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Basically, I have lines.

I've got my splash/frame line, which all horses have to have splash (preferred hom) and the mares are encouraged to have frame, whereas the stallions are culled for it (to stop lethal crosses). The base tends to be bay, but I throw anything with splash in.

I've got my liver/dp line, which has livers, chocolate palominos, and chocolate palomino pearls. Also got a bit of dun in it as well, and the very very rare bay.

And basically my other lines follow those rules. The horses in it HAVE to have that gene, and are bred to others with that gene. It makes culling easier, as well as sorting. Sometimes I do get horses who could go into either line, and I alternate who they breed to.

So a TL;DR would be that I have specific colours/patterns that I want, and I breed my horses to maximize those patterns in my herd.

I don't have specific lines, exactly. I do have certain colors that I breed for, and every horse I have can produce at least one of those colors. I decide who is bred to who based on which partner gives the best chance at giving a color I want. For example, if I want to breed for sooty brown splash and I have a mare that is chestnut but carries AtAt, I would be better off breeding her to a black stallion with two 'E' alleles rather than a chestnut or a bay. I of course match quality, except in bootstrapping.

I use prefixes to separate and sort everyone by gender, generation and special patterns first then names after. My mares all start with JL and my studs JS. Generations are sorted by an alphabet letter. Then special patterns NX - nexus and IC - ice (to stay intact descendants must inherit NX or ice)

Each generation also has their own barn so when culling I also go to each barn and do a quick paper check and any higher paper that is starting to be a majority within the barn gets the lower paper level snipped. All studs are compared superior to sire and AGA all brothers and I cull down to 3 sons per sire.

When breeding I usually use the pastures and go through one generation at a time normally starting with any special genes. I’m not overly fussed about inbreeding so I normally fill up the pastures and add up to 3 studs and let them cover whoever.

I breed Grullos. I use bulk testing so I am not swayed by a pretty picture and cull by SBA, inconsistency and any non Grullos get a snip.

It usually only takes me a few hours to breed, test, sort and add prefixes. My breeding herd isn’t huge but I’m working on increasing my foundation herd since it had gotten quite diminished after years of letting horses just age out without replacing and they’ve recently busted the seams of their 210 stall barn and are floating between the rest of my barns while I save up for a second one lol

I love my show horses. They provide for my breedings so I cheer every time there’s a snip.

Bandit, I was wondering about naming conventions. Thanks! I'm about to go peek into your barns and investigate your setup, maybe it'll give me some help. Right now I have few enough horses to name them all after stars, but I'm reading that some stables top out over 3000 horses! I'm going to run out of star names if I get that involved!

@towdolly, AGA is the shorthand for 'As Good As', a designation given when you run comparison testing on two horses. One horse might be superior to the other, as good as, or not as good as.

For me it's fairly easy, I breed even generation and usually the same era as well. All stallions are named that way and although I have lots the names clue me in on who was their sire to keep my breedings a bit diversified, on the whole other than generation and era anything goes! This with 1000's of horses too, I don't have specific colour lines, just all the pretty things, but by breeding even generations it's gives me a goal to at least be superior to sire each generation etc