HGG Community Forums

Holy cow Batman, that’s a lot of mares!

I think probably my first step would be, the bootstrap herd no longer gets pasture bonus. That solves that little issue, opening up that room for your higher gen mares to stay in pasture.

I would also maybe move your foundations, with the exception of your new boys that don’t have any second gen and beyond foals, to a rotating 15 day pasture bonus. That will take some timing to make sure the second group gets enough bonus before the season ends, but not terribly difficult (just time consuming). So that opens up quite a bit of space there, cutting out half the foundies from pasture full time. (The day you rotate your foundies would be the perfect time to throw your bootstrap mares in and breed them before setting up the second group of foundies.)

And then maybe possibly going through and tightening up your second gen and beyond groupings. Cull out inconsistencies, genes that aren’t as desirable or sizes that aren’t as desirable. You could also look at where lines could overlap, and one season this group of second gen (or whatever gen) mares gets bred by X line stallion, and next season they get bred to Y line stallion. That way there isn’t any need to pull mares out of pasture, they keep the bonus, and both lines are getting foals.

Bootstrap herd already doesn't get the bonus.

I can't really combine lines more than they already are. I have a light bone line that requires sooty, a mix bone line that requires no sooty and a draft/cob line that prefers sooty. Then my bootstrap herd is separate.