I had nearly 40 bravery-bred two-year-olds this month. 90% tested superb, a few were average and a few were elite. Not a single premium.

All of these were by elite sires out of elite or premium dams.

For me, with a lot of mares, it's been a hit or miss, but there have been some that have hit their breed's LBs :D as for the rest, I'm planning to use them as testers and/or brood them out.

I have 9 programs, one for each breed, so I'll share how I do it.For a new program, I would recommend getting your hands on as many P and E mares as possible. Once you start getting a dozen LB mares or so, you can start thinking about culling. I cull mares using the breed LBs. LB mares are my official breeding stock. I keep all my "culled" E and P mares to test my freshmen. As far as I can tell, foals don't affect a stud's placement. Back before I had a large testing herd, I would test studs on random cheap mares that probably had sub-par bravery, and some would still land very high on the LBs.

Right now I'm brave testing all fillies regardless of pedigree because I need as many mares as possible. However, I have recently raised my standards so that I only bother brave testing colts that are from elite mares. Colts from P mares are instantly FRd at 2. It's been a while since I had a colt from a P mare do well on the BABLB.

I don't worry about a mare's production history at all when culling. I once had a match produce a BABLB stud one year and then an average foal the next year. From the exact same parents. That's certainly not common and don't let it discourage you, but it means that RF is just a little to wild for me to use it to judge mares that can only have 15 foals in their lifetime.

I only use studs that make the BABLB, and geld anything that falls off it. The only time I would consider breaking this rule is if there is no stud of a particular breed on the BABLB that I can get access to.

Clover, I would say that 90% superb is a little unlucky. For several years I tracked my studs' production, only counting foals from P and E mares. Below is a link to a boy with lots of tracking. My top ABLB studs, bred to top mares, will still produce superb ~50% of the time. But the smaller your foal crop, the more crazy your stats will look. My foal crops on my largest accounts are reaching 200.

My bravery is more of a fun project which also involves adding color, competing on the RIDLB with Ink is impossible now - but it's nice to learn how it's done at the top.