My Horse Ranch/Breeding Program

[samoht04]

samoht,

income is directly proportional to the work your sim invests. Untrained horses sell for 5-6K each. Trained horses can sell for 11K on up. You can sell stallion services for 1K and more, and you get nice cash rewards for winning competitions. In the Lifetime wishes there's a Celestial Salt Like which can give your horses a nice moodlet; it also routinely spawns gnome horses that can be sold for 1K. It does take work -- my sim literally has no time for anything but the ranch -- but you can make a very nice income.

Thanks Mary! It sounds very profitable! 

[MaryMarsh]

samoht,

There are other things you can do to supplement your income. For instance, as soon as I had the spare simoleans I purchased the Equestrian Center, which pays me a return of 13K per week. When I have enough funds I'm going to purchase the Equestrian Regional Training Grounds, which I'll upgrade by creating a covered arena over the current jumping/racing training area. After I've done this I'll have sufficient income that I can concentrate more on competitions for a while and less on breeding, training, selling horses, and selling stud fees.

My personal goal is to make my four main horses (Scenic, Havivi, Medina, and Sabrina) International champions in each of the three categories. Of course, to accomplish this will take a long time, but that's the fun of it for me.

My trophy room isn't very impressive yet, but it's growing 


By marylcmarsh at 2011-10-22

Also, once I'm not relying on raising/selling foals for income, I can adopt two more wild horses (which will satisfy the Mustang Master component of my riding skill). Last night, a wild horse wandered near my ranch, I adopted it, raised it to 'Trained' status, and sold it for 11K. We need to adopt a total of three Wild Horses for Mustang Master.

Eventually, when my skills are all maxed out, I want to breed foals, train them sufficiently, make them International champions, and sell them for a VERY nice profit. When I'm doing this, I think I can say I have a world-class horse ranch.

[MaryMarsh]

Precious moment ... arrival of a new foal


By marylcmarsh at 2011-10-22

[samoht04]

Not impressive!? That's more than I have right now!  Thanks for the other information as well!

[MaryMarsh]

I end up missing a lot of competitions because I'm getting foals ready for sale. But, oh well, that's life on a busy ranch. I've just gone over 1M simoleans; so, it might be time to purchase the Regional Equestrian Training Facility. After that I can concentrate more on competitions.

[Lizzy]

Well done, Lizzy! Don't you just love the new foals? 

Yess!!
Crossbreeding(If that is the word used for horses as well) is interesting, I have a foal now which has the Gypsy Vanner/Brittish Warmblood as a dad, and a Friesan as a mom, that makes a very cool horse!

[Lesleyxxx]

I have a favour to ask.  I made my own ranch trying to make sure I had all the essentials, but in a smaller simpler fashion so as to save simoleons.   I wanted a budget version of Mary's? As I'm a total beginner with horses having never been near a real live horse I was hoping someone who knows horses would take a look and tell me if I made any mistakes or missed anything that needs to be there? [now for another adventure, first ever post of pictures if I get it right]

Bromwell Ranch.  Lot 64 x 64.  Cost furnished $68k I think?
House: 1bd, 1ba, openplan kitchen/diner/lounge, office/trophy room [no trophy yet]
Barn: 4 stalls
Fields:  training jumps and full jumps, open space.

[Lesleyxxx]

My horses:

[MaryMarsh]

Lesley ... that's VERY nice. I can't see that you missed anything -- and you did it so economically (I'm jealous!)

Lizzy ... about crossbreeding ... I was thinking the same thing, though I'm not as imaginative as you. I want to play around with the color breeds (paints and appaloosas) by breeding to my Arabian stallion. I don't want to loose the Arab conformation, but I'd like to pick up the color variations. I'm not ready yet to experiment (must keep eye on my original goals), but I'll certainly play around later.

[Lesleyxxx]

thank you but it's not a patch on yours.   Thank you for inspiring me to try it too.

[MaryMarsh]

Lesley ... pfft ... you'll be able to accomplish everything I did for a lot less simoleans. I think you made an ideal spread.

After several 2nd and 3rd place finishes, I finally won my first International competition (crosscountry). I am very happy.

I'll have to check it out to be certain, but I think selecting 'Go for Broke' might be a key. I'll run a few more and then report the results in this thread.

[Banksia]

I'm wondering if you have seen the really cool breed registration site that has been started.  They have affiliated blogs and people are registering their breed horses.  The central site is called Equus sims.

http://www.equus-sims.com/

You may want to have your Arabians registered and register a formal stable name.

[MaryMarsh]

Ooh, cool, I'll go there now. Thank you very much!!!!

[Lizzy]

I think I'll build a decent ranch tomorrow to (cross)breed unicorns.
My current lot is a bit messy, 64x64 with a tiny house in the middle.. I love the house but it doesn't really give me space for a proper bar and training area's.
After that I need a black male unicorn.. To breed with 2 full-blood unicorns.
And a place to blog/log the whole addiction 
I think it would be cool to "register" every foal/horse, with their traits, trophy's and prizes they are sold for.

Would it be financially better to sell foals or adult horses?

[MaryMarsh]

Lizzy ... after much experimentation I trigger foals to adult status, then train them until their status is 'trained.' Also, I usually work with the foals sufficiently to give them three positive traits. When this is done I sell them. I realize that I could get much more by training their racing and jumping skills to 10, but I've come to the conclusion this isn't cost effective based on my current operations. With the limitation of having only six pets on a lot, I've got to turn my foals quickly so I can keep my broodmares producing regularly. My 'adult' foals sell on average for 11K.

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I've created a blog for my Sim farm at http://saracenfarm.blogspot.com/

I hope a lot of us committed horsepeople will create blogs so we can continue to follow each other.