HGG Community Forums

A little over view of how I breed:
I only “evenly” breed. Meaning all of my horses are bred to others of the same generation and same papers.
So for example my gen 2 horses must be red/B papered. Gen 3 must be blue/A. For example I would never breed a gen 2 to a gen 3 or a red papered mare to a A papered stud.

Here is my process when breeding:
1. SBA test everybody
2. Comparison tested those left over. The way I do this is only to a maxed horse of the same generation. So for example I comparison test every gen 2 foal to a maxed gen 2 horse.
3. I then go through and get rid of any horses that are inconsistent. If I like their genes enough I will GMT them to be consistent.

Everything that doesn’t pass gets gelded/spayed and put into the show barn!

To answer your question “ Do you keep only those that are AGA that bench mare? When you get a surprise that's superior to that bench mare, do you throw out everything including the old bench mare and make the superior horse the new benchmark?”
- You can get around this happening by maxing the horse you want to comparison test everybody everybody to. It makes sure that they are the best quality possible from that specific mare/stallion cross.

I have a kind of confusing system. I keep track of horses that I can use as benchmarks within each paper level that I know where they are at from previous comparison testing. So for example I have benchmarks that I know are on the high end of red paper level vs. low end of red paper level, same thing for blue, *gold etc.

Every mare that I am considering keeping, after passing BA (and SBA if you have it), I comparison test to a benchmark within her paper level.

So, say I have a red second gen mare. I would comparison test her against my high red paper level mare first. If she compares as good as that high red, I would mark her as a high red mare. If she compares worse than, I would probably comparison test her a second time against my low red mare. If she compares as good as, I mark her as a low red mare. If she compares superior, then I mark her as a mid-range red mare.

Depending on the line or project that foal comes from, I would then establish my minimum base line of foals that I want to keep that season. So in this example, say I am breeding my era 9 second gen foals right now. I've decided to be super strict with era 9, and I know the maximum possible ability I could get is the high red paper level range. I would axe anything that I had marked as being in the mid or low red paper level range and keep only the "high reds"
In another project I might be more lax, and be willing to keep the mid and high range.

Another example how I might use this method is that I could take my breeding herd of 30 mares for the project, comparison test all of them to the benchmark(s), and then sort them into high, mid and low groups. I would then axe the low or mid range mares depending on how many I wanted to get rid of.

To establish your benchmarks I would pick one mare that you are guessing is hopefully mid-range within the paper level. Then start comparison testing all of the other same paper level mares to that one. Keep track of which mares test worse, as good as, and superior. You should hopefully at that point have a rough list then of mares that are on the low end, vs. mid range, vs. high end. I would then pick a high end mare, and comparison test all of the other high end mares to her, just to see if you can find one that is superior. If you find one that is superior re-test everything against the superior one until you get to a point where you have a small batch of mares that you can't find something superior to them. One of those would become your high end benchmark.
You could repeat comparison testing the low end mares amongst themselves as well to find a low end benchmark.

It's a lot of comparison testing up front to find the benchmark, but once you have it, super easy to just comparison test everything new to the established mark.

I keep a spreadsheet with every breeding horse in my herd sorted into their projects areas and color coded with how they comparison tested. So it's easy enough to start to see patterns and what horses to get rid of if I get mares coming of age that are superior to what I already have.

I hardly ever comparison test anything to their sire or dam. I already know from my spreadsheet where the sire or dam tested against my benchmarks, and once I test the foal to a benchmark as well it's easy to know if the foal is better, about the same, or worse than their parents.

The thing I like about my system is I can use the same benchmarks for any project. They help me pin down a range where the comparison tested horse is at and then I can go from there when I pick what to keep and what to cull depending on my goals for that month and that particular set of foals.

I’ll make note also that I do the the exact same process with my stallions. I have established benchmarks within each paper level and only have to comparison test new stallions once or twice at the most to pin down where their ability level is and decide if they are a keeper or not.

Going by 2nd generation, 3rd gen, 4th gen etc works better than by paper level.

I still use generation benchmarks for that. I find it most helpful personally to know where those uneven foals fall in the spectrum.