Deleting over bred horses foals

How do players feel about it? I honestly hate it myself, but with a good colt that I bred out of one of my best mare's being over bred; I feel it is necessary. 😑 

Honestly, this is the first time I am doing this, and I have been playing EV for 10 years this October. 

-Feather

P.S. - If mare spaying was a thing, this wouldn't happen!

Last edited on 2018-01-20 at 05:52:39 by 💜 Feathered Gold 💜

I'm completely revamping my breeding program and I will be culling foals on a regular basis.
I honestly don't care. I'd rather have a stallion with 1 quality, living foal and 6 culled offspring than a stallion with 3 crappy foals...

I breed 3 times, keep the best foal, sell the 2nd best and starve & delete the third.

Last edited on 2018-01-20 at 06:45:52 by Féline

i feel about it the way i feel about everything other players do: your horse your choice

then again, i also don’t really believe in overbreeding so take my opinion with a grain of salt :p

I don't do it with my current projects, though I have culled some foals in the past with a different project. If you don't have any use of it now nor later, and don't want to sell it, - cull.

However, I personally wouldn't toss away a good horse because of something as silly as “overbreeding”.

100% agree with Kahzie and Dratini
I honestly do not believe in the the whole "overbreeding" idea so I think its a bit of a waste, but of course, its your breeding program, your horses, so your decision. 

Yeah well. One young horse that's being culled is by Asylum; who has had over 351 foals. 😑

I know there is a huge culture here of not wanting any duplicates in a horse's pedigree, which is a lot of what fuels the "overbreeding" concept.  While it is a popular mindset on Equiverse, it's not that way in the real equestrian world.

To illustrate, this is a list of Man o' War's offspring - http://man-o-war.info/offspring.html.  On Equiverse, he would be considered horribly overbred, his owner would be looked down on by many, and some might seek to cull as many of his foals as possible.

As for inbreeding, this is American Pharoah's pedigree - http://www.pedigreequery.com/american+pharoah.  On the fifth generation back, he is descended from Northern Dancer through both his sire and his dam.  This would make him undesirable to many Equiverse players, if he were a horse on the game.  Of course, he did go on to win the Triple Crown, so those players would really be missing out.

I understand that everyone has their own goals, and own ways of playing the game.  If you don't want your horses to have many foals, or if you don't want to buy a horse because it has duplicates in its pedigree, you are well within your rights.  However, I do think it is an unfortunate thing that there is so much censure surrounding "overbreeding" and "inbreeding" in the game.  If a certain stallion is seen as so desirable that people want to breed their mares to him that much, cool!  He's certainly in good company.  In fact, the real prize for a Thoroughbred colt that wins races is not the purse, but the reputation for when he retires and becomes a stud.  In real life, the more times that stallion gets bred, the better.  Why should the game be any different?

Ironically, many people here do not put their stallions up for stud because they want to prevent "overbreeding", but if all stallions were put up for stud, there would probably be much less "overbreeding" because people would have more options.  If only a small handful of stallions are available, then of course they are going to get all the mares.

I really wish people would chill out.  Play the game the way you want to play it.  Let other people play the game the way they want to play it.  If you don't want certain things to happen to the horses you breed, don't make them available for other people to buy.  If you do let someone buy a horse, they are going to do with that horse what they want to do.  Including breeding stallions in realistic ways.

I have to agree 100% with what Confessor said.. Everyone is entitled to play the game as they wish..If limiting foals and not wanting any inbred horses is a player's choice , then thats the way they play their game. There is no right or wrong when it comes to 'inbreeding' or number of offspring in this game.. to each their own.

I remember back when i worked as a groom with Standardbred race horses..We had the fastest 2 yr old pacing filly in North America , the summer for 1990. This is her pedigree..she has Meadow Skipper, Hal Dale, Adios and Tar Heel on both sides!

http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/ghostly

 We could go to horse sales..and in some cases , we were actually attracted more to a horses, if he had similar lines on both sides ( ie. Balanced Image, was a famous trotting stud back in the day..if we saw a yearling with Balanced Image on both sides of his pedigree..it was a bonus)
- and like Confessor pointed out..American Pharaoh having Northern Dancer on both sides of his pedigree..

Secretariat had over 600 foals.. I think there's something to be said for stallion that is so highly desired.  

We all play the game the way we choose to. Its all good. The point is to have fun while you're doing it.!

Not to mention, overbreeding and inbreeding do not directly affect the performance of your horses in breeding or showing. I completely understand that the equestrian world frowns upon that kind of stuff in real life, but its gotten to the point in EV that it just seems kind of silly. 
I genuinely do not understand why players would get so upset over it. Time, work, and money do go into herds but if you happen to sell a horse that you will never use anyway, then what is the problem exactly?

I could be wrong but most of the arguments against overbreeding/inbreeding is that "it's simply just wrong".
If someone overbreeds a horse that you sold to them, it is no longer yours unless bought back. Overbreeding is not a real concept in this game, its something many breeders just decide to follow.

I personally do not have an issue with people believing that overbreeding/inbreeding is wrong except when they openly frown down on players that breed as many foals as they like. Both sides just need to respect each other's decisions.

The only valid argument that I can see against overbreeding is that the lines are no longer uncommon. However, if you sell an ungelded horse, you should be aware that there is a possibly that the horse will be bred more than you deem fit. Yeah, it can be frustrating, but gelding/simply not selling is always an option. Once you sell it, the new owner can do whatever they want with it. And who knows, that amount of foals could've happened over the course of several different owners. I'm sorry that he was bred a lot because I know that many players value rare lines, but in the end, everyone plays their own way and there's nothing wrong with differing opinions regarding how many times a horse should be bred. If you don't want something like this to happen again, then you should maybe consider gelding the stallions that you plan on selling.
This is just my personal opinion, and I would like everyone to keep that in mind. Thank you. c:

Last edited on 2018-01-20 at 14:16:25 by Raptor

Just a note on inbreeding in a SIM game:

I used to play a dog SIM that allowed and even encouraged inbreeding. The argument was that it does happen in real life and that inbreeding is often used to solidify desired traits in a bloodline. 

One of the highest achievements on that game was to breed dogs with perfect health scores and inbreeding was the go to method.
So basically you could buy 1 breeding pair, select the best male and female pup, breed those, select their best male and female offspring, and so on and so on.

As a result the in game economy was dead... I owned the absolute top quality dogs in their breed and I gave away pups for free. Nobody would buy pups because nobody needed fresh blood in their lines.



I have been playing SIM games for 16 years now (I played 4 different horse-, 3 different dog-, 2 different cat-, a rodent- and a snake SIM, rofl....) and with the exception of this one SIM game inbreeding / overbreeding was always frowned upon. It makes me wonder where this idea originated.
(Still wouldn't inbreed or overbreed though :p ) 

So, (I don't know a whole lot about breeding here on Ev, so bear with me) but if a mare has over 100 foals, how is that techniqually bad? Does it do something to the mare or her showing abilities? I just was wondering because I've noticed some people disagree with over breeding, so I'm just wondering why exactly. I can understand if they breed 500 foals and then pick only one and put the other 499 foals in the RC, but if you keep all of them, is it really a bad thing necessarily?

The way this game gets played would never work in real life.  The Equiverse "ideal" seems to be to buy a ton of foundations, pair up the mares and stallions, breed one foal for each pair, pair up those foals, and repeat until you have one final offspring, often the sole descendant of hundreds of horses.

Any breed that did that would be extinct in no time.  Ironically, in an effort to avoid inbreeding, you would create a genetic bottleneck.

This only works in Equiverse because we have an unlimited supply of very affordable, completely unrelated foundation horses.  Other games that I've played sometimes have a finite number of foundation stock, which are paired together to produce the horses you use to start your herd.  There is no avoiding a certain amount of inbreeding in that circumstance, if you breed far enough.  This is closer to how things are in real life, where each breed tends to be descended from a certain number of foundation stock (though some breeds, particularly those that are becoming rare, sometimes bring in selected outside stock to strengthen the breed and prevent bottlenecks.)

On Equiverse, many people value rareness of lines, but that is an artificial value.  If that's what you like, great!  But it's a value in perception only.  Horses descended from "overbred" lines perform just as well at showing as ones that are a product of long lines horses only bred once each.

In fact, I think this obsession with "overbreeding" and "inbreeding" is strangling the dynamics of this game.  Hundreds of horses are kept quarantined from the rest of the game community at large, and plenty of otherwise amazing, high stat, well-cared for horses are snubbed and left unpurchased, just because they doubled up a couple ancestors, or their sire had a couple foals too many.  Players who otherwise wouldn't care are jumping on the bandwagon because they want to be able to sell some horses, and they know that a lot of the high-earning players won't touch a horse that doesn't live up to these artificial standards.

I'm not saying that it's bad to keep your lines "pure" or to only breed your horses once in their lifetimes, but I really feel we need to shake off the notion that breeding multiple times or having duplicate ancestors somehow makes a horse lower quality.  I think it damages the game, honestly.

I personally prefer to keep horses that can be SHOWN. None of these babies can be SHOWN, which is why they're being deleted. Also, the stud in question is now a gelding, and had 17 foals before he turned 7!!!!

The reason why I quit breeding more than 1 time when my horses weren't selling; so why hold into so many extra foals when nobody was buying them? I personally don't buy horses that have had more than 10 foals; less if possible. 

I try to keep the quality high in my horses, of those who can shown, and have high conformation. 😊

Sorry if I offended or upset anyone! 

-Feather

No one is offended by your choices of how to play the game.  If you only want to keep horses that can be shown, that's great!  I love a good show horse, and try to breed them myself.  You can also breed as many or as few times as you like, and have whatever goals you like.

Where it changes is when you make comment on other people's choices on how to play the game.  It harms no one and nothing if someone wants to breed their horse seventeen times before the age of seven, and then geld the stallion.  There are actually very good reasons to breed a horse early and often.  I, personally, am building a new herd from foundations, and intend to breed my horses for the first time at the age of three, and to continue breeding them until I get a foal that suits my purposes.  I have my reasons for choosing this approach.  I hope it doesn't take seventeen tries before I get a suitable foal, but who knows?  It might.

If you do not wish to bring such a stallion, or its offspring, into your breeding program, you are well within your rights.  That does not mean that those horses are worthless or low quality.  They might be just the thing for someone else.

Same with a horse that has high stats outside of its specialty.  Sure, it will fail miserably as a show horse, but not everyone wants show horses.  Some people actually have the goal of raising all the stat traits to equal levels.  Those babies might be perfect for such a person.  And I say this as one of the people who originally began talking about how non-specialty stats affect showing, after the recode.  It is true, but it is also true that showing is not everything.

You are well within your rights to buy any horse that is for sale and do what you like with it afterwards.  I simply would like people to maybe think a little about why things like "overbreeding," "inbreeding," "breeding too early," or "wrong stats" are so looked down on in this game, and maybe realize that it isn't hurting anyone to have horses like that in the game.  That it's OK to let go of control of a horse once you sell it, and that your concept of a "perfect horse" may not be someone else's, and that is fine.  Maybe you don't need to "purify" the Equiverse world of "inferior" horses.

After all, if a horse is truly unwanted, it can be put in the Rescue Center and will quietly drift away into oblivion in three days.  And if it is wanted, well, why not let someone who wants that horse, have it?  I mean, you can buy it and starve it if you really want.  I'm not saying you shouldn't be allowed to.  I'm just hoping you'll think about it a bit, and maybe not feel so threatened by horses that aren't your personal ideal.  A "quality" horse is different for different people.