Once you reach 20 days' seniority, you can create and run your own center.

First of all, you should be aware that the reserve of a center is strictly separate from the reserve as a breeder. You will have 25,000 to create your center. It's up to you to make wise choices on how to manage this money.

Here are the sources of income of an equestrian center:

• boarding other players' horses and ponies
• selling crops
• speculating on droppings
• by crediting your center's reserve with one pass, you'll win 500 + your seniority will increase tenfold (max. 20000 per pass)

To enable you to build your center and buy everything you will need for its proper operation, Ms. Hubert also has an equestrian centers' store. It is run the same way as the breeders' store, but with different departments:

• Competition department, where you will find racetracks. You may have two, including the one with which you started your center.
• Box department, where you will find Boxes of various sizes and bedding of various qualities
• Meadow department, where you will find meadows of various sizes and fertility, as well as the greenhouse.
• Agriculture department, where you may buy seeds, fertilizer and even manure to make your own fertilizer.

On the centers' store page, you can also view your inventory. Use the link "Access the secret market" to find items from the store at a low price. You can also resell items to Ms. Hubert, if need be, but she will not buy back racetracks, boxes or meadows.

You may board one horse per box. Due to the necessary construction time-frame, the number of boxes that your center can have is determined by your seniority on Howrse. Thus you may buy one box for every 2 days of seniority. However, if you buy them with passes, you can buy as many boxes as you like.

There are various boxes with different dimensions. The larger boxes will give your center prestige, given that they offer your horses more comfort. Each box must have bedding. There are various qualities of bedding. You can purchased bedding and boxes at Ms. Hubert's marketplace.

Of course, the type and condition of the boxes have a significant impact on the wellness of the boarders at your center. For this reason, bedding, size and cleanliness are crucial for the recuperation and morale of the horses that are sleeping in the boxes. The quality of your boxes is one of the elements that determine the prestige of your stables. Note that you can upgrade a box and thus make it larger, which will have an impact on the overall quality of all your boxes.

Bedding

For the comfort of the horse or pony, there must be bedding in your boxes. To buy bedding, go to the centers' store. Once your bedding supply is acquired, it will appear on the right-hand side of the store page in your inventory. Go to the "Boxes" page, click "Manage the bedding of my boxes", and select the bedding that you want to use and that you have in your inventory.

To maintain the boxes and change the bedding every week, you must also have enough grooms for the number of boxes in your center. You need one groom for twenty boxes. The first is free. You need only hire a groom when your center has more than twenty boxes.

The grooms work during the maintenance of the site at 7am (GMT). Therefore, if you have just purchased a new box, it will not have bedding until the next day.

Repairs

Your occupied boxes wear down by 2% every day. They must be repaired before they reach 100% wear. Otherwise they will be destroyed and the horses housed in them will be evicted. An icon to repair the box appears when the wear and tear level reaches 75%: it is a small anvil. The repairs will cost you 200 equus per box.

Reservations

If you wish to board the horses of a particular player, simply reserve one or more boxes using the "Reserve this box" icon, which represents a hat.

You can acquire showers to make the horses boarded at your equestrian center more comfortable. Horses with access to a shower in their box spend 10% less energy than horses without one. Each box can only have one shower.

If you delete a box with a shower, don't forget to move the shower first. Otherwise, it will also be deleted. Likewise, when a box disappears due to overuse, the shower in it also disappears.

Land

You must buy meadows from the centers' store. You will use this land as pastures for your boarders, and as fields to grow crops, a major source of income. The meadows available at the store are of various sizes and are not all equally fertile.

Fertility is crucial as it will determine the yield of your crops. It will be taken into account in the quality of your meadows in your details, and horses put out in a more fertile the meadow will eat more grass. The latter point will have consequences on the spending of the owners who board their horses at your equestrian center.

Whether you decide to use a meadow as pasture or as a field for crops, its fertility will drop if it is used. To restore fertility, you must let the meadow lie fallow. However, the meadowcan only be restored up to its fertility level at the time of purchase. A meadow that was not fertile to start with will therefore never reach 100%.

The fertility of a meadow increases by 1% for each day that it lies fallow in spring or fall, by 3% in summer, and by 0.2% in winter. Land that lies fallow in winter will only slightly increase in fertility.

Pastures for the boarders

A horse needs one acre of meadowland. You must therefore have a set number of acres according to the number of boxes in your center. For example, a center with four boxes must have a minimum of four acres of meadowland. Note that it is better to have more meadows, to be able to grow crops on some of them and also to be able let some lie fallow so that the soil may be given a rest and restore its fertility.

The cleanliness of the meadows is very important. In poorly kept meadows, boarding horses run the risk of eating toxic plants. They will take some time to recover. To maintain your meadows, you need grooms. If you have enough grooms, in proportion with the number of boxes in your center, the cleanliness of your meadows will go up as the days go by. Note that for the first twenty box, the groom is provided by Howrse, and you do not need to hire one.

Agriculture

You can grow crops on five fields at a time regardless of the size of your center and that of your meadows. The crops that you grow depend on the seasons. Crops may only be grown in the spring and summer.

If you have a greenhouse, you can sew the seeds of your choice in it at any time of year with no restriction other than the 5-field limitation, the greenhouse counting as a field. However, you cannot grow apples or passes in the greenhouse.

You may install a scarecrow in your fields, which keeps pests away and increases your crop yield by 50%.

Crops and their season

In spring you can grow:

• Carrots, 9 days to maturity
• Barley, 10 days to maturity
• Oat, 11 days to maturity
• Flax, 8 days to maturity

In summer, you can grow:

• Wheat, 9 days to maturity
• Turnips, 7 days to maturity

In fall, you can grow:

• Passes, which takes 30 days. To grow passes, you must have a large fertile meadow of 15 acres and natural fertilizer.
• Apples, which takes 30 days. Once the seeds are planted, you can harvest apples every fall.

In winter, you cannot grow anything unless you have a greenhouse. If you have one, you can grow anything except passes.

To earn money, you can sell your crops to Ms. Hubert.

There are two special cases:

• Carrots, which cannot be sold, are available to the boarders at your center and will give your center a little more prestige.
• Straw may be kept for bedding instead of being sold.

To start a crop in a meadow:

• Go to the marketplace to buy the seeds and fertilizer that you want to use.
• Go to the meadow page.
• If the meadow is already being used as pasture, click "Fallow", then click "Start a crop".
• Select the seeds and fertilizer for this meadow.
• Confirm. The crop now is started!

Note that the use of fertilizer will reduce the number of days to maturity.

To make your own fertilizer at a lower cost, buy manure from the centers' store. It is available in accordance with what the breeders sell. You need 25 kg of manure to make fertilizer for 3 acre of land. Once you have purchased this quantity, you can transform the manure into fertilizer on the "Meadows" page.

To harvest a crop, click "Harvest the crop". You have twenty days to do this after the crop has come to maturity.

Once you have finished harvesting, click "Stop harvesting" to fallow this meadow and subsequently let the soil rest a while, or start another crop right away, or use it as pasture for the horses at the center.

To run the center, you need employees. There are several occupations on Howrse:

• The grooms tend the horses, change the bedding and maintain the pastures. You need one groom for twenty boxes.
• The farriers fit the horses at your center with horseshoes. The farrier increases the quality of care of the center. You need one farrier per equestrian center.
• The riding instructors enable you to organize lessons, a source of income for the boarders. Lessons are taken into account for the prestige. You need one instructor for thirty boxes.
• The saddlers. You need one saddler per equestrian center.

In the event of a shortage of staff, you can call upon the services of temp workers. You can lay them off when you no longer need them.

To put together the staff of your center, go to the "Employees" page. It will take some time to build your team. Remember to integrate your employees in the life of your center, to ensure their loyalty so that you will need to use temp workers as little as possible.

The salary that you pay your employees also has an impact on the prestige of your center. The prestige will be higher if you pay your employees the top salary.

You can work at your own center. The simplest way to do this is to make yourself a reserved job offer by putting your identifier in the space reserved to this effect. A center may not hire more than two farriers or two saddlers.

To ensure the loyalty of employees who've been working for you for more than 10 days, you can offer them a 45-equu bonus which can be added to the maximum salary for their profession.

If you have an equestrian center with an activated forum, you may give an item to another player who is not your friend. This allows you to offer prizes to win if you have contests on your forum. You may also reward your most loyal employees. You may only give away the items that are in the inventory of your equestrian center, such as seeds or fertilizer. However, you cannot give away meadows or boxes, or even a scarecrow if it is already installed in a field.

To do this, the players to whom you want to give an item must have at least:

• 10 days of seniority
• Positive or zero karma

You may only give one item (store or black market) per week. To give away an item to a player who is not your friend, you must go to the player's public page.

The cost of boarding

Your equestrian center can take in boarders. You may choose the price of board per horse and per night in the Office of your center. This rate must be between 10 and 25 equus. However, when you board your own horses at your center, you pay nothing and the horse earns no money.

Minimum skill requirement

You can set a minimum skill requirement for the horses boarded at your center. This is also done in the Office of your equestrian center. Only horses with this minimum skill set may be registered with your center. Note, however, that this also concerns breeders for whom you have reserved a box. If their horse does not meet the minimum requirement that you set, they will not be able to register with your center.

Extending a stay

Check your Office for news on a regular basis. You will find boarding extension requests from breeders who have a horse boarded at your center, and you will be free to accept or refuse these requests.

The influence of boarders on prestige

The horses that you board naturally have an impact on your center in terms of their number but also in terms of their health and their skill level.

Your equestrian center can organize riding lessons for children. The breeders of the horses that you board decide whether or not they want to give a lesson at your center. They thus earn a certain amount of money depending on the quality of your lessons. This amount is not debited from your account; you only pay the salary of the instructors.

The price of the lesson depends on the prestige of your center, the number of instructors (you need one riding instructor for thirty boxes), the health and dressage rating of the horses that you board. The number of lessons that your center can offer every day is unlimited.

With your center, you can delve into the organization of equestrian competitions.

There are several types of competition:

• Speed Races (trot or gallop)
• Cross-Country competitions
• Show Jumping competitions
• Dressage competitions
• Barrel Racing competitions

The competitions increase the prestige of your equestrian center if the best horses on Howrse participate in them!

Speed Races

When you create your center, you have at your disposal a small racetrack where one race per day may be held. You can subsequently buy a second racetrack from the centers' store. The number of racetracks per center is limited to two.

The race starts when there are five participants signed up.

Setting up a cross-country or Show jumping course

• Go to the competitions page.
• Give your course a name.
• Confirm.
• Start to build your course: first the Start line, then the elements one by one by clicking in the list above the course.
• You can remove an element from the course by clicking "Cancel", or reset to zero by clicking "Start over".
• When the course is as you like it, click "Save the course".

The difficulty of the course depends on its length and on the elements it includes. It will determine the minimum requirement in stamina for cross-country and in jumping for Show jumping for a horse to register.

You must have five participants for each competition. The competition starts automatically a few minutes after registration closes. When the competition is finished, other players may register and other competitions will be held.

Registration for cross-country and show jumping events are open 24 hours after their last edition. Of course, you can modify the course at any time, from the competitions page under the icon "My equestrian center".

You have the option of limiting a competition to a specific breed by modifying its settings.

Competitions for rookie horses

You may reserve your competitions for rookie horses. Your competitions will win more prestige than same-level competitions that are open to all horses, and you win 500 Equus every time your competitions for rookie horses are held.

Rookie horses are horses that have won less than 20 victories and that have no skills higher than 200. This number is re-calculated every night.

As center director, you also have a forum. You can configure access to the forum as you wish, that is, either limit access to only players who have a horse boarded at your center, or leave it open to all the players on Howrse.

This forum is your responsibility. You are its moderator, it is up to you to keep it running. You can create and configure your forum in the Office of your equestrian center.

An equestrian center forum that is open to all the breeders can be accessed via the details of the center.

Your details may be viewed by all the players. You can view them in the Office of the center. In this same page, you can create the presentation of your center, which will appear according to the same principle as your breeder presentation. You can modify your presentation at any time.

You can also view the details of all the other centers by clicking their name. In these details, you can compare your center with other centers and thus see where you need to make improvements so that your center can move up the ranking.

The prestige of a center depends on many factors, some of which are found in the "Key points of the equestrian center" frame.

Ranking of the equestrian centers

The equestrian centers are necessary for the game to work properly. They house the horses and enable the breeders to train them. There are four rankings for the centers:

• Prestige
• The number of horses boarded
• The wealthiest centers
• The most popular centers. This ranking is based on the number of visits by different players during the previous day. There is no point in visiting the details of a center multiple times; only one visit will be taken into account.

Ranking of the competitions

In this page, you can view the ranking of the most prestigious competitions, the amount of their kitty and see the centers that organize them.

These are the events where the best horses on Howrse compete.

To reward their regularity, the competitions of more than 75% prestige, that are not active for more than five days, lose 1% of prestige per day beyond this period.

Equestrian center rosettes

Rosettes are rewards for horses that finish first in certain competitions, and give you double the Equus! Only competitions with more than 75% prestige award rosettes.

Rosettes are a good way to make your equestrian center stand out, because they're shown on the special rosette page for all horses that have won them.

To activate your rosette, just go to your competitions page.