Sunday

With only two weeks left of racing before the end of the SIM year I'm trying to wind down my stable. I have a huge bunch of 3-year-olds I'm hanging onto to see if they will be any good at steeplechasing.

I've started to retire some of the mares that have finished their racing careers, mostly the mixed breeds. I'm waiting for some more of the mixer stallions to retire to breed most of them, many of those stallions should retire after this Wednesday. Hopefully I'll be able to have all of my mixed breeds bred by the end of this week.

Right now I only have four more TB mares to breed. I took the big step of breeding one of my better mares to a young stallion that stands for over 100K - not something I would usually spend on a breeding but decided to experiment and see how it comes out. This will be her third foal, the other two have both been winged, the 2-year-old is doing well but will like a longer distance that she is able to get at her age. The yearling has posted some very fast works. So far she has only thrown fillies, since I use the random button when breeding, I let the computer decide.

I currently have a total of 82 foals with 61 of them being TB's. Most of my mixed breed foals are trotters at this point, with 10. I have 91 yearlings that will soon be starting their racing career, 59 of them are TB's, with 13 trotters and though I have 7 Arabians only one is a 2-year-old and will race next year, the other six will spend another year in the barn.

I have put all but one of my current steeplechasers up for auction in the hopes of clearing out some space. Any that go will only be a plus for me. It's funny because when I first started playing this game steeplechasers were the last horse anyone wanted and wouldn't even sell for $1 on the sales page. Now there are players that seem to specialize in chasers. I believe that Mary Weather being able to judge which horse has a better chance over the jumps has really helped there. It used to be the only alternative to Greener Pastures.