Being organized...

[CarouselCowgirl]

So, my ultimate goal or goals will be to breed Morgans and maybe create my own breed eventually. My original plan was to start with foundies and just go for it; create the breed step by step and not pause at any in between step. I'm kinda unhappy with this though as it makes me feel unorganized for a couple reasons.
1. I've got many breeds and crosses on the farm right now. Some obviously are further along in generations and closer to Morgans than others. I HATE this. I like to be organized and only cover 1-2 steps at a time.
2. Player courses for horse ownership slow me down. I am NOT saying I dislike this feature. I actually like it because it adds some more challenges. Having to limit the number of horses I can have right now just frustrates my original plan and the problem I have above.

If I am going to eventually create the Morgan I really want to have a large gene pool, which I can't have currently due to the size of my farm and the fact that I have multiple breeds and crosses taking up my limited space. I feel like I want to just halt at a certain step in the 'Morgan formula' and breed up a lot of that intermediate breed to get a large gene pool for a while until I have a larger farm. I also am thinking about doing this because I am curious to see how well I can maintain 4* ratings in a single breed, and to see if I can get some greens!

I'm thinking I may take 1ish step back from where I am now and just breed West African Barbs for a while.

Does anyone else do this? Or what is your plan? How do you stay organized?

[SeinaMacabre]

I am going towards Black Forest horse with my breeding program, which is one of the most complicated breeds to get (If everything would go well it would take exactly 271 horses to get to Black Forest) -> http://www.horseworldonline.net/forum/v ... =17&t=2065
I am going to stop at Andalusians for maybe a month or so, just get more bloodlines and so on, to establish some good base to get to friesians, gypsy vanners and black forest in the final.

[Nikolaevna]

I am totally with you CarouselCowgirl. Took me ages to get a spreadsheet organized well enough that my damaged brain could follow it. Still isn't perfect enough but after several versions I settled. It's color coded! The limit to horses and finance limits along the way plus turn limits us poor people have (being spoiled in beta with all the goodies was a bad move and I knew it) can make one antsy. I've had decent success making my breeds but always the wrong gender as everyone complains about (free or premium account has no bias to this).

There is a natural pause if a cross-breed isn't made (what am I going to do with a Baladi) or it's the wrong gender or you have to do local comps to buy horse allowance/pasture/a market horse/hope for at turn/take a wee...

No organization tips from me. I need minions to work for me.

[CarouselCowgirl]

Nikolaevna, how do you manage a spreadsheet? I would like to, but I don't think I could. I go through months so fast and get new foals all the time and horses pass away. I couldn't keep up with it!

[Argent]

Spreadsheets are a lot of fun. I have all of the crosses for Lipis mapped out, along with the requirements for each breed (height/body/type) so I know where I'm going to need to adjust horses to make them fall in range. I also have my Lipi crosses mapped, as I'm particular about when and where I want certain genes added in as well as how related I want my horses. This also helps me track how many horse spaces I'll need, though it's sort of a moot point by now

[Nikolaevna]

Yeah Argent's sounds more advanced. I made mine before the reset for a path to my ultimate breed with all the crosses and recipes and color-coded the "easier" beginning ones green to start then the harder late stage red with in-betweens another color. Nothing too elaborate.

But something that might help I've been playing with that might help long term. It's essentially free. It's for real breeders so the breeds inside the program are set to standard but you can edit/add or just manually type in whatever you like (such as cross-breeds) Watch the videos if you have the time to get a feel for the program or dive in if a techie person:

Breeder's Assistant
http://www.tenset.co.uk/ba/

Download the Trial and then choose the Horse one obviously. It isn't really a Trial as you can use the free version forever. I got it to visually see pedigrees better for me personally (many options and you can customize). Plus all your horses are listed at once and you view all stats relevant to you. A lot of the stuff is meaningless for us so just skip over it when putting in information about horses.

And if you already have something typed up like a spreadsheet or even a text file you can import it!

[Randi Potos]

I've decided to work slowly towards my long term goal, too. I want to breed Oldenburgs. I started out one by one breeding each cross and going step by step, only to realize the gene pool for my eventual herd would be small and I'd likely end up with a lot of work ahead to refine the subsequent Oldenburg to my liking. So instead I've decided to focus on one breed at a time, create multiple horses from different foundation lines, refine the breed to my liking and then move on when I'm ready.

[CalicoJenn]

I am also working toward morgans, I am sort of one step at a time winging it however though.