Testing Your Horses

(Copied over from breeding section: should stick to simple explanations of what the tests are measuring, what that means for your horses, and link to more information.)

Concept: Keep the upgraded testing features brief. Just simple explanations and link to a more advanced testing page that talks about strategy of improving your lines in Building Your Stable.

Outline:

    Breeding Advice

        Strict Breeding Advice (link to upgrade page)

    Breeding Inspection (link to upgrade page?)

    Performance Testing

• • What does Consistent / Inconsistent mean?
    • This is a measure of how consistently a horse will perform when shown. A perfectly consistent horse will have exactly the same score both times it is shown in a week. This is a solid, reliable, predictable show horse.

      Inconsistent horses will have days where they perform flawlessly and outshine the competition, but on other days their heart won’t be in it, and they will place much lower in the class.

      Consistency is mostly applicable to showing results. The only relationship to breeding ability is that inconsistent horses are more likely to have inconsistent foals.

    Genetic Testing (link test)

    Comparison Testing

    “No Testing” Setting

        Wait, didn’t you say always test a horse before breeding it? Why would you want this? (link to bootstrapping page)

How do I know if my horses are any good?

• • Hunt & Jump has several different tests you can use to help you decide what you should do with that particular horse. The basic tests are:
    • Performance Testing (PT) - will give you an indication of how well your horse will perform in shows.
    • Genetic testing - will reveal the genes that make up your horses coat colors.
    • Breeding Advice (BA) - will tell you if the horse will produce good foals, or not
      • Breeding Advice will AUTOMATICALLY spay or geld horses that do not meet the minimum standards for breeding quality.
    • 
  • It is recommended that you use every test available before you decide to breed your horse (see the How Does Testing Help section), but especially breeding advice!

Testing 101

How Does Testing Help?

• • • It saves an enormous amount of time and energy!
    • It gives you some of the information you will need to build a winning herd of show horses and a successful breeding program
    • It is much easier to sell a horse when the buyer can see that how it will perform in various areas of the game. Why take a gamble on an untested horse?
    • Several of the tests are free. While it is better to utilize all the tests you can, some can be cost prohibitive. There is no reason NOT to use the free tests!

Exceptions to the testing guidelines

• • • There aren’t any!

Available Tests

• • Breeding Advice (BA)
    • Horses that do not pass Breeding Advice WILL NOT be good breeding quality animals.
    • Intact horses are compared to both parents, or in the case of Foundation horses, a standard benchmark.
    • To pass BA horses may be slightly worse than, about as good, or better than their parents.
    • Offspring, or Foundation horses, that are found to be significantly worse than their parent/benchmark are automatically spayed or gelded.
      • Significantly worse, in this context, means a lot worse. If these horses are used for breeding, the quality of the line will substantially decrease, essentially putting you back to where you started.
  • Strict Breeding Advice
    • SBA is available to players with a Premium Upgrade
    • While Breeding Advice (BA) will allow foals who are slightly worse than their parents to remain intact, Strict Breeding Advice requires that the foal be the same as, or better quality than both parents. Only the finest foals pass SBA.
  • Comparison Testing
    • Comparison testing allows players with an upgrade to compare one intact stallion to another in your barn. This can be an important consideration when deciding between two similar stallions.
      • Comparison Testing will return one of the following results
        • ‘Worse Than’ which means just that; Horse A will be a worse breeder than horse B
        • ‘About As Good As’ (AGA) which means that horse A may have the same ability as horse B. It could be a little bit better or worse, but in general the horses will have similar breeding abilities.
        • ‘Superior To’ means that horse A is a much better breeding horse than horse B.
    • Comparison Testing is fairly expensive, so plan your comparisons carefully.
  • Breeding Inspection – aka Papering
    • Stallion Papers
      • Showable Only: This means just that, should only ever be used for showing. Consider it a definite fail as far as breeding stock is concerned.
      • C: This represents basic/foundation level breeding ability. Perfect quality foundation stallions are C-papered.
      • B: Exceptional foundations and many 2nd generation stallions are B-papered.
      • A: Only exceptional foundations that have been given 5% breeding boosts can expect to see A papers. Otherwise, these are sometimes bred in the 2nd generation, and often in the 3rd.
      • *Star: This is the highest a stallion can paper. You normally will find this, albeit rarely, in boosted 3rd generation lines - most often in 4th and beyond.
    • 4a This inspection will provide you with an idea of how good a breeder your horse will be. Whereas Breeding Advice and Strict Breeding Advice will tell you if a horse SHOULD be bred, Breeding Inspection will identify the level of that breeding ability. Stallions and mares have different papering ranks/levels.
    • Mare Papers
      • Failed: The mare equivalent of a stallion's "Showable Only" result. This mare has no place breeding
      • Yellow: This represents basic/foundation level breeding ability
      • Red: Exceptional foundations and many 2nd generation mares are Red-papered
      • Blue: Only exceptional foundations that have been given 5% breeding boosts can expect to see Blue papers. Otherwise, these are sometimes bred in the 2nd generation, and often in the 3rd.
      • *Gold: This is the highest a mare can paper. You normally will find this, albeit rarely, in boosted 3rd generation lines - most often in 4th and beyond.
    • 4b The only way to change a horses papering level is to add a breeding boost, otherwise, paper levels do not change.
  • Un-altering and Boosts
    • Sometimes a foal will pass Breeding Advice (BA) but not pass Strict Breeding Advice (SBA). If this is the case, and you have the funds available, you can Unalter the foal in the Advanced Facilities and then give it a breeding boost to see if it will pass SBA on the second try. There are no guarantees that this strategy will work, however, and it can be very expensive.
  • Genetic Testing
    • Genetic testing shows you a list of genes a horse carries, to help you determine what gene, or combination of genes is causing a color or pattern to occur
    • There are some genes that are “hidden” and will not appear on the list.
      • Sometimes you can determine the presence of a hidden gene by the horses coat color. Sometimes you can’t!
    • Certain genes can be seen in the list, but you won’t see the results on the horses coat. For example; Silver only shows on bay and black horses. You will see the genetic symbol for silver on a chestnut horse, but the horse will not show the silver colorations.
  • Performance Inspection, aka Performance Testing (PT)
    • The Performance Inspection will give you a general idea about how well and how long your horse will perform in shows. Lower scores do not mean that a horse will be a bad show horse, only that they may not make it to the higher levels of showing, the elite classes like Grand Prix. They can still make you money even in their lower level classes, points are points no matter where they are earned.
    • PT scores are indicative of how many training points a horse will receive with each training session.
      • Horses will only receive those training points if they are trained. Members with free accounts need to remember to train every horse ever week.
      • If you pay to change a horses consistency level in the genetics lab you will need to run the PT test again, since consistency quite often (but not always) affects PT scores. (See What does Consistent/Inconsistent Mean? )
    • As soon as a horse is spayed or gelded they begin to earn extra training points with every training session. This gives them the potential to be better show horses, so they earn more show points, which adds to your daily show bonus
      • You will not see an actual change in the PT score of a spayed or gelded horse. They will, however, earn the extra points.