Curious about the composition of barns

[Laurel Addams]

In my Active Runners Barn (what I enter every week) I have 13.6% stakes and freaks. I try to run everything at least a couple of times, but I have a good handful of lower galloping horses in my Inactive or Improve barns at the moment as well, so that number is slightly inflated.

[Kelly Haggerty]

This is all really helpful. I have 30% stakes and above in my active racing stable. To me, that feels like "a lot" but I am still on the new-ish side and working on building up a barn. My preference is to keep productive and above of both genders, and only fillies in the solid and claimer ranks. Then at 2 I immediately retire the lower-galloping fillies and hypo them to see if they are worth keeping as breeding stock. The colts I will pension or give away. This means:

1) I stay interested in everything in my racing barn
2) It stays a manageable size and I can pay more attention to each horse's best routine and placement
3) I miss out on some big improvers with multiple improvement potential. Someone else will get my rando solid-to-freak jumper or he will pension before hitting the track
4) I am part of the behavior that drives Em nuts and also drives the need for gallop adjustments cause so much of what is hitting the track is allowance and over, making anything less than an over-performing productive feel like a money-waster (at least in my main division).

Because of 4 I tried keeping everything last season but I wound up with a mess of half-worked, half-fit, not knowing who was who kind of thing. And, I started losing interest. I guess I could make better use of the custom barns instead of just doing everything from the default racing, training, etc. barns. Oddly, I treat my chasers differently and race everything, as my claimers get some checks and even a win once in a blue moon, even though at the top of the division it's brutally competitive.

Still working on an approach. But, now I know that 30% isn't "a lot" of stakes horses necessarily. Thanks again.

[Carolyn Eaton]

In my active runners - its 40% (I only run allowance and above, with an occasional well bred productive progressive I'll give 2-3 starts - if they don't improve they go back out of the "special" barn).

The chaser barn, which is in its own barn and often forgotten - I only run the stakes and freaks (none of which have been all that freaky).

[Jon Xett]

Over 800 racers 2yo and up. Less than 100 of which are stakes/freaks. But >250 are Alw. Which leaves >500 Productive/Solid/Claimer types. Never give up on a horse because You Never Know. jX