Overbreeding?

Question to serious breeders on here...


How many foals is considered overbred? Will over breeding completely turn you away from a horse for stud and/or sale?
How much EVD do you take off for over breeding?

I restarted my lines after the game killed off my previous line of TB's at the beginning of the recode, and looking back some of my studs had 8+ foals and a lot of the lined tb's on this game trace back to my original lines- I really want these to be a tad more private this time

I think I consider 5 or more overbreeding. I have personally bred to stallions that have had more foals than that, but its more of a personal preference for me and not entirely a deal breaker.

However, on my personal ponies, most of them are only going to have a max of 3 foals. For those that have a ton of color combinations I may dabble with more than 3 breedings, especially if they are a sought after color with the public. But, 5 max public and private.

<sup>I don't really breed to outside studs, but I personally find 5+ foals off putting, especially if the horse is still under 15 years old and still up for stud. I used to have a max of 1 public foal for my own stallions, but I recently changed it to 3. I felt one foal was a little restrictive and wanted to contribute more to EV's breeds since my lines are mostly private and I don't always breed a 19 yr old foal from my pairings. I'm super picky about the players that breed to my studs, so it works out really. E.g. I might get two mares with high non specs requesting a low non spec stud, but if one gets fed hay cubes and is bred 7 times at 13 yr old, and the other a normal treat and bred 4 times at 20 yr old, you bet I'll pick the non haycube one heh. I'd rather a stud had no foals than waste a competition foal with haycubes and overbreeding.  My current limitations stand at 3 public foals and 2 private foals for a max of 5 with my own horses. For outside breedings, depends on a lot of factors with the horse and player. 

In regards to buying horse (missed this sorry), I prefer to buy horses that haven't been bred at all, purely in case I need to gender swap it, as I often buy to pair with a loner or because it'll be useful to me. I've actually just run into the problem of having horses paired up and ready to breed but suddenly discovering they were bred before I bought them, which has put my breeding plans on hold until I can replace them. If the horse is nice enough but been bred once or twice, I'll still buy it if it has a desirable pedigree/low non specs. Once it gets past 3 foals I'll often just not buy it.</sup> 

Last edited on 2017-07-10 at 13:44:00 by maplɛ

I tend to try to breed each horse only once for my own purposes, and at most twice (in some special cases like having a mismatched gender balance). As for public breedings I personally have never done them, as I don't want in some cases literal years of work spread indiscriminately. That being said though, I do allow breedings if someone contacts me privately to ask, but since that doesn't happen frequently I usually never exceed two foals from each horse. 

I don't buy horses very often myself, but I prefer ones that haven't been bred at all. I'd say anything more than maybe 3 or 4 foals would be a bit much from any horse. Once you get to 5+ it seems an awful many.

I tend to breed my horses a little more. Mares usually max at 4, but stallions will sire more. How I try to balance it though is I "kill" foals if they aren't to a certain standard. So my stallion who sired 10 foals might really only have 5 or 6. I breed more for color so getting the desired patterns and markings is most importan to me.

I personally don't breed to outside studs, but I agree that 5+ seems excessive. I also don't buy from other players mostly because I like my lines 100% private.

I've really knuckled down with my fresh lines...I breed max 2 times..Some of my pairs are only bred once..Just depends on  the pairings and if i think they'd be worth another go..

I rarely put up my studs for public breeding..most of my high stat studs are old, super long lines and aren't all necessarily clean lined..so I'm letting them die off..or breeding only the ones with the cleaner lines...

Although I do search for outside studs when I need them ( mainly for convo boosts or outside lines) I have a very hard time finding any that meet my standards in terms of quality...On ocassion, I luck out...but most of the time, the search is futile..

I tend to stray from buying horses that have had/sired any foals. I also am put off when the horses parents have more than 3-4 goals each (I've settled for 7 I think). The only issue I find with this, is when I was newer I would find a horse with a sure that had 3-5 foals, now I look at they're deceased but have something crazy like 17 >.>

I'm still learning haha. 

when looking to breed/buy, I pay 0 attention to the number of foals a horse has unless i'm looking for a specific sex and need to be able to swap it. The concept of overbreeding seems a bit silly to me, but i know others have their reasons. 

I breed most of my horses 2 or 3 times, but that's only for the lines with a stat focus(bc i wait until the horses are 19/20 to breed). I breed my color and conformation lines as many times as I need to until I get what I'm looking for. 

I won't breed any of my own more than 5 times. Though I'm going to be looking at narrowing that down a bit more, especially for mares.  I won't breed to an outside stud unless they have fewer than 5 foals and are over 15.  I also take into consideration how old they are and how many foals they've had already.  If they're 15 with 4 foals, I avoid them.  But if they're 20 with 4 foals, I'll go for it.  I look at how many more times they might be bred before they retire.  I generally won't buy horses that have been bred before, but especially if they've been bred more than 5 times already.  But this also depends on age.

I breed most of my horses between 2 and 4 times, so that I can select the best genetic combination and conformation from the foals. (Breeding 4 is fairly unusual, and is generally only if there are a lot of genes I want to try and get, or a low probability of getting something specific I want.) I keep 1 or 2, and sell the others, or may keep them as future stud/brood options. I never put up a horse I intend to breed for public stud/brood, though I will work things out with individual players if they want a breeding.
For quite some time I didn't restrict the number of foals my public studs could have - I put them up at 15, for a high-but-not-unreasonable price, and called it good, but I am thinking I will probably start limiting it more, as it's gotten very difficult for me to find horses that aren't related to mine.

For me, a stallion having 5-7 foals seems high, but not necessarily a complete dealbreaker, depending on how responsibly those foals are being managed, or what other qualities the stud may have, though for a mare that seems too many (simply because a mare has a week between breedings, it means she was bred fairly early.) A horse with 10+ foals has WAY too many for me to want to breed to or own them, though I have a few "project" horses with what I'd consider "overbred" ancestors. My hope is to breed them carefully for a few generations to knock the common horses off their visible pedigree.

When it comes to purchasing, a horse having more than maybe 1 foal is a major negative, and makes it far less likely that I will purchase it, largely because I very rarely buy any older horses. If I *were* for some reason in the market for an older horse, one that had a couple well-managed foals would be fine with me.

But pricing-wise, I generally won't buy an overbred horse as anything more than a school horse, no matter how good a deal it is. And I try to be careful enough that I will never have an overbred horse to sell.

I'm not sure if that long and rambly statement really answers what you were looking for, but... haha

I have started my own lines and i personally only breed each of my horses four time max. If i breed to an outside stud I look to see if the horse has been breed before and if so how many times. If a stallion i want to breed to already has three or four foals and is young under the age of 16 i will avoid the horse.

For sell i do not look to by horses very often but will avoid any horse that has a foal already. Or with related parents in the line.

Since i breed paints and like the different markings i will some times buy horse that have had one foal just for markings and will breed it to a max of 4 foals. then i hold the horse until it ages out and passes that way i know he or she will not have any more foals then the ones i have breed.

I breed my horses an absolute maximum of 5 times if the genetics are really special, but breedings like that are rare (1-2 cases in 70 pairs) and I usually only keep 2 of the foals anyway. generally, i breed my horses 3 times each, cause i want a little wriggle room in case one or two aren't what i'm looking for. 

when i'm looking for a stud, i won't look at ones under 16 and/or ones that have been bred more than 5 times.

when i'm looking to buy i prefer for there to be no previous foals, but if it's a really special horse then i'll accept one or two previous breedings.

It depends entirely on my goal with the specific line.

Some lines, mainly my Shetlands, I keep with a goal of improving the breed and gene pool. With these I consider more than 3 foals overbred, as I want to maintain a certain quality. I generally don’t use outside studs and only buy horses from quality lines.

With other lines, particularly one Trakehner line, I don’t care about inbreeding, pedigree or offspring. With these I have my own particular goals I want to achieve, studding/selling to others not being one of them.

I've never been bothered by the concept of "overbreeding". If a horse is what I want/need, I'll buy it.