Breeding advice?

So silver started her line of store shetland babes. I had a total of 3 pairs so 6 horses to start with. My plan was to breed them once every year starting at age of ten then at 15 sell the mares with their latest foals and stud out the stallions. They recently turned ten and I bred them to produce three foals right? Ok. Now I am confused. How will I breed the second generation to produce the third without inbreeding and with only my horses? I don't want to buy more store horses because that will ruin the generations. What do I do?

you need to start with an even number of pairs in order to have a sustainable breeding population.

The number of pairs you start off with will be the half the number of generations you can get from them before needing to add in new lines. So if you start with 1 pair, you'll only be able to get to one generation (beyond the stores). If you start with 4 pairs, you'll be able to make it to two generations (beyond the stores), and so on.

If you want to make it to two generations (beyond the stores you have now), you should lock your six stores and buy at least on new pair. I'd personally recommend 5 more pairs, for a total of 8 store pairs. That'll get you to 4 generations (beyond the stores).

I hope that all made sense!

Good Luck

Thanks! Well, I guess I will start over. Thanks again!

10 is also fairly early to breed. It's certainly up to you to do it however you'd like, but since horses don't retire until they turn 21, they'll have much higher stats (assuming regular treating/showing) once they're in their upper teens/20, rather than 10.

If you're wanting to avoid any possibility of inbreeding, also keep track of how many horses you're getting out of each pair; if you're breeding each pair 5 or 6 times (from 10 to 15) that will be a lot of related offspring. That may be more than you want to handle, especially if you do as Kahzie suggested and get 8 pairs; as that would then be 40-46 offspring (which is a lot of horses!)

That's just based of my preferences for playing; you're certainly free to play however you prefer to!