At the start of the year, I have a group of 2YO's bred from a prior year. I pick the few that look best to race with. I sell a mess of them.

There's a few marginal ones that, especially in the case of Fillies, might not be bad in the breeding barn and that seems a better use than Breeding with totally unknown horses or selling them and watching them do better than the ones I kept.

My question: if I put a 2YO in the Breeding Barn, do you get "credit" in breeding for their full potential? For example, a 2YO with Ability of 75 out of 85 would probably be in the 90's by the time they were 5. If I put them into the barn as a 2YO, does their full potential get factored in? Or just their initial stats?

IOW, should I race them for a while to raise things to the max before putting into Barn, or just put them in as a 2YO?

Second Question: Do you need to watch out for in-breeding in the game, and mix up bloodlines? Or is that not something to worry about?

Well I usually race everything apart from the poor ones and I don't sell them because they end up coming back and beating you for some reason I just send to game pool and send over to my jumps game, you can usually pick up some 2 yo black type with anything bred half decent and then if they are nothing special at end of 2yo campaign I decide whether to breed or get rid then

As for the second question I end up interbreeding without really thinking about it quite often to be honest, I don't see any noticeable difference

Inter-breeding isn't a problem.

2yo's - They have to have very bad bars for me to axe them at that age.
I usually race them til at least 5yo - I have found a lot of horses are at their peak at 5 - so I like to see them go around.
But if you're solely focused on breeding beasts then putting them in the barn at 2 or 3 is fine.

About potential - I can't answer it but it's a very interesting question! - usually by 3 they have their improvement in their bars so you should have a good idea what you are dealing with.

Doug

Couple of adds to this, even if put in the barn at 2yo the horse stats will continue to develop, if you look at the same horse at 5yo via the barn you will see what you could have had.

As for the stats they pass through, there a million dollar question, and I am afraid to say I do not have an answer, I can say with a large degree of certainty, that constitution passes through directly as a stat at the time it is breed, thus older breeding horses who have lost this with age, but pass on the low constitution stat, but I am less convinced about other stats like potential, which I think is more a reflection of how good it was at peak and I have certainly had good horses from older horses whose potential as at breeding had fallen through the floor.

Now I tend to start chopping my mares when they get to 10+ a few who have nice stats or have continually breed good horses may stay longer.

Josh