Does anyone have a good stategy in going about this?

[Macabre]

I signed up close to the beginning, but sorta drifted off for about six months. A lot has changed here! My horses don't seem as nice anymore lol.

Originally I wanted to produce performance Thoroughbreds from the ground up. Maybe I still do? I mean I have some horses I know are solid building blocks, but I guess I kind of got distracted with breeding horses for "x" sport, regardless of breed. For instance, I have a Forest mare who I consider a pretty solid hunter, and another Arab mare that's pretty solid in Sprint/steeple. The question is, use them to breed better Forest hunters and better Arabs racers, or just start making TBs right away and breed out all the crappy genes later?

I was a bit distracted with the (modest) success of my two mares that I just kind of started breeding hunters and sprint racers. But I'm sort of left with a mish mosh of mutt horses. I could probably use some for breeding TBs, but I feel pretty overwhelmed with them all.

So I don't know. What do you do?
Get the breed you want and worry about genes later? Establish successful foundations and tackle creating a new breed after? Do you tackle it genes before show results or show results before genes?

Thanks!

[Argent II]

D), all of the above. I have multiple projects going at once, and I kind of drift between them depending on my mood. It helps to have two accounts.

[Macabre]

Well I feel better knowing I'm not the only one. Maybe I'll feel better if get rid of some of the horse I know are going to get me no where.

I do need to create another account anyway. The only thing that is going to be difficult is getting both accounts upgraded so I actually have space for horses.

[Kayaine]

I only breed arabs right now, but since I breed for color, I do a lot of crossing. I don't breed by discipline, but I expect my horses to all perform reasonably well in something. I breed for a good(avg or better in all stats) breeding report and a 25+ in all conformation traits. I've found that it can be very difficult to breed bad stats out of horses and even then, they'll creep back in for generations. When I make the jump to paints, I plan to cross breed my great arabs with reasonable paints and then keep crossing the better horses until I work up to full paint bloodlines. Not sure if this helps, but it's what works for me!

[Scythian]

There are so many horses being offered for sale or breeding now that even slow players like me have reasonable hope of developing complex breeds -- not necessarily from scratch, just doing those last 2 to 4 steps.

One of the interesting facts about competition is that not all successful horses in a given discipline have perfect breeders reports for those criteria. Looking at reports v. records/rankings, it just seems as if some animals have a talent for an activity that is sometimes unexpected.