Post by Michelle on Aug 1, 2008 16:34:37 GMT -5
By Megan, C&H Ranch
Creating a horse, while at first may sound complicated or confusing, is actually very simple. When you create a horse, all the horse's basic information is left to your discretion to decide exactly what this new horse is going to be like. However, HF DOES have rules concerning creation.
RULES
"New members through intermediate members must follow the creation rules for their member level. Advanced members have unlimited creation credits to be used as desired. However, it is important to remember not to create horses unnecessarily. Make sure you only create horses that you intend to keep for a very long while. While we do not closely regulate the amount of horses created by each member, the officers will notice if a member begins to create a gross amount of horses and will be forced to take action and begin regulating the offending member(s).."
In addition to the above, member cannot create horses for the sole purpose of selling and making a profit off of them.
The member levels may seem contradictive to the above rule, but they are not. New members are allowed:
"New - Just joined. Starts with $100,000. Allowed to have a maximum number of ten horses (five created, five bought/bred), but no establishments. Must be active for at least two weeks before being promoted to the next level. Must enter at least one show (if available) before being promoted to the next level. Must board at a stable before being promoted to the next level."
You still may only use three creation credits per month, regardless what member you are at. So if you choose to use all your creation credits AND purchase your limit of bought/bred horses, you would only have EIGHT horses at the end of your first month.
Created horses, and bred horses for that matter, cannot share the same names as famous horses. They absolutely CANNOT share the same name and basic information as a real life horse, unless you have contacted the owner and obtained permission to use the RL horse's name and information.
CREATING A HORSE
When you create a horse, a basic information format is normally followed. You would fill out the information below:
Horse's Name:
Breed:
Gender:
Year Of Birth:
Color:
Height:
Sire:
Dam:
Disciplines:
General overview of the horse's personality, traits, strengths, weaknesses, pysique, etc. This is not mandantory, it just makes the horse come to life a little more when members can read a personalized paragraph explaining what the horse is like.
BREED
When creating a horse and its information, please keep in mind the breed of horse you are creating and whether or not its information is feasible for that breed. For instance, if you create an Arabian, it will not be palomino colored and 17 hands tall. These are simply not in an Arabian's genetics, and therefore not possible. If you aren't sure what IS possible for your horse's breed, you can either look up the breed on one of the many sites available, or my favorite way, post to HF on the message board and ask their advice. Be sure to include what you have in mind for your created horse and ask if it is possible.
GENDER
If it is a stallion, you might also want to decide a stud fee for him if you plan to offer him at public stud to HF members. The best way to decide this is to search around HF and find horses of the same breed, similar pedigree, and similar show records. If you are just creating your horse, he wouldn't have any show records yet. HF is realistic in that we would not ask a $3000 stud fee on a stallion who has not yet proven himself as a sire or a showhorse, so please practice common sense when creating a stud fee.
YEAR OF BIRTH
You can choose any year for your horse to be born. Honestly, I personally wouldn't create a horse that was born in 1988 or something, because that horse be nearly twenty years old and simply could not compete in shows for much longer, if at all. So, if you want a horse to compete in a certain discipline, make sure that you give the horse enough age to have ample opportunity for training to be at the level it needs, such as a ten year old showing in Grand Prix Dressage; you wouldn't enter a four year old in a high level such as that because it simply would not have the maturity or experience.
COLOR
Please make sure that the color you choose is proper for it's breed. For example, you would never find a cremello Arabian or a palomino Friesian. It's not possible in their genetic makeup.
CREATING A PEDIGREE FOR YOUR HORSE
History:
When you form a pedigree for your created horse, please make sure that it is as historically accurate as possible. For instance, your created racehorse wouldn't be sired by Secretariate in 2000, for two reasons: one, has been dead a lot longer than 2000. Two, Thoroughbred racehorses do not use artificial insemination by rule of their registration, so that would not be a viable excuse.
Coloring:
If you are created a colored horse, please keep in mind realism and how genetics work. There are many sites available that will explain horse's color genetics and provide examples.
My personal favorite is this site: equinecolor.com/color.html It not only explains the genetic makeup of the color, but it also gives examples of each. Accompanying this page is the color breeding chart, equinecolor.com/charts.html where it lines out what colors are possible when you breed certain colors of horses together. All of this information is accurate and trustworthy.
After referencing the knowledge provided here, when you create a horse you would be realistic in that your cremello stallion would not have a chestnut sire and a palomino dam. By genetic standards, a cremello would not be a possible production between these two colors. You would also not have a paint from two horses with no paint in their lines. I'm sure you can understand what I'm getting at here. Realisitc is the best way to go!
Using already established HF horses:
This is NOT allowed. If you were to create a horse that was sired by or out of an HF horse, it would not be a created horse, but a bred one. And, this is against HF rules because you would be creating a foal for an existing HF member without the member's consent. It simply isn't done, and will get you in trouble.
Using RL horses in pedigrees:
Real life horses in pedigrees is definitely allowed in HF. As stated before, please be historically realistic. If you aren't sure about what horses would best fit in the pedigree for the created horse you have in mind, post on the HF message board asking for help in creating a pedigree. There are many knowledgable members in many breeds who are usually more than willing to help create that perfect pedigree.
Created horses in a pedigree:
Making up an entire pedigree for a created horse is perfectly fine in HF as well. Having RL horses included can make a horse more desireable to an interested breeder, as they would have a reference as to what to expect from your horse by his lineage. Having a created pedigree does not make your horse any less valueable though, so it is up to your discretion as to how your make your pedigree. To make it more interesting, you could always provide made up information about the horses in your made up lineage.
Proper information display on the sire and dam:
To properly display your horse's sire and dam, you will list them when posting your horse's information as the sire first, then the dam. It would read like this: SIRE X DAM, NOT dam X sire. So a horse with Child Of The Night for a father and Lumiar WMA for a mother would be listed as Child Of The Night X Lumiar WMA. If you prefer, you can list them how I did in the above created horse information example.
Linage matters with disciplines:
If your horse comes from a long line of English disciplines horses on both sides, the chances are that it will have the build to be a good English horse. You wouldn't show it in Western disciplines. There are exceptions to this, but very few and very rare. So if you can, try to find out what disciplines it's forebearers excelled in and gear your horse towards a similar or same discipline. So if you want an English or Sporthorse disciplined horse, try to fit together a pedigree that would best produce a horse in that discipline.
DISCIPLINES
Be realistic:
When created disciplines for your horse, again, please be realistic. You will not have a horse that is competing in English Pleasure, Freestyle Reining, Level Two Dressage, and Regular Working Hunter all at once. It is incredibly hard for a horse to excel in multiple like-disciplines (like dressage and hunter pleasure), and even harder for a horse to perform well in un-like disciplines. It is next to impossible for a horse to compete in everything I listed above, let alone be good at it. If you think about yourself and say you play a sport, like volleyball, would you rather focus your time and energy into being really good at volleyball, or try out for soccor, tennis, swimming, track, and softball all at once? What are your chances that you will excel and be a winner in all of those at the same time? Slim to none; it is the same with horses. It is far better to focus on one to three disciplines than to have your horse compete all the way across the board. Besides, if you did this the HF Show Association would reprimand you for overshowing.
For more information on showing, classlists, and exactly what overshowing is, please visit the main HF site and the Show Association, listed in the main directory.
Lineage has impact:
Another factor that will help determine your horse's disciplines is its lineage. If your horse comes from a long line of English disciplines horses on both sides, the chances are that it will have the build to be a good English horse. You wouldn't show it in Western disciplines. There are exceptions to this, but very few and very rare. So if you can, try to find out what disciplines it's forebearers excelled in and gear your horse towards a similar or same discipline.
Breed has impact:
When choosing a discipline for your horse, please make sure it suits your breed of horse as well. For instance, you wouldn't be showing a heavy Friesian in Grand Prix cross country, or a Miniature in Dressage.
WEBPAGE FOR YOUR HORSE
You are more than welcome to create a webpage for your horse! It gives a sense of pride to display your horse and it's accomplishments/progeny. It is also very nice for other members to have free access to your horse's information, especially if they are thinking of breeding to it. Make sure that all of your pages have the HF mandated disclaimer stating something about your pages being fake, part of Horses Forever, a SIM game, whatever.
PICTURES FOR YOUR HORSE:
Please visit the HF rules for this. It can be very tricky, as pictures available over the internet are not always taken with permission from the horse's owner. This has caused problems in the past for HF-ers, as the RL owners felt their horse was being impersonated and not given credit. You must always try to aquire permission before using a picture you like. Pictures are very nice to display on your horse's page, as it creates a more realistic viewpoint of your horse, other than your description, and allows other members to see just what it looks like. You are allowed as many pictures as you wish, but please keep in mind the loading time for pages with a lot of graphics. Also, please make sure the pictures somewhat match, like one picture wouldn't be a chestnut for your bay horse, while the next picture is of a black. I know that sounds goofy, but it's happened in HF before.
PROGENY
When you create your horse, it WILL NOT have show results/titles and progeny created. The horse is starting with a totally clean slate in HF, and must earn each title and sire/give birth to each foal. By no means are you allowed to create already-born foals for its information.
MANDANTORY REGISTRY
Once you have created your information, you are ready to submit your horse to the Mandantry Registry. The MR is located on the HF Message Board, and you will find a post at the top that gives guidelines for registering horses. If the required information asks that you state whether the horse is bred, imported, or created, you would list "created." You ARE allowed to find a stable to board at and enter your horse in shows while your registration is still pending. Once you get your horse's registration number, please keep it for your horse's information as you will need it periodically as you play, and it is the key to your horse's existance being acknowledged in HF.
Congratulations! You have a new horse in HF! Go out there and have fun with it!
Creating a horse, while at first may sound complicated or confusing, is actually very simple. When you create a horse, all the horse's basic information is left to your discretion to decide exactly what this new horse is going to be like. However, HF DOES have rules concerning creation.
RULES
"New members through intermediate members must follow the creation rules for their member level. Advanced members have unlimited creation credits to be used as desired. However, it is important to remember not to create horses unnecessarily. Make sure you only create horses that you intend to keep for a very long while. While we do not closely regulate the amount of horses created by each member, the officers will notice if a member begins to create a gross amount of horses and will be forced to take action and begin regulating the offending member(s).."
In addition to the above, member cannot create horses for the sole purpose of selling and making a profit off of them.
The member levels may seem contradictive to the above rule, but they are not. New members are allowed:
"New - Just joined. Starts with $100,000. Allowed to have a maximum number of ten horses (five created, five bought/bred), but no establishments. Must be active for at least two weeks before being promoted to the next level. Must enter at least one show (if available) before being promoted to the next level. Must board at a stable before being promoted to the next level."
You still may only use three creation credits per month, regardless what member you are at. So if you choose to use all your creation credits AND purchase your limit of bought/bred horses, you would only have EIGHT horses at the end of your first month.
Created horses, and bred horses for that matter, cannot share the same names as famous horses. They absolutely CANNOT share the same name and basic information as a real life horse, unless you have contacted the owner and obtained permission to use the RL horse's name and information.
CREATING A HORSE
When you create a horse, a basic information format is normally followed. You would fill out the information below:
Horse's Name:
Breed:
Gender:
Year Of Birth:
Color:
Height:
Sire:
Dam:
Disciplines:
General overview of the horse's personality, traits, strengths, weaknesses, pysique, etc. This is not mandantory, it just makes the horse come to life a little more when members can read a personalized paragraph explaining what the horse is like.
BREED
When creating a horse and its information, please keep in mind the breed of horse you are creating and whether or not its information is feasible for that breed. For instance, if you create an Arabian, it will not be palomino colored and 17 hands tall. These are simply not in an Arabian's genetics, and therefore not possible. If you aren't sure what IS possible for your horse's breed, you can either look up the breed on one of the many sites available, or my favorite way, post to HF on the message board and ask their advice. Be sure to include what you have in mind for your created horse and ask if it is possible.
GENDER
If it is a stallion, you might also want to decide a stud fee for him if you plan to offer him at public stud to HF members. The best way to decide this is to search around HF and find horses of the same breed, similar pedigree, and similar show records. If you are just creating your horse, he wouldn't have any show records yet. HF is realistic in that we would not ask a $3000 stud fee on a stallion who has not yet proven himself as a sire or a showhorse, so please practice common sense when creating a stud fee.
YEAR OF BIRTH
You can choose any year for your horse to be born. Honestly, I personally wouldn't create a horse that was born in 1988 or something, because that horse be nearly twenty years old and simply could not compete in shows for much longer, if at all. So, if you want a horse to compete in a certain discipline, make sure that you give the horse enough age to have ample opportunity for training to be at the level it needs, such as a ten year old showing in Grand Prix Dressage; you wouldn't enter a four year old in a high level such as that because it simply would not have the maturity or experience.
COLOR
Please make sure that the color you choose is proper for it's breed. For example, you would never find a cremello Arabian or a palomino Friesian. It's not possible in their genetic makeup.
CREATING A PEDIGREE FOR YOUR HORSE
History:
When you form a pedigree for your created horse, please make sure that it is as historically accurate as possible. For instance, your created racehorse wouldn't be sired by Secretariate in 2000, for two reasons: one, has been dead a lot longer than 2000. Two, Thoroughbred racehorses do not use artificial insemination by rule of their registration, so that would not be a viable excuse.
Coloring:
If you are created a colored horse, please keep in mind realism and how genetics work. There are many sites available that will explain horse's color genetics and provide examples.
My personal favorite is this site: equinecolor.com/color.html It not only explains the genetic makeup of the color, but it also gives examples of each. Accompanying this page is the color breeding chart, equinecolor.com/charts.html where it lines out what colors are possible when you breed certain colors of horses together. All of this information is accurate and trustworthy.
After referencing the knowledge provided here, when you create a horse you would be realistic in that your cremello stallion would not have a chestnut sire and a palomino dam. By genetic standards, a cremello would not be a possible production between these two colors. You would also not have a paint from two horses with no paint in their lines. I'm sure you can understand what I'm getting at here. Realisitc is the best way to go!
Using already established HF horses:
This is NOT allowed. If you were to create a horse that was sired by or out of an HF horse, it would not be a created horse, but a bred one. And, this is against HF rules because you would be creating a foal for an existing HF member without the member's consent. It simply isn't done, and will get you in trouble.
Using RL horses in pedigrees:
Real life horses in pedigrees is definitely allowed in HF. As stated before, please be historically realistic. If you aren't sure about what horses would best fit in the pedigree for the created horse you have in mind, post on the HF message board asking for help in creating a pedigree. There are many knowledgable members in many breeds who are usually more than willing to help create that perfect pedigree.
Created horses in a pedigree:
Making up an entire pedigree for a created horse is perfectly fine in HF as well. Having RL horses included can make a horse more desireable to an interested breeder, as they would have a reference as to what to expect from your horse by his lineage. Having a created pedigree does not make your horse any less valueable though, so it is up to your discretion as to how your make your pedigree. To make it more interesting, you could always provide made up information about the horses in your made up lineage.
Proper information display on the sire and dam:
To properly display your horse's sire and dam, you will list them when posting your horse's information as the sire first, then the dam. It would read like this: SIRE X DAM, NOT dam X sire. So a horse with Child Of The Night for a father and Lumiar WMA for a mother would be listed as Child Of The Night X Lumiar WMA. If you prefer, you can list them how I did in the above created horse information example.
Linage matters with disciplines:
If your horse comes from a long line of English disciplines horses on both sides, the chances are that it will have the build to be a good English horse. You wouldn't show it in Western disciplines. There are exceptions to this, but very few and very rare. So if you can, try to find out what disciplines it's forebearers excelled in and gear your horse towards a similar or same discipline. So if you want an English or Sporthorse disciplined horse, try to fit together a pedigree that would best produce a horse in that discipline.
DISCIPLINES
Be realistic:
When created disciplines for your horse, again, please be realistic. You will not have a horse that is competing in English Pleasure, Freestyle Reining, Level Two Dressage, and Regular Working Hunter all at once. It is incredibly hard for a horse to excel in multiple like-disciplines (like dressage and hunter pleasure), and even harder for a horse to perform well in un-like disciplines. It is next to impossible for a horse to compete in everything I listed above, let alone be good at it. If you think about yourself and say you play a sport, like volleyball, would you rather focus your time and energy into being really good at volleyball, or try out for soccor, tennis, swimming, track, and softball all at once? What are your chances that you will excel and be a winner in all of those at the same time? Slim to none; it is the same with horses. It is far better to focus on one to three disciplines than to have your horse compete all the way across the board. Besides, if you did this the HF Show Association would reprimand you for overshowing.
For more information on showing, classlists, and exactly what overshowing is, please visit the main HF site and the Show Association, listed in the main directory.
Lineage has impact:
Another factor that will help determine your horse's disciplines is its lineage. If your horse comes from a long line of English disciplines horses on both sides, the chances are that it will have the build to be a good English horse. You wouldn't show it in Western disciplines. There are exceptions to this, but very few and very rare. So if you can, try to find out what disciplines it's forebearers excelled in and gear your horse towards a similar or same discipline.
Breed has impact:
When choosing a discipline for your horse, please make sure it suits your breed of horse as well. For instance, you wouldn't be showing a heavy Friesian in Grand Prix cross country, or a Miniature in Dressage.
WEBPAGE FOR YOUR HORSE
You are more than welcome to create a webpage for your horse! It gives a sense of pride to display your horse and it's accomplishments/progeny. It is also very nice for other members to have free access to your horse's information, especially if they are thinking of breeding to it. Make sure that all of your pages have the HF mandated disclaimer stating something about your pages being fake, part of Horses Forever, a SIM game, whatever.
PICTURES FOR YOUR HORSE:
Please visit the HF rules for this. It can be very tricky, as pictures available over the internet are not always taken with permission from the horse's owner. This has caused problems in the past for HF-ers, as the RL owners felt their horse was being impersonated and not given credit. You must always try to aquire permission before using a picture you like. Pictures are very nice to display on your horse's page, as it creates a more realistic viewpoint of your horse, other than your description, and allows other members to see just what it looks like. You are allowed as many pictures as you wish, but please keep in mind the loading time for pages with a lot of graphics. Also, please make sure the pictures somewhat match, like one picture wouldn't be a chestnut for your bay horse, while the next picture is of a black. I know that sounds goofy, but it's happened in HF before.
PROGENY
When you create your horse, it WILL NOT have show results/titles and progeny created. The horse is starting with a totally clean slate in HF, and must earn each title and sire/give birth to each foal. By no means are you allowed to create already-born foals for its information.
MANDANTORY REGISTRY
Once you have created your information, you are ready to submit your horse to the Mandantry Registry. The MR is located on the HF Message Board, and you will find a post at the top that gives guidelines for registering horses. If the required information asks that you state whether the horse is bred, imported, or created, you would list "created." You ARE allowed to find a stable to board at and enter your horse in shows while your registration is still pending. Once you get your horse's registration number, please keep it for your horse's information as you will need it periodically as you play, and it is the key to your horse's existance being acknowledged in HF.
Congratulations! You have a new horse in HF! Go out there and have fun with it!
