Are you going to use Morgan, Standardbred, and Hackney? love projects like this

oh and Thoroughbred too

If this isn't allowed feel free to tell me or delete the message but I have a question,
do crossbreeding team exists ?
If yes, I'd be interested in joining one so feel free to dm me !

Officially no they don't. Howrse/Ow hasn't implemented any form of official crossbreed teams, but I have heard of some groups that form a team (for the messaging, forums, etc) but then do crossbreeding projects together. Or even some loose associations without a team attached that work on things. I don't personally know of any, but I've heard of them around occasionally.

How important is the third skill listed in the different competitions? I might have an idea for a crossbreed suited for dressage competitions. According to my math, the trot and dressage skills will be a little better than the current best dressage breed on that server (knabstrupper). Sadly the gallop will suffer quite a bit... Will that have a big negative impact? I am hoping my horses might do well in grand prix if i can somehow get them to a high enough level.

Are there any benefits to cross breeding?

I have a good holster stud bow to me pure breed

Sorry to flood the forum. I wanna correct myself, the mix I am thinking of is actually not better than knabstruppers in dressage. I double checked and it looks like I did my math wrong. Sorry about the oopsie

Do you still want to

Hello all - Hope everyone is well!

I am an avid crossbreeder and primarily focus on breeding high-quality, real world crossbreeds (Warlander, Pony of the Americas, Appendix QH, etc.) I work with a lot of the top teams on most of my current projects to make some of the highest GP crosses available, and am very thankful for their support.

I love what I do, am happy to answer questions, and enjoy brainstorming new ideas with others. Please visit my hompage and EC forum (Crossbreeder Central) for crossbreeding information, discussions, and other fun!

I'm posting today let you all know that I have updated the studbook on my homepage, which currently lists a wide variety of 18 high-quality, crossbred studs. The studbook includes a clickable banner to each stud, number of covers, GP and skill stats, breed breakdown (%), and current leaderboard positions. Hopefully this makes it much easier to hopefully find what you're looking for.

Each stud will be retired after 20 covers. Please check for them in the public covers listings or private message me to reserve a covering at a discount.

Parent breeds in this set of studs includes:

Thoroughbred
Lusitano
Appaloosa
Selle
KWPN
PSH
Arabian
Barb
Welsh
Knabstrupper
Friesian
Fjord
Shetland
Paint
Quarter Horse
Morgan
Newfoundland

I am currently trying to find a good crossbreed that may have a good GP. I had a knabstrupper with Lipizzan and selle in her, but she had a low GP. I am thinking of using something like that again, and was wondering if anyone had any tips?

It depends on what type of skillset you're after.
Crossbreeding doesn't affect GP gain. The formula is the same as it is for purebreds. You'll want to pick the highest GP parents you can find, and make sure both are 100 blup for the best GP gain possible.

I personally like crosses that are more complimentary, like (Selle x KWPN) or
(Appy x Thoroughbred) crosses. You can make a crossbred that's better than its purebred counterpart, because you can keep the skills targeted towards a specific comp type.

Versus other crosses who have very contrasting skillsets. You can still breed a foal with high overall GP from, for example, a Walker x Newfoundland, but their foal will have more evenly distributed genetics than a purebred would of either of those breeds. It won't be very good at high level competitions as a result.

I am working on a Fjord and Icelandic cross at the moment....So far only been getting males so its going slow. They both have decent stamina but Fjords bring i some speed and Icelandics should help dressage. Will see its a fun thing to see what happens

Currently working on an all-around crossbred! Using the best quality mares on the market + best studs in publics. Just had my four F1 foals! Excited

F1 generation:

Highland x Lusitano (20091)
Holsteiner x SB (19411)
Peruvian x BRP (20392)
Knabstrupper x Marwari (19440)

F2 generation:

High/Lusi x Hols/SB
Paso/BRP x Knab/Mar

And finally, the F3 generation will be all 8 breeds! Will update with more later

Been reading through everyone’s forums and pages and totally become fascinated with the idea of cross breeding - I’ve got to ask, are there any main crosses for Marwaris that’s generally seen as a good idea?

Skilled my first one the other day and she really underperformed, and her top skills don’t match a comp (her skills are gallop, stamina, speed). Reining seems the closest comp according to the rankings (needing gallop, dressage, stamina) but it’s not a great fit at all so wondering if anyone’s done any improvements to the breed via cross breeding endeavours?

I’ve seen a lot of projects on here seem to reflect real world crosses, so marwaris wouldn’t be popular for that but thought I’d ask in case!

Marwari horses are specialized for barrels on here and they’re fairly decent, in my experience. In terms of recommendations, it honestly depends on what you want to do with a cross. If you want to increase her speed (the top skill for barrels), I’d probably recommend crossing her with a mustang which is also specialized for barrels but has higher speed. If you want to shift comps, you could try out a reining cross like a Marwari/TB or something like that. I think I’ve done a Paint/Marwari before which I remember as doing okay at both barrels and reining.

I’d recommend first figuring out what skills/comps you want to target and then just going through the breed directories to work out what breeds would work best for what you want. Then decide if you can use team covers, public covers, or if you’re going to buy and BLUP another horse. Make sure to do gp calculations first because it’s much less of a time sink than breeding a whole ton of foals. Hope that helps! If you have any further questions, feel free to contact me.

Thank you for this, I’m liking the sounds of a mustang cross - I hadn’t considered barrels! Will look into a few possibilities for reining too - I’ve got a decent mare to start from so I guess I can try a few That’s great advice in general too, I will have a sift through directories and look into the gp calculations too - I know there’s online calculators for overall gp help, which I use often when breeding purebreds, but I was wondering if there is a formula to work out how the skill GP will be distributed when the parents strengths differ? Or is it a just try it out situation?

Generally, the skill GP distribution can be calculated by adding the sire and dam's skill GPs together and then dividing the result by two. This is usually a pretty accurate guess, although sometimes Howrse is kind and gives you slightly more skill GP than expected. For an example, because I know sometimes an example is more helpful than an explanation, here are the calculations I did to produce Send Me Away Smiling who's a mix of TB and Mustang.

Her dam, the thoroughbred, had an overall GP of 19019.2 while her sire, the mustang, had an overall GP of 19052.18. I added those together: 19019.2 + 19052.18 = 38071.38. Then I divided that number by 2 to get 19035.69. Send Me Away Smiling's actual GP is 19037, which just goes to show that this is just an estimate. Sometimes you'll get a higher number, but this is a good ballpark for what your foal will be.

Now, I was specifically focused on raising the speed skill while producing a cross that would be good for Western comps, which was why I didn't use a Paint or Appaloosa. Looking at the speed skill, we can see that her dam had a speed skill of 3932.45 and her sire a skill of 4712.27. Doing the same calculations as above, we get:

3932.45 + 4712.27 = 8644.72 / 2 = 4322.36

I repeated the above calculations to get the rest of the skill GP and ultimately decided to breed the foal. After you do all the calculations, you can check the highest skills to work out what the foal would be best suited for. I never breed a foal until I've done the calculations for what's going to happen genetics-wise because I don't like being surprised. But this is how I, personally, like doing cross-breeding, and there isn't really a right or wrong way to do it.

Here are links to the horses used in the example:
Send Me Away Smiling
https://www.howrse.com/elevage/fiche/?id=68667077
Mars in Retrograde (TB dam)
https://www.howrse.com/elevage/fiche/?id=68495445
Mustang Sire
https://www.howrse.com/elevage/fiche/?id=68606573

@impi -- in regards to a formula to figure out the skillset of any crossed foal:

I've been trying to create a Google Sheets calculator that can predict what kind of skillset any crossed foal would have. For example, it would be able to predict the skillset of a TB x Criollo, a [50% Selle x KWPN] x [50% Au Pony x Arabian Horse], a 75% Canadian Horse x [25% Irish Hunter x Lippizan] or anything else in between.

I'm only using percentages however, in that a horse who's highest skill is dressage would have 100% dressage, and their other skills are ratioed in reference to their top skill, ie. stamina÷dressage = stamina percentage, and so on.

Of course, the downside to this percentage calculator is that not every single breed is at the same GP, nor are they even at the same sale/cover release GP. But still, I'm hoping that it will be a powerful predictive tool for crossbreeders!

It's gonna take me a while to sort through the data for every pure-bred horse, but my hope is that when I'm done, you'll be able to experiment really quickly without going through tedious GP calculations every time. I'm going in alphabetical order and have 50 more breeds to go

I'll be sure to drop a message in here again once I finish it and it's open for public testing

Wow thank you so much for the calculations Crimson, that is incredibly helpful and exactly what I needed to get started - gonna save all that to my notebook as I will be using it appreciate you included an example too!

And serene.snowbun, that sounds like quite the project, I can only imagine how complicated that will get to figure out and out together! Can see how useful it would be for you guys in the forum here - I’ll be hanging around and will definitely make use of it should you finish it ^^

Hi Cross-breeders

I haven't been in here in ages!!

I have been doing some cross-breeding but not a lot of blupping due to dealing personal issues which has taken me away from the game, however I am back with a vengence!


I have recently done a KWPN x Friesian - just need the motivation to blup and then find the right stud to breed with.

Anyone have any ideas for a target trained barrel comper? Meaning, high stamina and gallop but low speed I can beach away from to make even lower.

I have access to top tekes and IH ...

@ megawifey

Just from my personal experiences with them, an Arabian Horse or Vanner would be pretty fantastic for your project, thought Vanners would edge out Arabian Horses very slightly! Their stamina is top tier and they have quite decent gallop, but terribly low speed -- if I can't get wins any other way, they always do wonders in barrels

I've actually mostly completed that calculator I said I was working on earlier, and I thought this might be the perfect time to test it out on an actual scenario Right now I'm trying to find a breed that has very high Gallop, decent stamina, but mid-to-low speed, I'll definitely post again about it once I figure out some ideas for you

Tekes probably wouldn't be viable, as their speed is pretty high and gallop relatively low.

If your goal is minimising speed, it'd probably be wiser to use breeds that have lower speed to start with.

That being said, Vanner x Hunter OR Arab x Hunter would be interesting combinations, playing into your access to tip top Irish Hunters
From my percentage calculator I get: stam / speed / gallop
V x H: 92% / 43% / 72%
A x H: 92% / 50% / 69%

From these results, I *think* V x H would be mathematically a better combination, as gallop is higher and speed lower than A x H. This is assuming all breeding GPs are equal though, so the true numbers might be different depending on what Arab horses and Vanners are publicly available for cross-breeding covers

...

Now for some very theoretical and out-there ideas! If only public GPs were high enough to make some of these combos viable I used Vanners due to their impeccable target trained barrels track record
Icelandic x Vanner: 100% / 29% / 67%
Marawi x Vanner: 90% / 52% / 85%
Russian Don x Vanner: 90% / 42% / 69%
Trakehner x Vanner: 88% / 39% / 85%
Haflinger x Vanner: 100% / 36% / 79%


Hopefully that gives you some interesting ideas to play with, please feel free to reach out if you want any more details or help with your project!

I'm just thinking about getting into some cross breeding and was wondering if anyone had or knows of a formula to incorporate 6 breeds starting with all purebred horses. The end goal would be an even(ish since I know it's not exact) split between all 6 breeds. Not sure how many starting pairs I would need (I'm flexible) and I'm sure it would take some time.

If anyone could help I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you for your time and Happy Howrsing everyone!