bring him back and make him breedable again).  I will probably have a few for sale or retiree horses on this account as well to build the experience, points, and stats, and I may add a foundie project or something, but for now, this is where some very special horses live.  While occasional breedings may happen, these lines are going to be among the most safeguarded ones I have right now.

Who Am I?

I'm a farm "girl" in Michigan (fully grown and married) who lives on my small 3/4 acre homestead with a garden, a German Shepherd (she is also my service dog), and a bunch of rabbits, most of which are Satin Angoras.  I'm hoping to go back to school to chew away at finishing my degree soon, and although I don't have a job at the moment, I do a variety of things with my time and I'm hoping I will find something to do for work soon enough, as I am looking for work right now.  I have various hobbies, including fiber arts and building things, and I like reading and writing, although writing is honestly my preference.  Most of my writing is private and done for myself, as that is my way of personal expression, but I've put a few things in small local publications before.  I love horses, and am hoping to get back to riding lessons once the doctor clears me again.  My discipline is currently hunt seat equitation, and although I'm not the best rider out there, I thoroughly enjoy simply doing that.

I have been asked if I do EV art, and unfortunately I don't. I've considered learning to code or something, but I've only done one or two things, and only on a whim.  However, I hope to share my characters a bit more as I fix up my website.

Breeds

Akhal Teke (endurance)
This is one of my foundie projects, based off of 12 original horses, 6 stallions and 6 mares, that will be carefully bred in various combinations for diversity.  My goal is to ultimately have all creams; these guys and the Trakehners are my newest breeds and both experiments follow similar approaches.  This is my only breed in the endurance specialty.

Andalusian (dressage)
This is another of my early projects that has been around since the old version of the game.  I started them on a backup account, but it was hard to keep up with them and I moved the main project over to my main.  I've learned a lot about managing multiple accounts since then, but in the end this program is largely just for fun.  High confo Andalusians with super high stats seem to be a dime a dozen, and my big challenge is bringing mine up to the level of the top lines; however, this will take time.  I mostly have them because I like them, and for sentimental reasons.  Starfire was one of my early sires, and he was an amazing horse with super low non-specialty base stats and really high confo.  I have a number of his descendants in my herd now; originally I had to stud to him, but eventually I was able to buy him and I may try to revive him in the future in my archive account.

Appaloosa (western)
This is one of my two older foundie projects, and the one that enjoyed peppermints as foals.  I wanted to gauge how much impact peppermints had over hay cubes or standard treats, and the results have been interesting, to say the least.  I am basing this program off 12 original individuals, 4 stallions and 8 mares, and no outbreeding individuals, unlike the Shetlands.

Arabian (racing)
Since my first horse was an Arabian and I have always had the breed since then, this is basically my oldest project, from the day that I first set up my main account.  I love Arabians in real life and my trainer actually focuses on the breed, and they are the only horses I breed for the racing specialty.  I completely revamped this program at some point along the way and introduced the flaxen gene, and I'm working toward getting rid of bays, as I find them quite boring and like them less, aesthetically, than blacks and chestnuts.  It's a long project to get there, however, as a black and a chestnut can breed together and produce a bay.  Let's just say that the color part is a work in progress, and I'm not willing to budge on confo and stats for it as of yet.

Dutch Warmblood (show jumping)
I started on these in the newer version of the game on a whim; I couldn't find many with high confo, but I liked them and thought it would be fun to have them.  It'll be a while before they get to the level of my older projects, but they are a small project that still has made progress already.

Friesian (dressage)
This is one of the few projects that has color as a key goal, as I hope to breed a herd full of chestnuts, but I'm patient for color to fall into place, and I will build confo over time.  Like the Dutch Warmbloods, there do not seem to be many high confo horses in this breed, so I'm working on them so I can have a conformation herd with high stats.  I'm very early in this project, so we will see where it goes, but this breed is gorgeous, there is no denying.

Gypsy Vanner (driving)
This is my second oldest project, started shortly after the Arabians, as my second horse on the game was a Gypsy Vanner.  Overall, these guys are my heart breed, as I have a thing for cob types, and they are the closest I will get to my real life dream breed, the Highland Pony.  I saw a few of them for real in Ireland, and I honestly wouldn't complain if I had to settle for one, but in real life, the breed is a bit fancy for my tastes and I think I look better on an elegant but simple cob.  Either way, this is my biggest and most diverse herd on the game, and for a long time I eagerly sought after Lenka lines, and bred them carefully into my herd, and those lines had a long history of being conformation horses.  My prize stallion, and a key one in the background of most of my herd, is my archived boy Keith, and he's probably one of the last standing horses out there originally bred by Lenka on the old EV.  I have a few other gems in this breed, granted, but he will always have a special place in my archive.

Lipizzaner (dressage)
Yet another program very early in its development, and something I have only started since the newer version of EV came out, the Lippies are lovely horses that I couldn't resist forever with the newer art. With the old art, I could never get into them, as they looked too much like Andalusians, but now they are distinct from them, and one of the few breeds in which I actively prize my bays.  Like the Friesians and the Dutch Warmbloods, it is hard to find high confo individuals, but I did get my hands on a 90 confo stallion, Ultimate Majesty, who ultimately made the cut to become one of my archived horses.

Mustang (western)
This program had a bit of a rocky start from which I am trying to recover it, but I am still optimistic about its future since it isn't very old.  The rocky start came from the fact that I chose western as the specialty but used some high confo horses that were endurance-focused to kick start my program, as they were too good an opportunity to pass up.  This just means I will have to take my time working to breed down the non-specialty stats, but the early start with high confo horses will spare me some time to focus more on that with some breedings.  My favorites are the brown duns, but I enjoy a whole range of colors.  I haven't checked in a while, but as I recall, there weren't many in the western discipline when I first started, which kinda surprised me, but it just means I can contribute to western-discipline Mustang lines, ultimately.

Tennessee Walking Horse (dressage)
Another project that I didn't start until the new EV, the Tennessee Walking Horses are the only breed that can lay claim to an 87 confo foundie as one of my key program horses.  I archived him due to the rarity of a foundie this nice, and due to the fact that he has value in his ability to contribute his confo to any discipline if I should ever change my mind about my focus because he can be converted without having particularly high non-specialty stats.  I consider him to be exceptional because of his foundie status in spite of him not meeting my usual 15 or below NSS requirement for that division, and I am pleased to say that his line is unique to my herd because he did not produce foals before I bought him. He was a gem I had the privilege to get my hands on, and although he was most likely given up due to not being a big stat builder, he is beyond valuable to my program and isn't going anywhere.

Trakehner (show jumping)
My other newest breed in the foundie projects, the Trakehners are raised the same way the Tekes were, and they were given only specialty treats from the time I created them in the equine center as foals.  As soon as they were old enough, I started them straightaway on showing to see how far I could get with that method.  I haven't decided whether I will have a color focus for them, but I do favor creams and blacks.

Shetland Pony (driving)
What more can I say other than that these are, by far, my cutest breed.  I picked driving for them even though they were small because I thought it would be a fun and different thing to do, and I started them off at the same time I started the Appies.  Aside from two individuals I bought and placed in a separate division, this program is based entirely off foundies that were fed hay cubes as foals as opposed to the peppermints the Appies got.  The outbreeding program includes four custom horses, and the main program consists of 4 stallions and 8 mares, just like with the Appies.  We shall see where this goes, but undoubtedly it'll be an interesting and unique project.

Programs

Conformation
This has long been my primary breeding goal, and I started working on it with the old EV.  I noticed at the time that very few people worked on conformation, as most people were more concerned with stats. Admittedly, it was also the source of many of my early mistakes as well, because I focused so much on conformation that I didn't take the time to learn how stats worked.  That made it hard to earn money or do well on the game, and in time I developed techniques for building stats while I bred mostly to improve conformation.  This part is a hit and miss because it is difficult to get a foal that is better than the parents, and it can require multiple breedings to get a suitable foal since it doesn't follow a set formula anybody has determined like stats do. However, I've maximized success by comparing the traits of the two parents and pairing them based on strengths and weaknesses.  I try to pair every horse with another that is much stronger in its weakest areas, and although determining who to pair can be a tedious process with a large number of horses, I find it quite rewarding.

Color
Although I do try to breed a few programs toward certain colors (creams in Tekes, chestnuts in Friesians, and away from bay in Arabians), most of this is focused on me having a diversity of color in all of my programs and having the genetic potential for pretty much everything in my herd.  This is not as high a priority as conformation and stats, but it allows me to keep things fun and interesting, and allows me to provide variety of colors to people who maybe have color-focused programs and are interested in certain varieties, but want something to work with on confo and stats.

Stats
While I do occasionally do breedings that are geared toward reducing the non-specialty stats, I do, as I said, breed for confo and build stats.  Stats are build through shows or riding schools, treats, and training, and so I try to do all of these things every day.  Sometimes I do set foals to the wrong specialty on purpose so I can convert training and move the stats where I want them, or I may convert and reconvert horses.  However, the main goal is to get the specialty stats as high as possible and the non-specialty stats as low as possible, and to have every generation have higher stats than the previous one.  As a result, I have begun to use methods such as waiting to breed horses until they reach a certain age, so they have time to build the stats, and I make sure to use treats that will build the specialty stats.  I also use a technique where I utilize different types of treats for stallions versus for mares.  For instance, I will use red apples to build strength in the Gypsy Vanner stallions and I will use turnips to build endurance in the mares; that way the foals come out reasonably well-balanced. My primary goal here is steady improvement over each generation, rather than quick development, as in some respects stats are much easier than conformation to fix over time with breeding.

Foundie Projects
These are fun little experiments that serve the purpose of me being able to develop my own bloodlines that largely don't have the influence of purchased stallions or mares and, in the case of my Gypsy Vanner Foundie Project, will allow me to outbreed the rest of my herd over time.  I focus on the same goals as with other breeds, but since these are unaffected by preexisting lines, they are also the ones that I show to build points in my account(s).  I'm playing around right now with finding out how long it takes to breed up from foundies to low NSS, high conformation horses, and to see how far I can get in specialty stats by the time I start breeding them at around 15 years of age.  These breedings will be not only meticulous, but carefully guarded, and they are focused specifically on certain breeds.  I do not buy Appaloosas, Shetland Ponies, Trakehners, or Akhal Tekes, and these breeds - aside from the exception of two horses in the Shetland Ponies - are based entirely on lines brought in as Foundie foals from the equine center.  This will allow me to produce the cleanest possible lines and learn more and more about how things play out over time in the game; in some ways these projects act as controls as well, to gauge how I am doing with my other projects.