Starting From Foundation

I was wondering about starting and restarting a few projects of mine, since the success of my Racing Shetlands I have been thinking of picking up Endurance Morgans and I'm thinking of one more project which will be announced when I decide what that is. 

However, all this has gotten me questioning how many initial horses I would need to start a new project, and was wondering if anyone knew the answer. I started with 40 Endurance Morgans, 20 mares, and 20 stallions however I think that isn't enough horses to be continued into the long term. How many foundations would I need to have a long-term project?

I already struggle to find pairs for my Shetland Ponies as I seem to be having a long-term colt curse that doesn't seem to be letting up anytime soon. To combat this I find decent foundation horses, but that often results in lop-sided pedigrees as I HATE the idea of inbreeding, but often stalls my progress significantly. How do I go about correcting this? And don't get me started on my Western Quarters where I seem to have forgotten to get several mares and now only have 3 mares for 8 stallions, oops. 

So what do I do? I have tried the sales but at the moment it is flooded with high stat high NSS horses that I have no interest in, as I'm rather picky about NSS. I've also started to consider conformation too, now that it is calculated in shows, but by continuing to use foundation horses I have realized it is resulting in foals that have lower stats and lower conformation than their lined parents. I feel rather stuck and need some advice. 

If you want even pairs through all generations, you'd basically need to multiply by 2 for each generation you want. So if you want to end with 1 final horse in one gen, then you'd need 2 to start. In 2 generations, 4, in 3 generations, 8. So following that, I always starts with 32 horses (16 pairs) so I get 16 foals, and then 8 foals etc. You could expand that to 64 horses, or 128. I don't know if I explained that well xD 

With 20 pairs you'll get 20 foals to keep, but then you'll end up with only 10 in the next generation, and 5 in the generation after that. So you'll end up with an odd amount rather quickly.

My only other advice is to breed each pair more than once, and hope you get a more even number of colts and fillies out of that. I breed 4 times each, and that usually gives me more choices so I can get an even amount of colts and fillies each generation. I think I've only ever had one instance of needing to change a foals gender that way, even having a bad run of a whole breeding "year" giving me one gender or the other for a specific group.

Overall, it just depends on how many horses you want to tackle at a time. You could get 20 and 20 to breed, and then lock those and do another 20 and 20 or however many until you have and even amount of second gens, and then rinse and repeat however many times you felt like it. Just keep in mind each generation will be half of the first if you don't want any inbreeding down the line. 

yeah i also breed multiple foals per pair, i still have to buy daggers once in a while but it gives a lot of breathing room to be able to pick and choose. you can sell or retire the foals you don't want, use them for school, or as show fillers.

i also lock lined horses after a certain gen, 3rd or 4th usually. it takes a lot of patience that way but it's more manageable to just lock up horses until i can collect enough to continue the line. sometimes i'll have two different generations at the same time like foundations and 3rd-gens running together, but that can get a little confusing lol.

I have always liked the 3x3 method. Getting odd numbers of mares and stallions (example 3 mares and three stallions) so and then buying that many more store horses. So you will always have a spare multi gen horse that gets paired with a foundation horse and you have younger generations and foundations going at the same time. gives a bit more flexibility on the outcome of colts and fillies. 

Honestly, I used to think the lopsided pedigrees were just awful but the more time I have spent working with my own horses I have realized that if there are not enough breeders with similar goals to my own then eventually I will have to fill in with foundations. So some of my 2nd gens will be bred with foundations as well as future generations as well. It's the only solution I have come up with to not running out of horses to breed with. 

And as far as how many horses you need...a lot lol 

I pair 24 horses for each discipline, leading up to where I want my squeaky-clean lines to be before buying more foundations to start the process again. I also try to keep up with what gen is what and add it to the horse's profile box.

If I'd ever happen to restart, I would never start with more then 128 horses, but personally I think 64 is also enough, so rather the latter.

I started my foundation herd with 1024 horses years ago, and it's far too much horses to handle all at once. Less horses means that the herd progressing is somewhat quicker, so you will have higher sense of accomplishment in shorter time.

What I see on my herd, that even lines are somewhat better in the long run. If you always add foundations to your lines because you run out of horses, you lose some "bonuses" which the parents-grandparents give (as bonus I mean that the variability is somewhat smaller and I tend to get nicely conformed foals - higher confo than its parents more often than in the former generations). 
These are all my personal observations, and my lines are still not long, so it's not sure.

If I were you, I would take 32 or a max of 62 horses and always would take a new set of foundation when I bred down the former generation: 
Starting with 32 horses - when you get the 16 2nd gen foals, you buy also 32 foundations... when you get the 8 3rd gen and 16 2nd gen you buy 32 foundations and so on.
With this you will always have new influx of horses, you don't need to wait long to continue with the generations (for the time being) and at least you don't need to match foundations to your lined horses.

Oh dear, 1024 horses Olivia! o.O

I just wanted to say that I don't exactly know how much horses it takes. I also tend to collect just way too many and start with big bunches. Or I plan on starting, but because the project is so big already I just procrastinate/start with others (though my "big" is still not 1024 horses lol)
And then, with that, I've never gotten that far in generations either, so don't really know what the long term effects will be.

On the other side, if you had a nice group go into a couple generations and you notice you're getting stuck, you could start with a new group of foundations and by the time you come to the same generation again, mix them all in.
At least you'll know for sure that new group is completely unrelated to the old one.