Organization - Just out of curiosity

[JustLanci]

Hey all!

So, I've been trying to figure out the best way to organize my herds/lines so that it's easier to tell who is related to who etc. I only just started playing a week or two ago so haven't had a chance to get into having a large amount of horses on my farm - so, my question is, for those of you who have been playing long enough to have lengthy projects involving many many horses and cross breed coordination, how the heck do you organize it all?

I'm having trouble with just a handful of horses (I've never been great with organizing though )

[Devolare]

Usually people sort them into "houses." At least that's what I've gathered from a few members. They sort them by a specific breed or characteristic (if you're at the breed you want and you're breeding for stats/color now).

For me, I usually split them up by mares/stallions, followed by what they're going to be used for. I always have 6 mares to a large pen, 4 to a medium, 2 to a small so that there is room for each of them to be pregnant. Then I have pens full of stallions, usually separated by breed. For larger projects, such as the one I'm currently working on, I actually create excel sheets to help me keep track. Another helpful tip that has been working for me lately is to give part of the parent's names to the foal. That way you can keep track of lines.




This girl, for example, is named "Dandy Exit." I instantly know she relates back to any horses with Exit in the name (dating all the way back to her great, great grandmother named Exine).

[JustLanci]

Cute filly! I really like the idea of using part of the ancestor's name in the foal's name, just like breeding/naming out in the real world. I was also considering starting a spreadsheet. Hmm.

[Nate]

I definitely organize mine into houses. I am currently breeding for conformation in my breed, so I group the horses who have good croup height confo together, five mares and two stallions who are required to have different parents per barn/pasture. Then I group those that have good back conformation. I use overall number of good/bad conformation points to break ties.

[Vaxxine]

I'm painfully disorganized but I do have way too many horses and I'm always happy to share what I've learned from my mistakes! I apologize in advance for my long winded manner.
I generally use a system similar to what Devolare described. I'm a turn burner breeder, so on special projects I'll put a single mare in a large pasture all by herself because I'm super lazy and really don't like moving the foals out of the pasture to be moved to another pasture after 3/4 years. This can drastically reduce downtime between breeding seasons [as well as wrist inflammation from extra clicks].

My stables are a mess.:oops:No matter what organizational system I use, eventually everything will fall apart, so when I get around to naming I try and stick to a system. It's similar to irl with some added HWO specific features. I find it useful for snap decisions for breeding, culling and avoiding tedious owners comments. It's not very good at tracing ancestry past two generations, does not consider %COI, and generally creates really ugly names.

Here's an overview:

Name format [colours are for demo only]
Stable ID**, sire, dam, name beginning with the first letter of the dam's name
Ω Ted Bright Bank

Only the far right name passes down.
Ω Ted Bright Bank x Ω Stan Fake Fence = Ω Bank Fence Fancy

Powers/numbers can be used to demonstrate positive or negative skills.****
Ω Blake¹: This horse has one positive [green or gold] stat.
Ω Sonya-³: This horse has three negative [red] stats.
Ω Bank-¹ Fence³ Fancy²: This horse has two positive stats, her dam has 3 positive stats and her sire has one negative.

A capital letter at the end of a name represents a producer of that breed
For example a tarpan x prze horses that produces mongolians would look like this: Ω Bank-¹ Fence³ Fancy² M
This helps me clean out the horses that don't produce. If they don't get their "letter" after a few years they are removed from the program. I'm sure a better breeder could make use of every horse, but I'm much more of a mad scientist minus the science type.

A percentage at the end of a name represents the percentage of the left most breed.
Mixes don't currently state the percentage from the stable page, so I include this in names when I'm breeding for pure. An 80% tarpan x prze with 2 good stats that produces mongolians would look like this: Ω Bank-¹ Fence³ Fancy² M 80

Homebred horses that prove outstanding require only their ID and a simplified "marketable" name
Ω Castlevania Mistress Madness eventually became Ω Castle
Horses with unknown parents also use this rule

On occasion I'll use the 2nd, 3rd and 4th letter position capitals to indicate good conformation.
If I'm breeding for racing, I'll mark speed above 40, strength above 30 and stamina above 30. Say Ω Shadow has 45 speed, 28 strength, 30 stamina I'd display that as Ω SHaDow


**I use an ID as a way to identify horses I currently own and not a brand, as the breeder is already permanently listed on the horse's page. I used it as a : "Cool! I already own that one!" tool when browsing through pages of competition results, studs, or sales. If I buy a named horse, she'll stay unchanged. If she is unnamed, she'll get the stable ID and a brand new name.

****¹, ² , ³ : [alt-0185], [alt-0178], [alt-0179]

[Arctictea]

I also put mine in "houses"; the pastures are organized after mare/stallion, with mares organized after breed, and then after age. The last one is actually quite handy to know - my younger and older mares have different quality, different parents, different amount of offspring and different death dates.

I also try to have consistent and useful notes on each horse - I have made a template that I use for all horses that I keep. It tells its GP and score from BR/score from conformation in the four skills that I breed for in my arabian/turkmenes/akhal-tekes. This is because neither the BR or GP is visible when they are dead, or you are looking at them when breeding.
I also add coloring comments there, such as "carrier of tiger eye" or "sooty".

For example:
"GP: 46,050

STA〔 *｜31〕 SPD〔++｜38〕
AGI〔++｜33〕 TPO〔 *｜36〕

sooty"
So she has green in stamina (with 31 points from conformation), very positive comment in speed and agility and green in tempo. Had she had gold in anything she would have been **.

Everytime I get a foal that I will keep I need to take a pause and "mark" it with a picture, copy and paste the template, and then edit it. This is by far what gets most annoying after a while - I have thrown decent-but-not-great foals away becouse I just was so fed up with marking them. I also try to take a couple more pictures of the horse while it ages, but that is mostly just for fun.

Parents are visible at the breeding page anyway, and I'm not too concerned about COI, even though I try to keep my herd away from all being too dependent on a single stallion, just in case he would carry something nasty.

[Alaina]

I started my herd out with six "houses" or "families" based on stats and color. Each family had six mares and one stud. Once the descendants of those families will always carry the family name in their name (i.e. Akehakeha o Mohio or Marohirohi's Brandt). The family name is always passed down through the dam's line because I will sometimes cross families through the stud line which could potentially middle things up.