My horses aren't eating enough?

[Kintara]

Ok I used to play and be quite active, but I stopped playing when there was some changes made and I still haven't got my head around them. One of the big things is that feeding is so much more complicated, and I simply got tired of all the notices saying that my horses weren't getting enough feed for energy and I missed all my new foal notifications. Plus my horses look terrible and I have way too many to try and individually feed them all, would cost a fortune!! So I've tried reducing amount of horses in paddocks with low grass but hasn't really helped, I'm about to give it all up again. Is there a simple thing I can follow as far as amount of horses in a paddock so they have enough grass?? I sort of get that you can have more ponies rather than big horses but how many?? I would have though that a paddock that is 50% full could grow enough grass??

It's seriously frustrating, I just want to go back to breeding horses and enjoyiong the game like I did before!!

Other things like when the game layout changed so I can no longer see extended pedigrees properly, and competing got more complicated I also have trouble dealing with but if I could stop getting all those horses not getting enough feed for energy notices I might cope with the rest!!

[PeacefulOreo]

Ok I used to play and be quite active, but I stopped playing when there was some changes made and I still haven't got my head around them. One of the big things is that feeding is so much more complicated, and I simply got tired of all the notices saying that my horses weren't getting enough feed for energy and I missed all my new foal notifications. Plus my horses look terrible and I have way too many to try and individually feed them all, would cost a fortune!! So I've tried reducing amount of horses in paddocks with low grass but hasn't really helped, I'm about to give it all up again. Is there a simple thing I can follow as far as amount of horses in a paddock so they have enough grass?? I sort of get that you can have more ponies rather than big horses but how many?? I would have though that a paddock that is 50% full could grow enough grass??

It's seriously frustrating, I just want to go back to breeding horses and enjoyiong the game like I did before!!

Other things like when the game layout changed so I can no longer see extended pedigrees properly, and competing got more complicated I also have trouble dealing with but if I could stop getting all those horses not getting enough feed for energy notices I might cope with the rest!!

When you're on a horse's page, you should see a vertical section on the far left that has the horse's breed, age, gender, etc. At the bottom of that, the horse's feed, it shows a % of the horse's feed. Generally you want that % to be pretty close to 100% to keep the horse from losing weight and/or gaining weight (some will still lose weight even with 100%, in the barns usually horses under 2 years old, so to keep them from losing weight the pasture is better). If you want the horse to lose weight, you feed the horse less than 100% (Needs to be decently low for the horse to lose weight) but that also means that the horse's energy won't be at 100% because the horse isn't eating enough. To make a horse gain weight, you need to feed the horse more than 100% (Needs to be decently high for the horse to gain weight). Under feeding your horse or overfeeding your horse doesn't effect the horse's health but it is part of many factors of how the horse does in a competition (Example: horses that are competing in Racing usually needs to be thin to moderately thin). Other things that affects the horse's results in a competition are temperament, conformation, build, and breeders report. Putting a horse in the paddock is a bit less expensive than in a barn because in a pasture, the horse is getting mostly grass and therefore needs less feed than a horse in the barn since the barn doesn't have any grass for the horse to eat. But, the barn is a good place to put a horse in that you want to lose weight. With the paddocks, like real world grass, can grow in the spring and summer and die out in the fall and winter. But with barns, you don't have to worry about the grass growing/dying.

Also, with feeds, different feeds can either raise, lower, or keep the horse's temperament the same. Like for instance, Sweet Feed will raise a horse's temperament (Example: from spirited to high strung) because it is high on sugar but Performance Mix can lower the temperament (Example: from high strung to spirited) and/or kept the horse's temperament the same since it isn't high on sugar. But, the horse's temperament is also part genetics too. For example, if a dam is high strung and so is the sire, the foal will most likely have a high strung temperament. If the dam is high strung and the sire is bombproof, the foal could be high strung, bombproof, even-tempered, spirited, and/or calm. If both of a foal's parents are bombproof, the foal will most likely be bombproof. With bombproof temperaments, it either can't be raised at all, or it can be raised slightly but it is extremely hard to do so.

With the pedigrees (I chose a random horse for this):



See the "+"? That will extend the pedigree to show the parents of that horse. You can go on and on with some horses' pedigrees. You can also click on a horse's name in the pedigree and it will take you to that horse's page.

[BlackOak2]

...

PeacefulOreo offered excellent information.

Use weight gain mix on your horses. I even have to add it to breeding mares in a pasture (that's 6 bred mares in the 12-count pasture).

It's best to let the pastures grow to 100%. Some horses will eat down more than others, generally speaking the larger the horse, the more they'll eat. Sometimes I've found 4 really large and the rest mini's in a pasture work out alright.

But your trick is going to be the weight gain mix and somewhere between 100% and 125% depending on whether you have a growing horse, a regular horse or a broodmare.

The great thing still is, no horse will die from being too fat or too thin. So as long as you have a grinder to earn you some income, the outgoing monies for feeding is easily compensated by the grinder's earnings. For me it comes to between $100 and $250 per turn, but my grinder easily earns 2 to 3 times that daily on the very conservative end.

It's a pain to run through all your horses and fill out their feed if none of them have it. But once filled out, all you'll need to focus on is those babies when they turn 6 months 'generally' and those pastures that start wavering in being over-filled and loosing quality, especially during the autumn and winter turns. With a full complement of horses (above 180 head on the farm), I still only get three or four energy warnings, or generally, none at all.

I hope either or both of our offerings help. Let us know if something doesn't make sense, or you have further questions.