Showing Tactics

Hello everyone, so I seem to have hit a brick wall in terms of showing and I need some help/suggestions as to what to do. I have a lot of horses (500+) and when it comes to showing there doesn't seem to be many shows available for me to put my horses in. I have heaps of horses that are in or around the same grade for Racing, Dressage, Driving, and Western. (endurance isn't included as I only have a small herd of endurance paint horses). 

I'm trying to slim down on the HUGE number of horses, I've already gotten rid of over 200 horses, I have been eliminating breeds that I don't really care about (currently they are sitting in the marketplace). But I still have a lot of horses competing against each other, and I feel like no matter what I do I sometimes (more often than not) that over 5 horses are in the same show. I feel really bad shoving all my horses into shows, but I can only create 200 so therefore by the time I have created my 200 I still have over 200+ horses that need to be shown. 

I also feel really bad asking people to make my shows but usually, I need an extra 150+ just for my horses, I don't think it is far to keep asking people to make that amount of shows all the time (players still need to be able to show their own horses).

I could get rid of a lot of my horses, or lock them but to be honest I would be very reluctant to do that. I have already gotten rid of a heap of breeds, and the horses I do have now are either new foundations or from lines that I started with when I first got into the game. Also, I enjoy having a lot of different breeds/specialties because I get bored very easily. 

So what do I do? 
Do I keep flooding the shows with my horses? which to me doesn't seem very fair and I feel really bad looking at the show results to see over 5 sometimes over 10 of my horses in the same show. The problem is that the majority of my horses are in the same grade, I try to spread them out as much as I can, but I can only do so much with only being able to create 200 shows. 

I recently tried using the riding school, but I prefer not to use this method due to the limited stat gain. But if it is one of my only options then really I have no choice. 

And, if I have to slim my herds how do I go about this? I'm kinda attached to the pixel ponies I have left after culling so many horses. So what do I do??? 

i'm not sure if you're already doing this but i usually don't show my horses until they're about halfway into their current grade. like if an R1 horse only has 615 stats i'll just school them until 650+ since they have a very low chance of winning 1st-3rd. and unless things have changed, placing 4th or lower (or placing in a show with less than 5 entries) doesn't earn any stats at all as opposed to a chance of gaining stats from schooling. basically it's worth schooling if a horse isn't going to earn stats through shows anyway.

besides that the only other thing i can think of is alternating which herds are active and locked. maybe keep some active for a set amount of time or until a certain age and then switch them out for a locked herd. you can also wait until a certain grade. i have some overlap with my driving and western herds, so if i find too many are showing in the same grades i'll lock one and let it fall behind the other one a bit to increase the grade diversity. with enough different grades you could eventually start seeing less overlap and try keeping all your horses active again.

I feel yah Laureal, I don't have that many at all, but I used to have three groups of driving (different breeds but all in driving), two groups of racing and two of endurance and I felt like mine were even competing a bit too much with each other, so I cut out one of each discipline ( would have done two on driving but I'm attached to both my Fries and Shetlands). 

What I've been doing to also try to help is I keep two lines going at once in each breed, but I wait until the first line is about 10 or so before starting/unlocking the next line and each line has only had 8 horses lately tops for each generation (with subsequent generations having fewer). With the two driving I try to keep varying generation levels (ie not starting a new line of driving fries at the same time I start a new line of driving shetlands) to also help with this. It has seemed to have helped, but my numbers are super low compared to yours (just 57 total horses at the moment, 11 of which are locked and waiting their turns or mates) so I'm not sure how feasible this would be on a bigger scale.

I'm too lazy to do the showing until a certain time before leveling up, so more power to you Bubbles for doing that :'D I just show mine all their lives.

When I struggled for enough shows for my horses, I would rotate a discipline for riding school, or enter half of my groups in it. Especially to cut down on self competition and not have empty shows with only me in it. Now I only have a couple divisions to work with at a time just to keep things easy for me 

So that’s an option if you don’t want to lock anything. But it will get easier once you get to higher generations and less horses from breeding. 

I totally understand your problem. I have 512 2nd gen racing TBs and - as I've changed my training plan for them in the recent month or so - they all should be showed and not put in riding school at all. As there are nor enough shows, nor enough participants for so many shows (and I put a maximum of 3 horses of mine into one show to increase their chances), I decided to work actively with much less horses per level (about 3-12). 

That's kind of frustrating, because the herd will progress much slower (most of the 2nd gens on R1 level) but I hope higher horse points and achievement points will get me better foals down the line. 

I don't know either how to speed up the process for such a large herd except for culling or locking many horses, so I'll just following this thread if anyone has any better idea.

I can definitely understand your frustrations with this. I start with very large herds of foundation horses. Even though I can make 600 shows daily I do sometimes come up short. 

If I am unable to find someone that is able and willing to make shows for me then I will lock up the divisions I ran out of shows for. I don't really feel guilty asking people to make shows because if they aren't using them and willing to make them then they do get a bit of profit from it as well. So I figure it is helping out the economy a bit. 

 I try not to put more than 5 of my own horses per show but every once in awhile I do end up with 6 or so in a show, especially if I am not paying super great attention and click past what I mean to. 

I also show daily and very very rarely use riding schools for the same reasons as you, the chance of getting more stats from shows is worth it to me. 

There are a lot of times when I've thought that auto generated shows from the game would definitely come in handy but at the same time there are so many people willing to make shows so I would rather give my money to them.