How to break a world record?

[EclipticEnd]

Thanks! I do have a couple more questions tho:
- Is the range from the competitions or the locals?
- For the score, do you take the score without the penalties or the total with the penalities? To note the Best and Worst.

h0rsey's ranges should be the same for both locals and player-mades as far as I know.

I'm not sure whether you want to take the score with or without penalties. I would assume you take the total score with penalties added, but I'm not 100% certain. Someone with more experience might correct me.

[BlackOak2]

Thanks! I do have a couple more questions tho:
- Is the range from the competitions or the locals?
- For the score, do you take the score without the penalties or the total with the penalities? To note the Best and Worst.

h0rsey's ranges should be the same for both locals and player-mades as far as I know.

I'm not sure whether you want to take the score with or without penalties. I would assume you take the total score with penalties added, but I'm not 100% certain. Someone with more experience might correct me.

Use the penalties to fine-tune your horse. Penalties will tell you such things as optimum weight and optimum temperament. It doesn't much matter which one you use, just as long as you remain uniform throughout your data.

You want to make the penalties as slim as possible. So sometimes a horse that's super light, will require a slightly heavier weight than one that's light. And each horse can perform slightly differently, so the horse you're working on and it's direct foal may also be different.

I'd suggest you look at the base score first and then fine tune your horse you want to use to get to those records, using the penalties.
Think: is lighter better? - make horse lose weight for a turn (95% food). Try again... did the results improve or did they get worse? Then go from there.
Etc.

[SweetP]

h0rsey's ranges should be the same for both locals and player-mades as far as I know.

I'm not sure whether you want to take the score with or without penalties. I would assume you take the total score with penalties added, but I'm not 100% certain. Someone with more experience might correct me.

Use the penalties to fine-tune your horse. Penalties will tell you such things as optimum weight and optimum temperament. It doesn't much matter which one you use, just as long as you remain uniform throughout your data.

You want to make the penalties as slim as possible. So sometimes a horse that's super light, will require a slightly heavier weight than one that's light. And each horse can perform slightly differently, so the horse you're working on and it's direct foal may also be different.

I'd suggest you look at the base score first and then fine tune your horse you want to use to get to those records, using the penalties.
Think: is lighter better? - make horse lose weight for a turn (95% food). Try again... did the results improve or did they get worse? Then go from there.
Etc.

Ok thank you, i think i understand. But for world records, do they look at the total score?

[BlackOak2]

Use the penalties to fine-tune your horse. Penalties will tell you such things as optimum weight and optimum temperament. It doesn't much matter which one you use, just as long as you remain uniform throughout your data.

You want to make the penalties as slim as possible. So sometimes a horse that's super light, will require a slightly heavier weight than one that's light. And each horse can perform slightly differently, so the horse you're working on and it's direct foal may also be different.

I'd suggest you look at the base score first and then fine tune your horse you want to use to get to those records, using the penalties.
Think: is lighter better? - make horse lose weight for a turn (95% food). Try again... did the results improve or did they get worse? Then go from there.
Etc.

Ok thank you, i think i understand. But for world records, do they look at the total score?

The records themselves use the final scores only, for any discipline (should there be two scores listed).

[SweetP]

Ok thank you, i think i understand. But for world records, do they look at the total score?

The records themselves use the final scores only, for any discipline (should there be two scores listed).

Great! Thank you!

[Silverine]

I just wanted to note - you don't need to wait until 5 years to score test your horse. It doesn't matter if they're still growing or not.

(The following notes are in regards to score testing ALL of your stock, not just horses you may want to show.)

The point of score testing is to determine which of your stock to breed together to produce horses that will score even higher. (Score testing can also help you decide which horses to train to enter into shows, but that aspect is not as important for moving forward in a breeding program.) For score testing your horse does not need to be performing at its optimum, but every horse that is testing together needs to be performing at the same level.

Here is my score testing method. Feel free to read or not at your discretion.

I'm breeding my Knabs for dressage. In order to determine who stays to be bred and who gets culled I breed them in batches, wait until everyone is born, and then shove all of the foals in pastures together until they turn 1. (I use player-made shows for testing and horses can't compete in player-made shows until they are at least 1.) The foals are on pasture while they age, but not enough to keep their energy up. So by the time they all turn 1 their temperament is at Bombproof and their weight is at Poor. To make sure of this I will sometimes mow the pastures down to make sure the grass is insufficient for weight gain. Having everyone at Poor and Bombproof means that, even though their weight and temperament is not ideal for the discipline, everyone has the same modifier for weight and temperament and it is not a factor in one horse scoring better than another.

Once everyone is at least 1-year-old (they range from exactly 1 to 1 year 2 months just because of variances in gestation) and is Poor/Bombproof I set up at least 5 competitions in my chosen discipline, usually at level 5. Level 5 is high enough that the horses won't place out of it and low enough that they don't get egregious amounts of points. Level 10 would work, too, but I don't like inflating the points of my horses like that. Anyway, the entire crop gets entered in all of the shows. Afterwards I will record the scores, noting high scores and average scores. Any horse that does not score higher than its parents is immediately culled. Horses whose parents do not have scores are evaluated to see if their scores are in the acceptable range. Horses who score higher than their parents are evaluated against their siblings, and are checked for consistency and heart.

If you're curious, these are my score testing records. It also notes which horses I kept and which I rehomed.

In ten crops, my high score went from about 30 to being consistently about 32. This isn't a huge jump, but it's also only one generation removed from when I first started testing scores. (Foals currently being born have parents that were score tested but not grandparents.) You may notice that as the generations went on I became increasingly picky about which horses were kept.

There is a caveat to my testing: A crop needs to have at least 20 foals to force the shows to run. I've had a few batches with fewer than 20 foals at which point I've bought some yearlings from the market to fill out the last spots, and then just skipped over those horses when recording.