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Hey StarBar, I have a 0% In-breeding and era specific set of breeding programs.

I tried doing the whole separate barn thing for each era and gen and to be honest it was a pain in the backside. I gave up with this and now have a naming code that works with the Search Horses function.

Naming every horse by their era and gen in the easiest way to do this, for example my foundations are simply coded E8, E7 etc... with further gens being 8G2, 7G2, 6G4 etc... Searching by the name and splitting two search tabs between mares and stallions works best for me. This allows me to check the colour genetics are compatible before looking back through the pedigrees to check for inbreeding on later gens.

With regards to the advantages of keeping Eras separate, the one thing I can think of is for longer down the number of generations when doing 0%. I've got a feeling I might have to combine two eras once I get to gen 5 / 6, so if I then breed my 6G5 and my 7G5 lines together there won't be any chance of having relations in the other pedigree, especially with totally homebred lines. I'll probably do the same thing and combine Eras 7 and 8, and then 8 and 9. But this is very niche to my playstyle and you might not find this useful.

Yep, putting the E8 foundation stallions you have at the moment should give you a mix of E6 & 7 second gens.

When I breed my foundations in pastures, I tend to do the actual breeding in a set of smaller 10 horse pastures. This is a bit expensive thought tbh, when I had a job it was a manageable, but now I have to be careful which mares I rotate in and out of pasture, as I can't expand to have all my mares turned out.

I do this so I have more control over which stallion I breed to which mares. Most seasons I'll start with five foals from each new stallion, I try and have between 2 and 4 newbies each season until that era starts to age out.

Plus I don't trust myself to actually breed the 60 mare pasture. I know I'd have the wrong horses in there by accident and end up with a right old mess!

Also, thank you for sharing your kind words about my program. It made me very happy.

Adding a new question here, as I go through and sort out my G3s by era -- I have a handful of mares who are related in some way to all of my stallions within E5.
So my options would be to either breed them to an outside stallion, or breed them to another G3 stallion within my own program, but from an later era, and the resulting foal would be an E5 either way, correct?

What are the disadvantages to breeding to an E6 or E7 stallion to make more E5 fourth gens? I feel like there's something I'm missing here.

You are correct that Era 5 mares bred to stallions Eras 5-8 would result in Era 5 babies. I agree with Waly that the only disadvantage at Gen 4 is that your babies won’t be Futurity qualified, but it sounds like your goal is to be more about era and 0% inbreeding anyways.

I have an era based program, but I don’t care at all about inbreeding. It got too hard to be leaderboard chasing and avoid inbreeding at the same time. Theres only so many ***star studs in an era and you have to keep using them if you want to stay at the top.

Spreadsheets are your friend! It sounds like you’re already on board with that tactic. My spreadsheets are always evolving and being tweaked as I adjust my plans, and strategies.

I need to get my laptop and then I will type up more detail about how I organize myself. This post is already giving my thumbs stress typing this much on my phone.

A spreadsheet is a godsend if you are doing Era AND want to be 0%. You don’t have to be 0% to get on their Era boards, you can do it though. To my knowledge there is currently no advantage anywhere in the game to being 0% inbred. I do it for the challenge. :D

I am currently focusing on Era 5 and up for my 0% Era programs. I have 10 generations planned as that’s about where things cap before having to boost (it might actually be nine but I like a nice rounded 10 to soothe my OCD. :D
Era 5 foundations are getting harder to find so I will eventually need to supplement new eras. I kinda started haphazardly but now starting with Era 8, only that era foundations will be used.

I have my eras separated by barn to make finding them easier as I haven’t 100% updated my names. I use the same naming prefix as Wensum - Era7 Gen 2 is 7G2. I use @* @* to create to random names, and then foals get the first 3 letters of each parent and another @*. For example - 7G2 Blue Wish x 7G2 Red Night would have foals named Kh 7G3 WisNig @* . I use embryos 100% and pasture bonus mares, and select pairings I will flush the mares. This naming makes it easier to find siblings for culling if the end up in a different barn. I have a pretty big stable and wasn’t exactly organized, but I am getting there and have a good system in place when new horses come in.

I am more than happy to share any breeding stock I have to help your programs. I do a post when I put up extras in auction- The next big one will be on the 28th but I might have a smaller one before if I run out of room.

The one thing I highly recommend for any long term projects is getting your show barns making money for you. I’m going to start a separate post for that.

I do think that a 0% inbreeding program would certainly be easier if you were not concerned about eras. The biggest challenge with no inbreeding is how many unique foundation pairs you need. If you aren’t strict about era you can always create more and be adding new blood into the mix.

I think if the 0% inbreeding is more important to you that is a good way to go.

As you grow, you could diversify and have separate projects too. For example I have a backwards breeding herd, a herd that is strictly a fancy color line where I'm being super strict about benchmarks and even generation breeding, and my eras herds that are all era based and have kind of willy nilly inbreeding and bootstrapping going on as needed since I'm going for leaderboard contention for those eras.

For what it's worth, this is what I do with my eras herds:
I have a 30 acre pasture for each era full of mares. I also have 1-3 studs for each era, depending on the era. As I get studs with a higher paper level/breeding ability I rotate out the lower ability studs.

I keep mares in my primary barn until they reach 3-4 years old before rotating them into their era pasture. As I rotate new mares in, I kick out the lowest paper level/breeding ability mares. I have a spreadsheet where I keep track of what paper level I am at in each era so that when I do my new breeding I can weed out foals that are below the ability level I have already reached in that era.

When I do my breeding I set aside some mares in each era to breed to an outside stallion for 10 futurity foals. I am usually looking for the highest papered stud possible in a color/bone/size that I like. I then split up the remaining mares amongst my stallions for that era. Depending on the era I will use surrogates and eggs to get 40 foals out of my 30 mares instead of just 30.

Newer eras that have not reached cap breeding ability yet I am trying to breed even generations, once the era reaches CAP that all goes by the wayside and I'm just looking for best possible cap or boosted stock to breed to, with no regard for generation.

There's probably a lot of other little things I do, but that's the nutshell.