So, probably not for this breeding year, but for next, I’d like to allow you to set up bookings for your mares while they’re still in foal. This should help cut down on the busywork throughout the year for stud/mare owners, and also help mare owners plan who they’re breeding to as early as they like and not have to remember in July that I was going to send mare Betsy to stud Joe.
The complication, of course, is the variable due dates. Mary could be saying she’s due on June 1, but actually her foal will be born on May 8, or July 10. So we need to take that into account - at the very basic level, we can lock her down to booking slots no earlier than 2 weeks before her due date (as the due date itself can be off by about 3 weeks, plus mares can foal 2ish weeks early, so that’s 5ish weeks, and then she can’t be bred for a month after foaling, so really 1ish week).
So that’s simple enough - I can build an interface that will show that Mary is due on June 1, can be booked to a stud from May 15, and off you go.
The complication is what happens when she actually foals. If I’ve booked a May 15 slot for her but she actually foals on July 10, that slot ends up unused, and then we also have to scramble for a July/Aug slot for her. And the stud owner potentially needs to scramble for a mare to fill that slot at the last minute.
So…my thinking is two-fold, but ideas are definitely welcome.
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allow stud owners to flag a booking as locked or flexible. Locked means that a booking is only available to that mare for that date. Mary can only breed to Joe in the May 15-May 31 slot (or not at all, if she doesn’t foal in time or her owner doesn’t click to breed her). Flexible means her booking slot is there, but can be moved around based on what’s happening with foaling.
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for flexible bookings, I’d introduce a (virtual) vet, who would re-evaluate due dates on a schedule (probably at the end of each booking slot, so Feb 20ish, Feb 28ish, Mar 9ish, etc). That vet could then revise Mary’s due date from June 1 to July 1 (still off by 9 days, but certainly better). Then, provided she has a flexible booking, and the stud either has flexible bookings in August or open slots, her booking could be auto-adjusted from the May 15 one to the Aug 1 one. Then she foals on July 10, her booking for Aug 1-15 is good to go, and everyone’s happy.
This sounds cool in theory, but of course the devil is in the details. What happens when you’ve got multiple mares who need the same flexible slots? What priority do you use for booking them? This could be a global thing (e.g. prioritise mares owned/not owned by the stud’s stable), or there could be a UI where you rank the mares in order of preference (I want that MSW mare bred to Joe no matter what, and the unraced created mare can fit in if/when she can).
This is less of an issue for mares due early in the year, as they could always be bred later. But does that also require a setting (e.g. if I book Mary for a flexible May slot, I don’t want her bred later than July 1)? Or is it fine to just shift Mary to an Aug slot because she’s foaled late and if you don’t want a July foal next year, you just don’t breed her? 
Do stud/mare owners opt-in to all of this, or is it on by default? Am I massively overthinking this and we’re fine with the system as-is?
As I said, thoughts/ideas welcome. I’ve got a long to-do list already, so who knows when I’ll get around to working on this (if it’s even something we want), but discussion can happen now, at least. 