I know this has been mentioned before (possibly by me) but I can’t find the original thread and I feel like Feature Requests is an appropriate board for it anyways.
The sale economy is pretty rough right now, and seeing 83 stallions for almost 10,000 broodmares is an extra shocker. I think it would be great if retiring horses could produce either a small cash award or, preferably, AMI points (once AMI points are fixed) – that way retiring several broodmares could lead to cashing in points for 1 new horses. Be it cash or AMI points (and for cash I’m thinking like 1k/horse, since many horses can’t even sell for that much), I think retiring fillies/mares should be worth more than retiring colts/geldings/stallions just because of the broodmare factor. Old colts/geldings will eventually be retired, but there’s always hope for selling breeding stock so I feel fillies/mares stick around longer. I’ve been ruthless and just retiring broodmares outright to help with numbers and because I know they likely won’t sell, but some sort of award system might provide incentive for others to do likewise.
I agree there are overall too many horses particularly now there are fewer active stables. Things were very different when i was a newbie. Broodmares were like gold dust and the only way I could breed myself was to send begging letters to mare owners asking if they would sell them to me for a breeding season and then I would sell them back and keep the foal! There was no leasing. a remnant of those days can still be found on the horses page when you open the horse information tab
Now that would be a price we could only dream of getting for most of our horses!
There used to be a limit on the number of horses you could own as well, I think about 300.
I currently have 30 broodmares I don’t really want because I can’t deal with too many racers due to lack of time. an incentive to retire may be helpful but lack of cash is something most older stables don’t have a problem with I don’t know what sort of stable and cash newbies get now but it must be daunting if its still like my starting stable $50,000 one 2yo and 1 3yo. if it is perhaps it would be another idea if we could donate horses to a newbie pool and get points or cash for that. 42,000 horses with less than 50 active players is an amazing number and a purge of deceased or retired horses would also free up some nice names! interested to see what others think
I love the idea of donating horses to a newbie pool!
This year I am definitely taking advantage of claimers because if anyone is claimed it will be at a price I could never hope to sell them for, so it’s a win in my book. I finally dropped under 120 broodmares and my goal is to get to about 100 this season, but I will likely end up cutting my losses and retiring mares vs. adamantly trying to sell.
I love the retirement incentive idea! It really has been rough trying to sell anything right now.
I’ve been reducing my broodmare numbers, and sometimes skipping a year to have fewer foals.