*Spaying Mares

I fully support this. 

If I had the space I would love to buy in unwanted geldings and use them as riding school horses to earn some extra money, but I can't. Because my barns are filled up with mares I can't get rid of because I don;t want my lines being ruined. 

ALSO as a player who only joined the game last year I can tell you, I have no interest in buying fancy high stated horses as honestly it's more rewarding to find foundations horses and build them up yourself. 

Also Spaying would be useful in stopping the overuse of certain lines, there has been so many times I look at mares for sale (for breeding) but I see that they all have similar parentage or have horses in common with my own mares or studs. 

At the beginning I was a bit sceptic about this idea, but the option I won't use is an option I won't use and others convinced me to support it. After some months situation has changed, I know I would probably use that feature. Why?

I would really like to make money on my mares I don't want to breed but :

1) I don't have place for them, I need their slots for their's siblings' foals-> try selling (4)
2) I have enough many horses right now, would like to stick only to those I want to breed to increase the breed's stats and conformation-> try selling (4)
3) I don't like moving such horses between main and spare account just because that's the only working way to get rid of them without killing (I don't have a spare, but that's a different story)
4) I can't sell them, because unpopular breeds are not selling well and the market is dead ->if 1) is not the main case try offering as a broodmare 5)
5) I can't offer them for brood, because the breed is unpopular and there is no interest even if the mare has over 1 000 stats, nice conformation and broodmare request is not expensive, also I would have to keep her and it collides with 1)
6) I can't sell them cheap or give away, because I worked for these stats and sometimes conformation for generations. Probably they will get adopted by a rookie who will breed them young, mess up with stats or kill right after the breeding. I had such situations before and I don't want to see that again.

If I can't make money on my mare, then what to do? I don't want to kill her if she's quite nice, but doesn't match my breeding goals. I would leave her in the RC, will be adopted or deleted from the game. Deleting? It didn't happen with my geldings, so it won't happen with mares. Adopted? Will happen 6) again. That's why I would use spaying when nobody wants to buy my mare. A person who will adopt her will have a nice horse, good at showing and I don't have to worry about the worst possible scenario. Maybe a rookie who adopts one of them later will get interested in proper breeding of this breed? Of course, my spayed mare can be killed by someone, but I did all I could to find them a good home and at least she wasn't overbred before hitting proper age.

I am against this because of a few reasons.

#1 What kind of ethics are being promoted by adding such a feature? I have played numerous horse games similar to this one and not one of them have this feature because in the real world such a procedure is risky and potentially detrimental to the life of the mare, and I don't particularly think that altering a mare just to protect bloodlines is good logic, even if it is a game. Also as a side note which at first may seem irrelevant but just bear with me, studies have recently been being done in dogs who have been spayed and neutered and this research suggests that the drop in hormones is causing cancer along with other unexpected health problems in these animals. It is still being studied I believe so I am not sure what the outcome will actually be, the point is, if there is anything to this then the same may well be true of horses, and to me it just doesn't promote good animal husbandry at this point. I am also some what opposed to gelding stallions but that is a whole different issue because in real life this simply serves to make them more manageable.

#2 People are already complaining about not being able to sell horses. What do you think will happen when a bunch of people start spaying mares and all of the sudden they are still stuck with the same horse only now it's value has dropped because they can't even use it for breeding? Personally speaking, I have never purposely bought a gelding. I did accidentally pull two out of RC. They went back as soon as I realized they were geldings. They are not overly useful in a game where a major feature is breeding. I won't buy a gelding and I will under no circumstances buy an altered mare. New or not, I am pretty sure many other players will feel the same way. Why would they spend money on a horse that isn't fully functional. If this feature is added, it should come along with some sort of competition bonus so there might actually be a reason to have a less than fully functional horse.

#3 This makes more work for some one to put in a feature with no real benefit. Gelding a horse serves no purpose in this game other than to make him where he cannot breed. I might be more in favor of altering mares if there was some sort of competition bonus added to altered horses (both geldings and altered mares)

Just wanted to touch on the ethics part. One of the main ways to get rid of an unwanted mare who you do not want to breed is actually to neglect them by , starvation, dehydration, trapped in their own filth, and poor foot care till they keel over and die. ?? Spaying them seems a lot less "risky" in a digital form where you control the outcome to always be successful. So I rather promote spaying than neglect and a slow death? 

Also from what my friends tell me horses are a bit like rabbits what tend to be safe for a horse to eat is normally safe for a rabbit. (They are very similar in a lot of ways actually.) Some types of animals actually get cancer from not being spayed. If you don't spay female rabbits or etc. They actually have a very high chance of getting cancer from not breeding. Im not a scientist but I think that's a bit common with herbivores vs dogs who are carnivorous. Untill a study is done on horses specifically it's not much of an argument. 

Also that's kind of your own fault if you don't check if the horse is gelded or spayed. If you didn't want a spayed horse who's "value" that's been lowered then don't buy it? You wouldn't be "stuck" with anything you didn't buy? 

Your basically saying anyone who wants to protect their blood lines from being over bred and valued dropped that. "Too bad". And I don't think that's a fair view point. People protect blood lines all the time in real life with horses and dogs. If they don't want their lines to continue that's their choice.

The benefits are giving plays high stated mare who they can show and gain money from, freeing up space for players stables, not killing mares? In general. Most kill them off so they don't breed. 

Also I do believe geldings do perform better in shows? I thought that was a benefit to geldings? 

@ Therion: Unfortunately, Geldings do not perform better in shows. Currently, geldings performs just same as the rest. It was suggested by players repeatedly but Abbey (and some players) shot it down every time. I still do think Geldings should get small additional benefits (maybe higher Member EXP instead of higher chance of winning the shows) since geldings tend to do better than stallions in rl.

Last edited on 2018-09-28 at 08:25:44 by ωιςκεδ

I agree with Bye Bye. Numerous times in real life, geldings tend to have a better showing advantage, also in other horse games that I play, where gelding them is an option they get a showing bonus so why not on here?. 

Support.

I've been reading the previous comments and I want to share my thoughts.

Realism
This argument had been brought up multiple times. Personally, I find this argument irrelevant. As numerous players stated, this game is nowhere near reality. We are allowed to swap genders, colors, markings, and more. It's ridiculous to argue realism over a minor thing that happened in real life. Yes, spaying mare is not typical but they DO happen. It is POSSIBLE to spay a mare while it's IMPOSSIBLE to swap genders, colors, etc in the real life. Therefore, it is more realistic to have a mare spayed than gender swap, color swap, etc.

I saw someone argue that gender swap, color swap, etc was necessary for the economy. Personally, I disagreed. I think they are one of the main reasons behind the poor economy. Those credits items allow us to obtain horses with specific looks without using outside lines. Without those items, I would be forced to breed my horse to an outside line to get CrCr or any other formerly rare genes. With those items, I don't have to use the outside line because I can easily add CrCr to my stallion to which I am going to breed my mare. Those genes are no longer rare as well since there are multiple players who modified the genetics. Rarer genes helped boosted the economy by increasing the value of the horse and now we don't have that as well.

Flooding the Market
I saw several comments mentioning that they do not want spayed mares to flood the market. The reality is the market is already flooded with unwanted horses. Personally, I will not notice any difference between a flooded market without spayed mares and a flooded market with spayed mares. Both markets are flooded, period. The flooding in the market is a completely separate issue, IMO. I agreed that the flooded markets need to be addressed but preventing mares from being spayed is not the answer. You can simply filter the search by gender and you will never see these spayed mares in the search. As for the Rescue, a simple suggestion to add a Gender filter to the Rescue will solve the issue. 

Their Purpose in the Game
I've seen some people argue that nobody will use spayed mares anyways. Again, I disagreed. When I first started the game, I rescued a bunch of horses from Rescue and used them for riding school (with a few show horses). Many of them are geldings. I never planned to breed any of my rescues so I do not care if they are breed-able or not. The same thing will be applied to the spayed mares. A good spayed mare can fetch us, newbies, a lot of money. They also prevented us, newbies, from falling into temptation and breeding them recklessly. I had several geldings that made good show horses. I would've bred them carelessly even if I have no intention to focus on that breed. For example, I did own an Arabian gelding from Maple's line for a while. He earned me a lot of money and I was tempted to breed him. His stats and pedigree were amazing and he would've made a great stud if he wasn't a gelding. I have no desire to focus on Arabians so I would've bred him multiple times and sold the foals. By doing so, I would've ruined that line. I also will be saddled with extra foals under my care when I can't really afford them. Now, I am more experienced, I would've been so horrified at my own action if I actually was able to do so. Thankfully, that did not happen because that horse was gelded already. Instead of breeding him recklessly, I kept him as my income horse and was able to earn enough money to start my own lines of Clydes and GVs. I was able to play the game with more responsibility. Spayed mares will be useful to players who needed extra income just like the geldings are. 

Last edited on 2022-08-14 at 06:38:26 by 𝕷𝖚𝖈𝖎𝖆