Once you have successfully passed your third Riding Level, you can create and manage your own center. Once this condition is fulfilled, from any icon located under the icon “My equestrian center”, you will arrive on a page that will enable you to get started in this new adventure.First of all, you need to know that the center’s reserve is strictly independent of your reserve as a breeder. You will have 25,000 (EC money)to create your center. It is up to you to manage this money as best as possible by carefully investing it.Here are the sources of income for the equestrian center:

  • board and lodging money taken for other players’ horses and ponies,
  • selling off crops,
  • organizing competitions,
  • speculating on manure,
  • you can credit your center’s reserve with a pass, you will therefore earn 500 + your number of days of registration multiplied by 10 up to a maximum of 3,000 per pass.

Equestrian center store

 

     
     
To enable you to build your center, and buy everything you need for it to work well, Mrs. Hubert also runs the equestrian center’s store. It works like the breeders’s store with different shelves, of course:

  • Competition: on this shelf you will find race courses, you can have two of them, including the one with which you have started your center,
  • Boxes: you will find boxes of different sizes here as well as various qualities of bedding,
  • Meadows: on this shelf are the meadows of different fertilities and sizes, as well as the greenhouse,
  • Agriculture: this is a key shelf for cultivating your meadows; you can buy seeds, fertilizer, pesticides and even manure here so as to manufacture your own fertilizer.

On the centers’s store page, you will be able to look at everything in your stock. You can also sell back items to Mrs. Hubert where need be, but he does not buy race courses, boxes and meadows.

Boxes

 

     
     
You can accommodate one resident horse per box. Due to the construction time needed, the number of boxes that your center can have is determined by your number of days of registration on Howrse. So, you can buy a box for every 3 days’ registration.There are different boxes of different sizes. The largest give more prestige to your center, given that they are more comfortable for your horses. Each box must have bedding. There are also different qualities. You can buy bedding and boxes on the market from Mrs. Hubert.Of course, the type of box and its conditions have an enormous influence on the well-being of your center’s resident horses. For this reason, the bedding used, the size and the cleanliness are essential for the recovery and morale of the horses resting in them. The quality of your boxes is one of the elements that determine the prestige of your stables. Note that you can change a box and also enlarge it, which will influence the general quality of all your boxes.

Bedding

     
     
To shelter a horse or a pony, you need bedding in your boxes. To buy bedding, go to the centers’s store. Once the stock of bedding is built up, it will appear on the right of the store’s page in your stock. Go to the page “Boxes”, click on “Manage my boxes’s bedding” and select the bedding you want to use and that you have in your stock. To keep the boxes clean and change the bedding each week, you also have to have grooms depending on the number of boxes your center has. You need one groom for every twenty boxes. The first is free, you only have to hire when your center has more than twenty boxes.The grooms work when the site is updated at 3am (French time). If you have just bought a new box, therefore, you have to wait until the next day for there to be bedding.

Repairs

     
     
Your occupied boxes wear 3% every day you connect to the site. You have to repair them before they reach 100% wear. Otherwise, they will be destroyed and the horse will be expelled from it. An icon to repair the boxes appears when the wear and tear is at 75%. This icon is a small anvil. Repairs will cost you 200 per box.

Reservations

     
     
If you want to accommodate the horses owned by one player in particular, simply reserve one or several boxes for them using the icon “reserve this box” represented by a hat.

Meadows

 

Land

     
     
You must therefore buy meadows from the center’s store. You will use this land to put your resident horses in pasture and to develop agriculture - an important source of income. The meadows available in the store are of different sizes and do not have the same quality with regards their fertility. This is essential as it will determine how many crops you produce. It will be taken into account in the quality of your meadows on your page and the horses left in the meadow will eat more grass in a more fertile meadow. This last point will have impacts on the expenditure of owners whose horses are boarded and lodged with you.Whether you decide to put a meadow in pasture or use it for growing crops, it will lose fertility if used. To increase fertility, you have to lay it fallow. However, the meadow can only increase to the fertility level at the time of purchase. An infertile meadow will therefore never achieve 100%.The gain in fertility per day fallow is 1% in spring and autumn, 3% in summer and 0.2% in winter. Laying your meadow fallow therefore only provides very little fertility in winter.

Pastures for resident horses

     
     
A horse needs an acre of pasture. You must therefore have a number of acres of meadows that is in line with your number of boxes. For example, a center that has 4 boxes must have a minimum of 4 acres of meadow. Note that it is better to have more meadows, to be able to grow crops on them and also to be able to lay them fallow to enable the earth to rest and the meadow’s fertility to increase.The meadows’s cleanliness is important. In poorly maintained meadows, resident horses might ingest toxic plants. It will take some time for them to recover. To maintain your meadows, you need grooms. If you have enough grooms, depending on your number of boxes, your meadows’s cleanliness will increase over the days. Note that for the first 20 boxes, the groom is offered free of charge by Howrse and you don’t need to hire one.

Agriculture

     
     
You can have 4 meadows simultaneously used to grow crops, regardless of the size of your center and that of your meadows. The crops grown depend on the seasons. You can only grow crops in a meadow in spring and summer. If you have a greenhouse you can plant seeds of your choice there in any season without any constraint other than having to restrict growing crops to 4 meadows, with the greenhouse counting as one meadow.

Crops and their season

     
     
In spring, you can grow carrots, alfalfa, barley, oats and hay. In summer, you can only grow wheat and turnips. You can sell your crops to Mrs. Hubert to earn money. There are two specific cases: carrots cannot be sold and are available to the resident horses in your center, will give it a bit more prestige, and straw that can be used as bedding instead of being sold.To start growing crops in a meadow:

  • go to the market to buy the seeds, fertilizer and potentially the pesticides you want to use,
  • go to the meadows’s page,
  • if the meadow is already in pasture, click on “Lay fallow”, then on “Grow crops”,
  • select the seeds, fertilizer and pesticides for this meadow,
  • confirm, the meadow is now ready to grow crops!

You should know that fertilizers improve the harvest collected from the crops grown and pesticides prevent the crops from being disrupted by ravaging insects, etc. The choice of pesticide cannot be changed once crops are being grown in the meadow, so be careful with your choice. Both these products exist in several qualities, but their price varies enormously depending on this.

To manufacture your own fertilizer at a lower cost, buy manure from the center’s store. It is available depending on what the breeders sell to it. You need 100lbs of manure to manufacture fertilizer for two acres of meadow on which crops are to be grown. Once this amount is bought, you can then transform the manure into fertilizer on the “Meadows” page.

To harvest a meadow, use the link “Start the harvest”. You have 20 days to do this before your crops mature.

Once the harvest is over, use the link “Stop the harvest” to lay this meadow fallow and then leave a resting time for the earth or reuse this meadow straight away or even put it in pasture for the center’s horses.

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Growing passes
     
     
You can grow passes under certain conditions, as this crop is very particular! Whenever growing passes:

  • you have to buy pass seeds for 10 acres from the agriculture shelf in the center’s store. These seeds are sown in autumn,
  • as passes are sensitive, they only grow on 10-acres fertile meadows,
  • growing passes requires the use of a fertilizer and pesticide. Both these elements must be of the best quality existing on the market.

30 day’s after starting to grow passes on your meadow, you can harvest them.

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Lessons

 

     
     
Your equestrian center can organize horse riding lessons for children. It is the breeders of the horses that are residents at your center who decide whether or not to give lessons in your center. They hence earn a certain amount of money that depends on the quality of your lessons. This amount is not taken from you, you only pay for the instructors’ salaries.The price of lessons depends on your center’s prestige, the number of instructors (you need one horse riding instructor for 30 horses), the health and dressage level of the horses that are residents at your center. The number of lessons your center can offer each day is unlimited.

Competition

 

     
     
Thanks to your center, you have the opportunity to start organizing horse riding competitions:

  • the speed races, which can be of two different types, either trotting or galloping,
  • the cross-country competitions,
  • the show jumping competitions.

Competitions increase your equestrian center’s prestige if the best Howrse horses participate in them!

The speed races

     
     
By creating your centre, you have a small race course which can hold one race a day. You can buy a second one in the centers’ store afterwards. The size of the race course determines the number of daily races that can be held there. The number of race courses per center is limited to two.These races start once there are 5 horses registered. It is up to the equestrian center to fix the share of the earnings made from visitors that will be paid to those participating in the race, as well as selecting the discipline (trotting or galloping).

To organize a cross-country or show jumping competition

     
     
  • go to the competitions page,
  • give a name to your competition,
  • decide on the share of earnings that will be paid to the competitors depending on their place and confirm,
  • then start putting the course together; initially the start, then the elements one by one by clicking on the list above the course,
  • you can remove an element from the course by clicking “Cancel”, or start from the beginning by clicking “Start over”,
  • when you are happy with the course, click on “Save course”.

The course’s difficulty depends on its length and the elements it contains. It will determine the minimum level required in stamina for the cross-country and in jumping for show jumping competitions so that a horse can register for it. Once five horses have registered, the competition starts automatically.Once the competition is over, other players can register and new competitions will take place. The registrations for cross-country and show jumping competitions are open 24 hours after their last edition. Of course, you can change the course at any time from the competitions page under the icon “My equestrian center”.

Employees

 

     
     
To keep your center in working order you need employees. There are several professions on Howrse:

  • the grooms look after the horses, change the bedding and clean the pastures,
  • the vets ensure horses are in good health and are responsible for looking after the mares when foaling, etc.,
  • the blacksmiths shoe the horses that are residents at your center. The resident horses of a center where a blacksmith works will see their horseshoes wear three times slower than others. The blacksmith also increases the center’s quality of healthcare,
  • the horse riding instructors enable you to organize lessons. These are a source of income for the resident horses and lessons are taken into account in the center’s prestige,
  • the saddler enable the breeders, with a horse that is resident in a center that employs one, to have this horse’s equipment repaired. A saddle and bridle repaired by this craftsman will lose half their wear, but can only be repaired once.

In case of a shortage of personnel, you can use temporary staff. You can make them redundant once you no longer need them. The temporary staff will bring less prestige to your center than players working for you, except for the groom category. To build up your center’s team, go to the page “Employees”. It will take some time to do so, so think about involving your employees in the life of your center to make them loyal and ensure you don’t have to use temporary staff. As the number of players looking for a job is often lower than demand, this factor also has an impact on your prestige. The centers that know how to create a real team will move up quicker in the rankings.

The salary you pay your employees also influences the prestige of your centre. The latter will be better if you pay your employees the maximum salary. You can work in your own center. To do this the easiest thing to do is to make yourself a reserved job offer by putting your login in the space reserved for this purpose. A center cannot employ more than two blacksmiths, and more than two saddlers.

To make the employees who have worked for you for more than 10 days loyal to your center, you can offer them a bonus of 15 that can be added to the maximum salary for the job in question.

Resident horses

 

Price of board and lodging

     
     
You equestrian center can accommodate horses as residents. You can select the price of the board and lodging per horse and per night in your center’s office. This price must be between 10 and 25 . However, when you board and lodge your own horses in your centre, you do not pay anything and this does not earn money.

Minimum skills level

     
     
You have the possibility to fix a minimum skills level for the resident horses of your center, still in the equestrian center’s office. Only horses with this level will be able to register in your center. Be careful, however, as this also concerns the breeders for whom you have reserved a box. If their horse has a level lower than what you have fixed, it cannot be registered for board and lodging in your center.

Board and lodging extensions

     
     
Regularly look at the news on your office. Here you will find the requests for extended board and lodging from breeders whose horses are at your center and you will be free to accept or refuse these requests.

Resident horses’s impact on prestige

     
     
The horses you accommodate do, of course, have an impact on your center, depending on their number but also on their condition of health and skills level.

The center’s page and prestige

 

     
     
Your page can be seen by all players. You can look it up in the center’s office. On this same page you can make a presentation of your center that will appear on the same principle as your breeder presentation. You can, of course, modify your presentation at any time.You can also look at the page of all other centers by clicking on their name. On this page you can see different information to compare your center to other players’ centers, and therefore see what you have to improve so that your center moves up in the rankings.A center’s prestige depends on numerous factors, some of which are found in the box “Key points for an equestrian center”.

The center’s chat room

 

     
     
As a center director you also have a chat room. You can set up access to this chat room as you wish, i.e. either reserve it for players that have a horse in your center only, or leave it open to all Howrse players. This chat room is your responsibility. You are its moderator and you have to make it lively. You can create and set up your chat room in your equestrian center’s office.You can access a center’s chat room that is open to all breeders from the center’s page.

Rankings

 

Equestrian center rankings

     
     
Equestrian centers are essential for the game to run smoothly. These centers accommodate the horses and enable breeders to train them. There are five rankings for the centers:

  • the prestige,
  • the number of resident horses,
  • the wealthiest centers,
  • the most profitable lessons,
  • the most popular centers: this last ranking is calculated depending on the number of visits by players in the previous day. It is therefore no use making several visits to a player’s page to make them go up in the ranking. Only one visit will be taken into account.

Competition rankings

     
     
On this page your can look up the most prestigious competitions, the amount of their winnings and see what centers organize them.The best Howrse players compete in these competitions.To check their regularity, competitions of over 75% prestige, that are not run for over 5 days, lose 1% prestige per day after this period.
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