How to begin a breeding line?

Hey, I'm nearly at level 6 so I can finally breed and I don't want to breed horses just for the sake of it. So I was wondering:

How you would suggest to begin a breeding line?

What breed should I go for?

And should I breed for stats, confo or colour?

Breed should be something you enjoy. I breed for stats because that's what I want to do, but people do breed for confo and color as well or even a combo or all three so once again totally up to you (and probably something you should wait to consider until you pick a breed since some, like my Fries for example, have limited non rare colors available).

As for starting a line, I try to start with a number that can breed down to one foal, usually with a minimum of 8 and a high of 32 (though I accidentally did 64 once).

Like Wiki said, choose what you like. I breed for all three but mostly stats because I like showing and stats are important for that. Choose a breed that you like the art for, and if you decide to breed for color, check the custom horse generator first to make sure you pick a breed that has a lot of options.

Copying this post of mine from an earlier thread. c:

Paints, Vanners, Quarter Horses, and Appys are all breeds I'm in that have a considerable amount of color. I would definitely suggest if you do any of them to stick to the main specializations for them - Western for Paints and QHs, Driving for Vanners, and Appys seem to be mainly Western/Show Jumping (mine are in sj).

I like to start out with numbers that even out well across the generations to eventually end up with one horse that sums up all the breeding, so depending on number of generations:

1 pair (2 horses) - second generation
2 pair (4 horses) - third generation
4 pair (8 horses) - fourth generation
8 pair (16 horses) - fifth generation ** probably my most used group number.
16 pair (32 horses) - sixth generation
32 pair (64 horses) - seventh generation

I normally start with 16 horses, 8 stallions and 8 mares, and start them out at 0 years old so they have the extra foal years to gain stats. Now, when I start groups I can end up making 100 store horses hoping to get the rarer genetics/higher confos in my starting herd, but if you have the ability to use color/marking randomizers or are tight on cash, you can just make the original number.

Also depending on funds, you can start the horses out on haycubes and in a different specialization from what you want their final one to be. These horses can only be entered in the riding school while on hay cubes (they won't perform well in shows, and won't gain stats or bring in any money if you put them into shows). If you do end up with the hay cube method (my experiment is showing that it does gain higher stats at the low showing grades over all, and I still have to see how it does at higher showing levels, so don't worry that they won't gain as much - they're actually gaining more than show horses!). The price to switch back per horse is 10k. Given that you enter them in the riding school each day, and they net $315 per day ($350 - $35 training fee) each horse earns $2,205 each year. To cover the cost of both creating the horse and paying for it's specialization transfer, you would want to leave them on hay cubes for at least 6 years (but I would suggest going to 10 or 15y before transferring them). Once you do transfer to their final spec, you want to take them off of hay cubes and on to specialty treats.

I normally do foal trades with other members, and will breed my groups either two or three times. If I breed three times, I do 18y, 19y, and 20y. 18y is open sale, 19y is foal trade, 20y is keep for the next generation.
Since they do make quite a bit of money, both from riding school, showing, and selling foal sets - you might find it viable to start multiple foundation herds a few weeks apart from one another. You can always lock foals from earlier groups and group multiple second generation herds together to keep it simple. c:

And finally, pairing. I pair all my first foundation herds by confirmation, shown here: CLICKITY CLICK. It's pretty much about pairing up the very worst confos with the very best, which evens them out over the first generation, and then each subsequent generation should see an improvement in their confirmations. I also track stats of the parents when I breed, foal stats when born, and confirmation/color for future pairs.

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TL;DR, Main Points:
- start with numbers that breed down to a single horse. (2, 4, 8, 16)
- don't breed earlier than 16y (preferably 18y), and don't breed more than 3-4 times.
- - this tip above takes time, but it can assure you produce the best foals that will actually sell, rather than ones that stick around.
- multiple smaller foundation herds (starting one every 3-4w) makes it so you don't have an extremely long waiting period between breeding sets.
- pair horses so you don't have one stallion breeding to three different mares. 1 stallion to 1 mare, and keep the pairs together for all subsequent breedings.

Thank you everyone, I think I will start with appaloosas and keep my other horses for showing.

Thats really helpful Nittrous.

One more thing I dont quite get, Cube method, why set them to a random discipline when you know what discipline you will want them to be in the future??

Last edited on 2017-01-13 at 13:48:45 by Tiger

You gain more stats feeding the cubes up to a certain age, then paying 10k to switch disciplines (: I don't know the details of it, but it's a thing.

It'll convert all the non specialty stats you get when using hay cubes into specialty stats

Setting to a random discipline gives you a chance to convert to the correct one in the future. By having that conversion take place, you're giving your horse a chance to realign its stats. Hay cubes are great for stat building but they can give to ANY of the stats, not just the two stats you need for each discipline. So if you do the hay cube method but don't have a conversion in there somewhere, you're going to have high stats in the wrong places, when only two of them should be high.

Ohh ok so when you convert a horse it realigns its stats to suit that discipline and will gain more overall being on cubes?

Yep, exactly. Cubes give you 0-2 per stat (usually around 1-5 total per use) whereas treats like apples and turnips and carrots give you 1-2 in only one stat.

Once you convert those and the stats go to the right areas, it's important to immediately switch them to a treat better suited for their specialty, so that you don't keep getting stats in the wrong places.

Thank you thats great