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Lately, I've been getting pretty fed up with my AD breeding. I've been getting lots of EEEs, but no Ws no matter how much money I dump into stud fees and items. EEEs > PPPs, but my breeding program isn't really moving forwards at all and I think I need to make some changes to make that happen. So, I have a couple questions that I would really appreciate if a more successful stable could answer :) 1.) Are any of my mares worth keeping in my program, or should I just sell and/or brood them out? The ones I breed with are mostly EEEs with decent training and fairly steady EEE production, but only a few Ws produced among them, and only one has produced a W for me. 2.) When/if I try to get some fresh blood, should I be looking into purchasing mares or should I try to get broods and set up some nice matches? Thank you in advance to anyone who can help me out! :) |
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I'm not saying, I'm more successful at it, but maybe I can help out as well :) However I've been pretty much at the same place you're now. I've had plenty of EEE mares producing decent foals but I didn't see improvement after that. No LB placings etc. What I did was to dump almost my whole breeding stock to be part of my show army and concentrated on my two best mares (decided by training and production). I made sure I sent them to high ABLB studs preferably with a sven to boost. I'm not saying my herd approved a lot but within two game years I had my first homebred EWE. 1.) With a relatively small gelding army like yours I'd concentrate on your 3-4 best mares (preverably your regular EEE+ producers). I've taken a quick look through your breeders barn and I've spotted some mares with rather bad training and production. I usually cull any mare that is down a training bar week 5 and 9. Same goes with production. Some mares have only ever produced a lot of PPP and PEP combos with the occational EEE. A good example is her: she was down 3 bars week 9, and she's mostly produced PPPs so that would be a definite culling candidate to me. It's up to you where to draw the line but the stricter you are the better for your breeding programm. I personally wouldn't brood the mares you cull. If you don't want them, why sell them to others to breed more weak foals? I CS the mares I cull and use them for showing. 2.) Broods are dead cheap at the moment. Especially well producing EEE mares are usually below 50k (depending on breed). So it might be a cheaper option than buying. However it might also be worth keeping an eye on auctions. |
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I agree with the above. I'm not the most successful stable, but I don't keep anything that can't produce to my standards (except a few EEEs but they're just for brooding out, pocket money and all that), brood out all of your EEEs, save the ebs your geldings earn and buy a brood of a good EWE+ mare, top ABLB straw and potientially an item. Aim to only have 1 maybe 2 really strong matches every RO. That's how I bred my first WWW. I like to pick studs from the top 20 ABLB and no lower, but this could be difficult depending on what breed you're interested in breeding. This is the best time to start buying broods, the brood market is utter piss, it won't start picking up for quite some time and if I was you I'd really be taking advantage of that. Oh, and also matching. Don't settle unless the match is perfect. And once it's perfect, forget about it until RO. I may be superstitious in saying it but I find the more I stress over matches, the worse the foal is lol. Worst thing you can do is second guess your matches, the RF gods are so cruel |
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I was like you back in september and still am. I was breeding only EEEs that were not consistent producers. The advice I got was the same: breed to top ABLB studs with top mares. I sold all my previous stock and with that money I invested on more geldings and on those said matches. Well, I went from breeding crappy EEEs to breeding PPPs out of those top matches. My results haven't changed or improved on any way. The only thing that has changed is the huge amount of money I spend. What I want you to see is that it can happen, that no matter how much you spend, it won't necessarily take you anywhere and believe me it's terrible specially when you have to start. The only EWE I got for now was out of my PWW mare. Stallion fee was 25k. |
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RF can play cruel tricks on you. I've had LB matches flopping, that's part of the game. You have to be patient, it might take a while until you see results. |
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Sunny
