Stud Facilities...

I'm, quite frankly, finding myself more and mroe attracted to more breeds, but I dont like breeding on multiple accounts, SO I'm thinking about converting to a stud facility, and focus on bringing high quality studs to the market (of course, after I have the quality desired).


I don't know, I'm waffling lol, what are your thoughts on this?

Great idea - some breeds have a limited number of high quality studs ... but it sounds like a LOT of work & I hate that!

Good luck if you do decide to go ahead with it :)

Khatir, what breeds would you like to see higher quality studs of? I would be starting this (long project) with foundations to keep clean lines, and only have successors from my studs to continue on studding. I would likely have 2-3 studs of each breed.

There's about 18 pages worth of Studs at the moment, admittedly only about 6 of the pages are in the over 500 stats rage, but 10 pages of them are over 300 stats, so there's a decent chunk of "okay" studs.(All this by cursory search) There's 10 pages worth of Studs under 10k, about 1 and a quarter pages of those are studs over 500 stats, some of which are listed super low like under 1k.
So basically what I'm trying to say here is it's not the best market at this time. I used to get fairly regular requests on my studs in Old EV, and even some good ones as this version started up, but it has now stagnated quite a bit and I only get about 1-2 requests a week if that. I think mine are priced fairly reasonably, starting at 8k and going up with foals produced, and maybe it's now that I just have worse stock than I had before, but it's harder overall to get decent studs out just to be studs.

I have way more luck studding from my lines or foundations than other people's lined horses. But it's all in what people are looking for at the time, color, stats, conformation, there's been big kicks in each for different breeds! I know my Buckskin Trake made enough breedings to get him to 150k in stud prices(mine usually go up incrementally with each foal) and he still had people breeding to him!
Also a recommendation if you do go the stud route, put them up for public. more people are likely to use a stud if he's publicly available unless he's super amazing or something, or you have limited breeders that want smaller lines. Your market and prices will shift depending on which type of breeders you're catering towards.

You might be better offer trying to offer a brood mare service.

I'd be interested in a GV broodmare of high quality and an teke stud of high quality. And if you do both services, you can breed better foals yourself as well.

If you're considering studding, do it large enough that you would only have to breed each stallion a total of 3-4 times. 2-3 would be preferable, but if you're keeping a foal from each to move onto the next generation, 3-4 would be better. The issue I see in the horse market (from my section of it at least, I'm in 5 breeds atm) is the extreme overbreeding of studs, and the early breeding of studs.

I've been a reason for it, on occasion, if you look at my breeding book for Del he's gonna end up around 9 foals, which is three times as many as I originally wanted. Mainly though, I try not to go over 4 for studs and 3 for mares. The market needs new blood, just not being flooded with one or two new ones. Brood mare services would work too, since I know I sometimes have too many stallions and no mares to match them.

I don't stud out all too often, but that might be because my horses haven't quite gotten into the age/stat range I want them to be in before I stud. I don't stud before 17, and when some studs are open at 6 years old it's hard for my geezers to get a following. XD

:'D I made the mistake of being over zealous early on and maay have over bred some of my current stock. Im horrible.

Not to worry ive done the same... erg xD But as a few of them have said there are numerous studs and i quiet frankly would love to see a brood mare service!

* a nice GV mare service would be pleasing to many

Last edited on 2016-05-13 at 09:38:35 by Bopper

Overbreeding definitely happens sometimes. I'm only recently starting to be consistent on reining it in. When I started it was incredibly difficult not to want to make a ton of high-stat foals with the one or two high stat horses I had. Even now, I know I could do just a feeeew more breedings and make a bit more money... but I won't. Cause down the line I'll want to breed the foals I have now, and don't want seventeen of their half-siblings around to breed to, and especially not a ton of nieces/nephews.

I'm incredibly picky over who I sell stock to now, for that reason. I don't want to sell any of my horses to anyone who overbreeds or studs out their horses rather early, because I'm trying to be extremely select. >.>

-pets the pretties-
my babies are important to me. xD

Yeah, Im in the same way, NOW. BUT, I also am still in my first "generation" of foundation stock o_o; and I realized "crap I messed up" with the breeding. So I'll probably end up gelding the vast majority of that stock to prevent over saturating my lines.

Do you think it would devalue the foundations grand foals if their successors followed a stricter breeding Regime?

This is something I started doing when I had a surplus of stallions after breeding, so I just thought, hey I'll offer theses guys only to the public. Now I have a small little stud "barn" (they are really not that epic) that has made a very little on the side.

This is something I'm going to faze out. I've found it kinda pointless, unless you can offer epic studs from uncommon lines.

I find value in strict breeding practices, so I don't see their being an issue. It would just have to be gone about in a different way. When you're studding a less notable or lower statted (from being foundation/second gen/third gen) your horse won't be on the top of that stud list for points (where most newer members immediately look when they want to stud because more stats=better horse for a lot of newer people)

Making a thread in the boards planning out the breedings in the weeks before they become available would probably be the best idea for it, since you can talk about their good points. I, for one, check pedigree, number of relations (foals their mother/father had), color, stats, confo, and previous breedings. And age. I've found horses that I love, that fit most of these, but are 14-15 with high stats and two breedings under their belt. Most likely, that means they'll be bred more, a lot more. Also, if it's a really nice looking foal with good birth stats, I'll check to see the age of the parents. If the parents are only 14-15 I'll normally pass, because I know their could be endless brothers and sisters down the line.

Like Dox said, unless you can offer epic horses from uncommon lines, it might be hard. You might have to skip studding that "foundation" generation and keep the first set for yourself to stud the next generation out. Putting a thread up on the boards is really helpful when showing off a stud, even a foundation. I have a lot of unpaired foundations when they get into breeding age, and often struggle to find other nice foundations to breed to, to keep the lines clean.

Do you think it would be best to phase them out over time then? (my first generation)

Which I'd considered doing, buuut I have two studs I am particularly fond of at the moment, which would be Ikonik and Hatchworth (the two I was highly over zealous about breeding because I loved their colors and wanted babies)

In my opinion those two are too low statted and I would never breed my horses to them therefor. Also Ikonik already has 10 foals, which is too many in my eyes. I had one generation of my shetlands with only 4 stallions and about 10 mares of multiple ages, so I bred them on the best age possible for both horses (and then I realized I made a mistake, one of the mares was actually a stallion)