Some Numbers on who is booking full

[Tammy Stawicki]

Limits almost certainly did not come about because of one players breeding. It was more on the sire side that there were very popular sires that people ALL gravitated towards, and in some cases they were at stud fees well below their value making the issue even worse.

While certainly with limits in place it is advantageous to own a nice stallion as you are guaranteed able to breed to him, limits are certainly not advantageous to stallion owners. I'll use EC Jet One as an example. Best I can tell the year before limits came into being he made $5.91 million for his owner and that is while offering a $20,000 discount in stud fee to paint and appy breeders. Last year without that discount he made $2.25 million. That is a $3.66 million annual loss on a single stud. I would hardly call that advantageous.

So we can sit here and bicker amongst ourselves and get this thread closed and forgotten or we can put forward a meaningful discussion on how to improve mixed breed breeding for all.

[Kaine Saracen]

Firstly.... Your welcome

Instead of thinking about how much Fred hates on Barney, try thinking on a solution.... Oh yeah, I reckon I got one and more important, without giving it a lot of thought. I actually don't think it has a viable workaround

use the same limits that players have on Aj, allow a player to breed up to a maximum of 5 mares to an individual stud each week whilst retaining a max cap limit of say... 150 per stud and limit the owners booking choice to the excess 30 now on top.

if you want to breed 100 mares in a week you will need at least 20 sires to do it.

[Dave Trainer]

Its not all about the money. Some players have enough money not to worry about getting 2m less. They also have other studs who will be used more and recoup some of that 2m.

Improve mixer breeding.

Remove cross breeding limits.
Make the fee for cross breed studs a maximum of a % age of the fee for TB breeding (or QH breeding for other breeds)
Limit the number any one player can breed to a stud per week to stop anyone breeding en masse in the first day or two

[Laura Ferguson]

I still think the current solution is worse than the original problem (and is more divisive), and I would advocate just removing the limits, period, for mixers. I think the holiday sires and cross-breedable stallions weren't given an adequate chance to see if they helped to solve the problem, and the foal limits blunt some of the diversity those sires were intended to provide, which is another strike against it. At this point, I'd rather dig myself out of any future problem resulting from over-popular stallions than continue with the current situation. I'd have more fun, at any rate.

[J.r. Lewis]

Agreed Laura...let each of us figure it out on our own. I breed a lot to the same studs every season and I'm not too worried about it. If I'm banging my head against the wall in a few years then I'll believe that it's a problem but it's my own fault so I'll figure a way to fix it.

[Tom Lin]

Agreed Laura...let each of us figure it out on our own. I breed a lot to the same studs every season and I'm not too worried about it. If I'm banging my head against the wall in a few years then I'll believe that it's a problem but it's my own fault so I'll figure a way to fix it.

In theory J. R. I can wholeheartedly agree with your point of view, because you run a very big stable, obviously bigger than mine. And I certainly can agree with Laura's point of view but when it comes to practice it will be community asking the Steward to fix it when everyone's popular "A" sire mare has only "A" sired line stallions to breed to.

[J.r. Lewis]

Agreed Laura...let each of us figure it out on our own. I breed a lot to the same studs every season and I'm not too worried about it. If I'm banging my head against the wall in a few years then I'll believe that it's a problem but it's my own fault so I'll figure a way to fix it.

In theory J. R. I can wholeheartedly agree with your point of view, because you run a very big stable, obviously bigger than mine. And I certainly can agree with Laura's point of view but when it comes to practice it will be community asking the Steward to fix it when everyone's popular "A" sire mare has only "A" sired line stallions to breed to.

Totally agree Tom and I think that's how we ended up at this point in the first place, public outrage that their horses are too inbred. At some point the community has to take responsibility for their own mistakes. If too many of your horses have sire A in them then guess what, you'll have to go to sire B or C or D. I'm not really sure why that is so hard to figure out.

[Ali Hedgestone]

One thing that's not coming into this conversation and should is the overall # of available stallions. GP sires and Holiday sires have helped. But, there were a limited number of those. Running the numbers of ungelded colts in each breed that have made the $350k minimum you get:

Appys: 16
Arab: 12
Paint: 19
QH: 31
Pacer: 10
Trotter: 11

VS

Thoroughbreds: 306

Mixers are so competitive that it can be hard to get a good stallion prospect to that $350k minimum. I feel that we need more stallion options, not a lift of the foal limits. If that's purse increases or an increase in the number of stakes races, either option would work. I do know that I ran into several races last year where I had to have a potential stallion prospect run in an allowance because the only stakes available that week was already full.

We are breeding more mixers every year and I don't think the current number of races/tracks can keep up in certain divisions.

[Rochelle Bos]

I know I’m still new, but Ali has a really good point! We need more stallion options for mixers.

Maybe I’ll add opening a mixer track to my game goals, though that won’t be for quite some time haha

[Tammy Stawicki]

I don't know that it is that there isn't enough stallions retiring with that $350,000 magical cutoff insomuch as a small subset of them seem to be a lot better than the others so those are the ones everyone wants to breed to. Take paint middle distance which is a division I struggle to find stallions for. There are 37 stallions up on the studbook, of those you have the 2 holiday sires and 24 other sires with $350,000+ in earnings so 26 total sires that meet the minimum criteria. Admittedly that isn't a huge number, but if we now look at sires that have sired at least one freak (and in middle distance paint mares good luck winning a stakes race with anything less than a freak) the number drops down to 6. Horses that sired more than 1 freak drops to 3 (2 of which are holiday sale sires). So it is not surprising that those 3 sires fill up nor that people get frustrated when they can't breed to them at all. I also imagine its frustrating to players that own some of those other stallions that can't attract any mares. So if anything is going to change on the sire side I'd like to see more traditional sires able to produce some nice foals.

[Mr. Lord Rich]

One thing that's not coming into this conversation and should is the overall # of available stallions. GP sires and Holiday sires have helped. But, there were a limited number of those. Running the numbers of ungelded colts in each breed that have made the $350k minimum you get:

Appys: 16
Arab: 12
Paint: 19
QH: 31
Pacer: 10
Trotter: 11

VS

Thoroughbreds: 306

Mixers are so competitive that it can be hard to get a good stallion prospect to that $350k minimum. I feel that we need more stallion options, not a lift of the foal limits. If that's purse increases or an increase in the number of stakes races, either option would work. I do know that I ran into several races last year where I had to have a potential stallion prospect run in an allowance because the only stakes available that week was already full.

We are breeding more mixers every year and I don't think the current number of races/tracks can keep up in certain divisions.

The stallions are there, players are just being picky and not using them because they are not pushing out freaks like the holiday sires or some of the newer gp sires.

Everyone wants to use Ec jet one or San Patricio or Devon castle or scary Edgar.

Before all these steward created real life or made out of thin are A+ hypoing studs, players were happy using a stud pushing 3-4 % freaks. Those were studs like ghost striker, or or Tls Special Day or winner on the wire.

Now unless a stud pushing 10% freaks it’s almost useless and no one wants to use it.

What we don’t need is more created studs hypoing better than the player bred/trained options already out there. As a stud producer/owner before all these magicaly created studs were forced into the game I felt the holiday sale as a big slap in the face.
All the hard work of trying to produce a nice colt, get the earnings to be stud worthy ect ect were quickly ripped away when all the brand new hypoing better than anything we had created studs were sold to players for as low as $100. Instant atm machines for the lucky ones that got them.

It’s pretty bad when the top studs in each division are not player bred studs. What we don’t need is more of these.


The mixer division was the only ones not influenced by the steward’s touch. The drama we have with stewardbreds every auction is now starting to show its face with the stewardbred studs created and placed in the game.

Why even bother to breed/race up and retire a colt when a new out of thin air stud will just be created and trump everything players worked so hard to make.

Please stop putting these new A hypoing studs in the game. Let the players work this situation out. If stud A is booked, use Stud B. Then if B is booked use stud C.

I know people won’t agree with my statements, but it had to be said. We can’t keep putting steward bandaids on our problems. We need to be smart and find solutions.
Not everyone should always get a trophy. I’m sorry.

[Mr. Lord Rich]

Perfectly good studs not really being used by the general public:

Ain't Dead Yet
Clairvoyant
Sparksfly Wildside
Heza Dasha Luck
Horchata Ale
Irish American
Cabela Seven
Fireball and Beer
Gun For Hire
Golden Shock
Moonfly

I only looked at 3 divisions (QH, Appy and Paint Sprint). There are studs like this in each division not really getting mares due to the newly created studs. But all of these used to get mares.

[Ali Hedgestone]

I would agree with that Pete. In general I stay away from Sprinters, so maybe that's why I'm not feeling as limited?

I do breed Mids. Bred 6 different paint mares to 6 different stallions. Ditto with the QH mids 6 mares to 6 different stallions.

I breed a lot of routers. Both my QH holiday router/mid (who according to what was said when the holiday horses were given as gift, is the same quality as the others) and my newly retired QH router are cross breedable. Both are reasonably priced $15k/$10k for the holiday stallion and $10k/$2.5K for the router sire. The holiday stallion got nowhere maxed out (66 yearlings) and the router only saw 6 mares (all mine).

Options exist.

[Laura Ferguson]

Not really sure how EC Jet One (a purchase from a steward auction) belongs with Scary Edgar, San Patricio or Devon Castle (all homebreds), but otherwise, I get your point.

I'd like to see the limits eliminated, and rise or fall from there. I'm going to note that stallions like Scary Edgar, The Visionary, Devon Castle, etc., came from not using the hottest sim money stallion out there. At some point, you need to breed colts out of other sire lines, but the influx of holiday stallions has put a dent in that.

[Nena Olson]

Things may quickly change with gallops tonight and the adjustment of freak/stakes numbers in Mixers.