Phal's Florida Crackers

[Phalaenopsis]

This is a bit late in the game, or project, for me to start doing a breed log now, but I thought I'd at least do one.

So almost right away, I wanted to breed Florida Crackers, with hopefully breeding towards a more Western Pleasure look. At least, that's the dream.

I wanted to try my very best to breed within my own bloodlines, but very quickly realized it is futile, especially for some of the required breeds/crosses. I also realized very quickly, and am currently still doing it, that you may need to breed multiple generations of a certain breed/cross to get the evaluation you're looking for. I require my breeders to be at least 3* or higher in at least one breed they are required for. More is better obviously, but if it's even 1 high evaluation for a breed I need, I'll keep them. I also have a spreadsheet on all breeds and their requirements necessary for the FC (Florida Cracker). I also quickly rehome/retire any horses I don't need This includes 2* evals.

As I am typing this up, I am trying to find some of my foundations I started with, and thankfully I have one!

p Morena

Morena is the NAB I adopted and her bloodlines are still in some of the horses I have today.

When I first started breeding, I was trying to go one breed/cross at a time, and heavily preferred mares over stallions. Now, my current aim is breeding a Sorraia, as the studs up for public breeding don't meet my needs. I also continuously adopt new blood to continue breeding for WABs (West African Barbs) and evaluate them on Spanish Barbs (SB) and Andalusians to see if I can almost skip other breeding requirements to get to the FC. So my breeding plans hit the fan very quickly and I'm now all over the place.

[Phalaenopsis]

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[Phalaenopsis]

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[Phalaenopsis]

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[Phalaenopsis]

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[Phalaenopsis]

Going through my horses and their HGP/stats/conformation is making me want to take a few steps back and start over. Going through others' logs and how they're setting themselves up has made me realize I need to not do this so quickly to just get to the desired breed, but focus on breeding competitors and not just grinders.

I really do want to keep Morena's (foundation NAB mare) lines intact, but due to how quickly I was breeding the recipe horses, all have too low HGP/stats to be competitors.

The only horse I'm going to keep is my Arabian as she has become my lined grinder.

[Phalaenopsis]

Restarting the Project

I am now going to restart my project, and do it how I originally wanted to - one breed at a time. Even though this will take a long time, I'm realizing that by improving my stock and not just blindly breeding will reward me more so in the future when I do eventually breed my own Florida Crackers.

Firstly, I'm going to list the goals for each breed as I go. Once that breed is done and I'm happy with their outcome, I'll move on to/list the next breed. Thankfully I'm not too picky on color, so I'll take any colors/patterns I get. My hopes are to breed more so for HGP/stats first then later get into breeding for conformation when I'm closer to the end goal.

1. Breeding West African Barbs -- DONE
a. Adopt Arabian, NAB & Forest Horse mares, and 2 NAB stallions. I'll adopt 2 mares of each breed first so each stallion gets proper comparison.
i. Breed and compare foals to WABs and keep the highest HGP without reds. The goal here is to keep HGP above 40k and evaluations at 3* or above, with a goal of keeping as close to body size as possible. Any foal that does not meet these requirements is automatically rehomed.
--> Hitting a tough spot as there is only 1 page of WAB studs, with 2 meeting my HGP goals but are just too far out of my price range.
--> To date (May 24th), I have 5 WABs: 3 mares, 2 stallions -- Mares between 32-34k HGP; Stallions are 37k and 42k. I know COI has not come into play yet, but I do not want just one line of WABs, so will hold off on breeding with the 1 mare.
ii. Adopt more ancient breeds if foals continue to fail.
--> I'm going to adopt an Arab mare & NAB mare to hopefully breed to an outside NAB stud & Forest stud to not only get more outside blood in, but also find/achieve my HGP goals.
iii. Once I get a nice mare & stallion pair, freeze at breeding age.

[Phalaenopsis]

2. Breeding Mongolians
a. Adopt a few Przewalski mares to breed to outside Tarpan studs.
i Breed and compare to Mongolians and keep highest HGP without reds. HGP goal of 40k+ and evals above 3* are still maintained.
ii Keep at least 2 high quality breeding mares and freeze, if necessary.

b. Adopt a few Tarpan mares to breed to outside Tarpan studs. This will ensure that if I use a personal Tarpan as the other half of the Mongolian recipe, that the quality will not suffer.
i Breed and compare to Mongolians - the higher the eval, the better - will try for 5*.
ii Freeze if necessary, a 45k+ stud to breed to Prze x Tarpan brood.

> This is where I first started having trouble as the Mongolians were not well evaluated and did not produce quality offspring. I may need to stay on this breed for a while, but we shall see.

[Madonna]

Ping

Hi! I have a lot of low COI Andalusians and Sorraias. If you want I can give you one horse of each breed. I have them on that account and my other account Maesta.

[Phalaenopsis]

Ping

Thank you! I'll take a young Sorraia mare if possible!