One Approach to Managing a Large Stable

Original article written by Regina Moore posted 11 years 4 weeks ago

When I was first in SIM, I was aghast that some players had hundreds of horses. I was outright appalled to later discover that some players even had thousands of horses.

How could they manage that many horses?

Now, some ten years later, I have 888 horses, and newish players sometimes ask me, “How can you manage so many horses?"

Here’s an answer to that question.


ARE LARGE STABLES REALLY THAT LARGE?
First, one has to carve out those horses that actually need proactive management.

I have 282 horses at pasture. These are geldings that have been pensioned from racing, and stallions and mares that have been pensioned from breeding.

Horses at pasture require absolutely no management. Because I have my own farm, where the pensioned horses are boarded, they cost me nothing. If I didn’t have my own farm, then I’d have them at a $5 farm, and each one would cost me $80 per game year (16 weeks x $5 weekly board).

Subtracting pastured horses gets my number down to 606 horses that require some kind of active management.


BREEDING STOCK
I don’t need to do anything with my 13 stallions, unless I decide to do a forum post, advertising their latest accomplishments. For a newly retired stallion, or a fussy nicker, I might be on the lookout for appropriate mares to purchase on their behalf.

With my 142 broodmares, I’ll probably put about 30 in an auction later in the year, along with some newly retired fillies, because I don’t want to breed that many mares. The hard part about an auction is deciding which mares to part with. That’ll bring the broodmares, along with newly retired fillies, that I actually breed down to around 120.

I spend game points doing nicks, which includes making handwritten notes (each mare and stallion has their own notebook page for nicks), and then making final decisions on breeding. So, that can take a lot of time. In my case, however, I do breeding over the course of a couple of days after Week 16 races. So, while it is a time consuming process, it’s one that I actually only spend two full days on. Therefore, most of the time, my broodmares don’t require me to do anything with them.

For players that spread out their breeding throughout the year, I would expect that the organization of their mares is probably more challenging. In addition, if one likes to lease or swap mares with other players, that’s going to involve more proactive management of mares, in terms of determining who has what mare; and, of one’s own mares, which ones really belong to somebody else. Thankfully, the new SIM 5.0 has introduced the option of leasing mares to other players, (rather than using the method of gifting, or selling if there’s a lease fee), so the computer will automatically return the leased mare to its original owner at the beginning of the next game year.


TRAINING BARN
The training barn probably has the most flexibility, in terms of how little or how much players choose to do with their youngsters.

At the minimum, 2yo horses need two workouts before they can race. If that’s all a player wants to do with their youngsters, then their yearlings aren’t going to take much management.

At the other extreme, are those of us who like to do as much as possible with our yearlings, in order to find out what they need and their capabilities, as well as giving them the most thorough possible training, without tiring them out.

My training barn has 149 horses, which includes eleven 2yo Arabians, since they don’t race until age three. All but a few are homebreds. Since I breed to race myself, and am a player that tries to get the most from each and every horse, I do various training (longing, etc.) with the yearlings before they start doing workouts, as well as equipment checking. I then do meticulous equipment training on those horses that need a second piece

So, my training barn requires a lot of management. However, I only work with my training barn on Saturdays. Therefore, the rest of the time, I don’t need to think about those horses. It also keeps me from, say, working out a horse one day, and then accidentally giving it another workout two days later. Those mistakes of doing too much with a horse virtually never happens, because working with the training barn one day a week means I never do more than one thing with each horse per week.


RACING BARN
This leaves 302 horses from the original 888, of all breeds and types, in my racing barn. But at this point in the game year (Week 6), a chunk of those horses don’t require any proactive management. The 2yo Thoroughbred milers and Standardbreds don’t start racing in earnest until Week 8, and the Thoroughbred routers don’t start until Week 10. That’s 50 horses in my barn. So, I’m not doing anything with those horses yet, except giving them gate and paddock training which, thanks to the group training element introduced in SIM 5.0, is a lot less time consuming than it used to be.

When those horses need to be entered, I’ll be busier, but I will also have retired or pensioned bad performers in the meantime, and the number of active racehorses will be continually shrinking throughout the game year.

Now we’re down to the real action – the 252 racehorses that need to be managed at the present time. That number is considerably less than the 888 number that is my current horse population.

The main thing that needs to be done with those horses is entering, which I do for the mixed breeds on Thursdays, and for the Thoroughbreds on Saturdays.

I also choose to walk my horses a week after their races and two days before their next race. Again, the group training aspect of SIM 5.0 has been a great timesaver.


KEEPING CONFUSION AT BAY
Whether one considers 250 active racehorses to be “a lot” or not, I think the most important aspect of managing that size of stable is to have an organized regiment. Certain things get done to certain groups (breed/distance/surface/age) on certain days of the week, week after week. That way, I know what I need to do each day with a designated group of horses.

If one has SIMperior, they’ve got a chart for their horses, where one can, say, sort the “Last Raced” column and work with each group of horses that last raced on a certain day. That’s also a good way to keep from making mistakes, such as exercising a horse that raced recently.

I don’t ever have to think about doing anything on any given day, because I have a checklist for each day of the week. I’ve been using the same checklist for over a half dozen game years, and I like that it frees me from having to remember anything. The first item each day is to “Check Notes” on my home page. If I’m doing something out of the ordinary with a horse (such as having it entered in two races, because I can’t decide which one is best), then I put a note on home page that I need to do something with that horse on a certain date. Putting information in one’s notes is only effective if one remembers to check their office notes regularly.

If one takes the approach of clicking on each of their horses, and deciding if/what they need to do with the horse that day, that’s very time consuming for a large stable, and it’s easy to make mistakes, in terms of, eg, galloping a horse today, without realizing it just raced three days ago. I’d have to think that’s one of the worst ways to manage a lot of horses, unless the player has an awfully lot of time to spend on SIM.

Even worse, is just haphazardly deciding to click on a horse and see if one wants to do anything with it. With that lack of organization, horses can slip through the cracks and end up not racing for a long time.


I have a large stable by virtue of wanting to participate in all breeds and all types of Thoroughbreds, but it really doesn’t take as much management as one might think upon seeing a population of 888 horses.

Every player has to decide how large of a stable he or she is willing to have. That decision is going to be influenced by how much time one has to spend on SIM, and how willing one is to organize the management of their horses.

---

Back to New Players articles