HGG Community Forums

Will inconsistent horses ever be good showers?
Yes, they can be. Here are two of mine with a good amount of points.
http://hj2.huntandjump.com/horse.php?horseid=1096134
http://hj2.huntandjump.com/horse.php?horseid=810504
PT is a bigger factor than consistency in good showers I think.

I have a few foundation top notchers and exceptional producers, but they don't seem to be giving me that great of foals.. or how can I tell if they are?
You can look at the average PT of your foals. I’m getting an average of anywhere from 9.9 to 10.2 so if you’re in the ballpark of an average foal PT of 10 that is probably normal. If not I would look at what Stallions you are breeding them to. To maximize a top notch producer’s potential they should be bred to B papered stallions and not an average ability C papered foundation.

I know foals can become better showers as they age, but what if they haven't won a single show and then start doing poorly as a 2 or 3 year old? At what rate does showing improve? I know some can be good breeders without being good showers, but how can I tell that unless I get more than a few years into them?
Foals do not train at all or increase their Score. So I don’t care one lick about how they do as foals. I also don’t care about how many shows my ponies win or lose. All I care about is their PT and lifetime points. I weed out foals below a certain PT (10.3 currently in my herd). Then as the horses age I weed out horses that seem to be lagging behind in points from other horses in my barn that same age. So for example if I have 5 four year olds with points of 150, 145, 120, 80 And 75 I would weed out the 80 and 75 point earners. Once show horses reach six years old in my barn I quit calling them and they stay for life in my barn. I usually see horses points start to improve more quickly between 3 and 4 years old.

Does PT, or earnings or points, give me any indication when comparing two horses of similar showing ability as to which I should keep?
PT and points only in my barn as I explained above. Earnings is such a minimal part of your income because their earnings are so small once you pay entry fees. Having horses with lots of points increases your daily income and that is where most of your money will come from. So keep horses with higher points,

I'm just so confused as to who to get rid of and my niece wants me to make more babies! Lol can't afford more room yet, but I hate auctioning foals.. they just don't seem to be worth much to me right now if they aren't producing.. or are they with my show bonus?
If you are always auctioning off most of your barn and then filling it with brand new babies each year you’ll have a hard time increasing your total barns points and increasingly your daily show bonus income. Ultimately you need to be keeping a big chunk of show horses around for their whole lifetime. My highest point horse in my barn is 21 years old and I bred him myself, so he has stuck around my barn for almost 2 real life years now and he has over 3500 points.
http://hj2.huntandjump.com/horse.php?horseid=384510

Making reliable income in this game is about long term strategy and keeping horses around that will eventually bring you good income.

Thank you for the explanations!
I guess I'm just slowly going to have to grow my barns. Lol
I wouldn't mind spending money if I had RL money to spend.. :P
Hopefully if I cull my low PT horses I can start a smaller, but more consistent herd. I think I got addicted to breeding more and more. While trying to figure out how it all works. :)
Maybe a few more clarifications.. I think I've asked this before somewhere..
Does consistency make for bad or good, breeders? What is the negative to consistency? How big of a part does it play? It is all just luck, right? How good a horse shows?

Papering gives you a rough guess of a horses breeding ability. A foal could pass BA but could be a paper level below their parents. This tells you that the foal is slightly worse than the parents.

Usually you tell whether a horse is low or high by comparison testing. PF's are high C's and should be AGA a low B. Exceptional horses are low Bs, and so one knows that a 2nd gen blue/A that comes from them would automatically be on the low end due to the parents.

There are only like 10 horses that are very inconsistent that I could find :/

The best way to compare horses that have the same paper level is to look at their Average Foal PT score. If you don't have a Premium Upgrade, you will have to figure this yourself. Another hitch is that if a horse has not had the Performance Test, it cannot count towards the AFPT.

But, for a bunch of foals that have been through the Performance test, add up all their PT scores then divide by the number of foals.

Note that the more foals a horse has produced, the more accurate the AFPT is for comparing breeding ability with another horse. For stallions, this will be a larger sample than for mares, since stallions can produce up to 50 live cover foals per year, and mares only produce 1, unless you are able to pull and use eggs.