Breeding

Hehe for some I pick a theme for the whole line, like the mare above is from my play on flower/plants names. I also have a Star Wars line, Hawaiian line and Nancy Drew line to name a few. Each has a name to do with the theme, and for my Hawaiian line each generation has a theme, like my current ones are all named after Hawaiian islands. For themes I pick something that I'm interested in/like or things that are ironic to me. Wiki Tiki being my old game name and rl nickname, when Sab pointed I should call me Tekes Wiki's Tekes as a play off that old name it brought about the Hawaiian names to go along with that word play XD

I used to do parents name that influenced the goals name.

I did that too, but I loved giving mine royal names so much that soon there were way to many Duchess and Prince this and that's for me to keep track of XD

That would be confusing

Popping in with my little bit of input. c:

If you're looking to keep your herd small, 16 is a good number to start with. I suggest breeding them twice, at 19 years and 20 years. The first set you can sell (or keep a few) and then keep the second set. Try to only keep one foal per pair of horses. You'll have 8 in the end, raise them up do the same thing. Then you'll have 4 foals, then 2, and then a final foal.

Now, there are choices for what you can do to keep lines running. What I'd do, is either when you get that first set of foals, start another line of sixteen to breed alongside those. Keep the two groups separate. The second line can give higher-statted foals to breed into the first line eventually.

Another suggestion is as stated above, breed foundations into the line. It's a good idea, just leaves the pedigree a bit lopsided and you take a hit on the stats for the foals (since you'd most likely have a high statted lined horse breeding with a lower statted foundation).

And another way is to breed out. Find others with high statted horses and breed your horses to them, or buy horses to add into your lines. This can work well, since you can get high-statted horses to breed in.

As for the amount of stats a foundation can get, my paints just hit 18 and the top horse just got over 600 stats, while the bottom is sitting more around 500s. I have one weird one that's at 450s. That's over 40 horses. If you have a small herd, watch them well, take time with those that seem to lag behind a bit, I'm sure you could keep them more closely together.

Thank you Nittrous for your input, I was wondering when should your upgrade your tack and what does that affect?

YES upgrade your tack all the way it makes a huge difference. :)

On another note...
I name my horses the first that comes to my mind when I buy them, then the foals are named from a combination of the parents names. I love doing this because it gives me a challenge when I breed two horses with seemingly unconnected names.

Currently my naming trend is letters, and occasionally another pattern within that.. All my studs have one letter that their names start with (they all start with S in one of my groups) and the mares have another (they start with K). Within the K group I also chose to name them mostly after tropical storms changed to fit the K theme, so. I've also used Greek gods and goddesses, weather/nature (Dawn, Typhoon, two of my originals) I've done it all lol

I think I went through a random phase of whatever so I have some named after the mods for some reason, some named after literature (bard, things from books like The Hunger Games) I've done countries.. I've done every kind of theme. Whatever I feel like at the time, it's fun to change it up. I MAY have named them after their parents for a little bit, but not much.

How would I go about upgrading my tack all the way?

Go to the Tack Workshop under "Town" and pay to upgrade it there