Deleting over bred horses foals

I was commenting on how other people were playing the game? I didn't mean too! :( 


And I sold the stud when he was only 1 year old for half his listing price. I prefer to breed my horses when they are at the top of their stat gain (18 years old to 20 years old), though mostly I simply breed once, as it's easier, and that way I don't have a huge amount of extra foals that aren't selling. 

I strive for the best horses possible, that can be shown, great stats, conformation, and possibly even color. :D Pedigree's aren't THAT important to me, until it comes to finding a good stallion or mare in a particular discipline that has a tiny gene-pool. That's why I was upset about the horse being "over bred", because my mare (his dam) was on the Top Ten List in the Hall of Fame for Show Jumping. My ultimate goal is to provide excellent horses in their disciplines for decent stud/brood fees. It is hard to offer my horses up for stud/brood because hardly anybody makes use of them. Want to breed to a quality stud, broodmare for a quality foal or buy one of my horses? Then it's going to come with a quality price tag for either the stud fee or the broodmare fee, or the sale price. I put A LOT of time, money, and work into my herds.

I do allow my mare's to have up to 3 foals and the studs up to 6 foals; but nobody makes use of them; which is why none of them are up except for one. :/

Last edited on 2018-01-20 at 17:12:49 by 💜 Feathered Gold 💜

I plan on breeding mine young because I have a theory I want to test.  Older is best for stat gain, of course, but I don't find stat gain all that challenging, and I can make up for lost time when I finish my primary, more challenging goal.  In fact, if I'm able to do it the way I want, stat gain may actually become easier.

Which is one reason why I try to caution against looking too negatively at horses that are bred young or frequently, or don't seem to be prioritizing high stats.  As the saying goes, there's more than one way to skin a cat.  I'm experimenting with a different way to raise horses to my standards.  And it's a way that is going to look like what many people believe to be irresponsible breeding, but I think my results will speak for themselves in the end.

I really think the problem with the slow horse market has more to do with how easy it is to get enormous numbers of foundation horses.  I am an offender in this area myself.  What is easier to build a herd than to buy tons of foundations and keep just the ones you want?  Or go through the rescue center and pick out of someone else's discards who maybe had different goals than me?  But if horses are too easy to come by without ever having to exchange money with another player, of course horse sales are going to be slow.  The problem isn't the low stat horses going on the market - the problem is that no one really needs to buy.

If foundations were limited more strictly, people would have to buy from others to bring new blood into their herds.  If this were the case, a horse bred carefully for show power would be a huge asset, and people would be willing to pay good money to get them.  People could make a profit off breeding and selling desirable horses.  It wouldn't matter if there were low stat horses on the market, or horses that had been bred a lot, or any of the rest of that, because they would not be competition for the people who are looking for, say, the kind of horses you breed.  I think that "overbreeding" has gotten a bad rap partially because people blame that for the poor horse market, but I really think they're just being turned into a scapegoat when foundations are the true problem.  Limit the foundations, and people would want to buy or breed to your horses.

also, here’s a thought regarding this specific situation with a horse you sold having more foals than you wanted: why not just delete him?

The reason I try to keep clean lines is so that they/their offspring will be more likely to be bought. 
However
If the whole of EV simultaneously decided they don't care about clean lines, I would not care either, because more people want to buy my horses. 
There is a spiral, in which just one person decides they breed for clean lines. They, therefore, don't buy any horses that have unclean lines (because there is no point in buying horses you won't breed to your stock*). That means that other players make sure they have clean lines, so that their horses will be bought by more people who breed for clean lines, which means that they don't buy unclean-lined horses.
And so it goes on.
I am part of that spiral, so that more people are more likely to buy my horses. I am making my decision how to play, and others are making theirs. I won't judge either way, I just want players to buy my horses xD. 

*Unless you're buying to make profit/riding school.

Last edited on 2018-01-21 at 12:36:41 by 🌙 Io

Honestly until reading this thread I "believed" in overbreeding and the evils if inbreeding, but Confessor et al. have made SO much sense that I completely changed my mind! :O