Wiki » Horses » Breeding (foal exercises )

As soon as the foal is born you can start foaling exercises. You can do this in the lunge circle on your ranch page or a rented lunge circle (Menu > Rent > Lunging circle). Training these foaling exercises is also called ‘maxing’. During maxing, you will train your foal's skills. Once you have trained these 100%, your foal is fully maxed.

The foal exercises you can do and the skills you train with them:

• Haltering- increases Obedience.
  
• Walk along by hand - increases Agility.
  
• Standing alone in the stable - increases Stamina.
  
• Short ride as a hand horse - increases Speed.
  
• Give foot - increases Strength.

Skill points and why they are important

Skill points are the number of a horse's skill points that determine his/her performance during a competition. The more skill points a horse has, the better it will perform. So this also applies to foals: the higher the skill points, the better the chances of successful performance in the future.

You can train your foal's skills until the horse is 1 year old. This is because a foal is not born with its maximum skill points; the skill bars are usually around 50% at birth. By training the foal's skills in a lunging circle, which is also called “maxing”, you can train the skill bars to 100% so that the foal will have the maximum number of skill points. Once a foal is fully trained/maxed, it automatically disappears from the list in the lunging circle.

Skills can be increased by 100% training your foal and selecting parents with high skills (and who are 100% trained).

Impact of not training a foal

When you choose not to do foal exercises with your foal, the foal's skills do not improve. Foals that are not trained therefore end up starting as an adult horse with lower skill points, i.e. this means they get fewer points with competitions.

Moreover, training the foal affects the skill points of future generations. If one or more of a horse's bars are not maxed, these skills start at 0% in an offspring of that horse. This means you spend much more time fully training these foals.