¶ Ranch Manager
The Ranch Manager is a special feature to help maintain and partially automate your subscription Ranches. Please note though that the Ranch Manager is only available on Ranches with active subscriptions. Free accounts will not be able to use this.
¶ Overview
The Ranch Manager can help you with 4 different tasks:
- Moving stud colts from pasture before they reach 2 years old.
- Finding the best fit job for your horse.
- Manage each horse's feed.
- Automatically enter shows for the next game month.
Before I jump in to how each task works, let's look at where to find the Ranch Manager. If you have a subscription Ranch, they will be found on your Ranch page:
Selecting the Manager will open a tab that looks like this:
¶ Using the Ranch Manager
¶ Moving stud colts from pasture before they reach 2 years old.
Ever had a yearling stud colt in pasture with other horses and forgot to move them out before they turned 2 years old? They can be such a pain! The Ranch Manager can help prevent that problem. All you need to do is let them know which youngsters are stud colts, and they will move them out of your pastures into an available barn space, if you have one. They will do this for any colts who reach 1year 11 months old and are in a pasture.
Please note that the Ranch Manager will not do this automatically for any stud in pasture, since sometimes you may want studs to pasture breed mares. It's a good idea to check the box next to your colt's name soon after they are born so that you don't forget!
A couple things to note though:
- While you can check the box next to mares or geldings, the Ranch Manager won't move them.
- The Ranch Manager will not move stallions out of barns, or from one pasture to another. They only move 1year and 11 month old studs from pasture to a barn.
- The Ranch Manager cannot move stud colts from pasture to a barn if you have no available space in your barns. Please make sure that you do have space if you want to use this feature!
- Only stud colts who reach 1 year 11 months old will be moved. Younger stud colts will remain at pasture.
¶ Finding the best fit job for your horse
Each horse will have a checkbox in a column called ‘Auto Job’. Select this box if you want the Ranch Manager to give your horse a job. They will select whichever job fits your horse best. If you don't want them to have a job, or if you prefer to manually select their job, then leave the box unchecked.
One thing though, if you have the Ranch Manager give your horse a job, but then you decide later you don't want them to have a job, you will need to 1) uncheck the ‘Auto Job' box, AND 2) go to the horse's page and remove their job.
¶ Manage each horse's feed
The Ranch Manager can try to help you manage your horse's Condition by changing their feed for you. To turn this feature on, you will want to set the horse's ‘Target Condition’ to one of the three Condition options available. If you have this feature active, the Ranch Manager will work at rollover to select the best feed for your horse based on all the things they did during that period, and based on what Condition you selected. In simpler terms, they will try to get the horse to the Condition you selected, and keep them there.
Notice we said ‘try’ though. The Ranch Manager can only change the horse's feed, and they have the same feed options that the player does. This means that you can still ‘overwork’ a horse and make them lose more Condition than Concentrated feed can counteract. All this is to say the Ranch Manager is not a miracle worker, and won't be able to keep your horse at the desired Condition if you have the horse do too many things. Please make sure you read the Condition page to prevent your horse from becoming Emaciated (which they can die from!).
Setting this feature to ‘None’ means the Ranch Manager will not help you with that horse's feed.
¶ Automatically enter shows for the next game month
The Ranch Manager can help you with your show horses' busy schedules by randomly picking 1-2 AM and 1-2 PM show that will run in the next game month, and entering the horse in those shows.
To use this feature, you will need to first click the box under ‘Auto Show’ for the horse you want to be entered, then you should select the ‘Discipline’ (including Inhand, even though it's technically not a discipline) and Level that you want them to be entered in. Inhand should always be set to Level 1.
From there, you can tell the manager whether or not you want your horse entered in ‘Breed-Specific’ shows or not. This column is only for disciplines since inhand shows are always breed-specific. If you do not select this box for a horse entering in a discipline, they will be entered in Open shows.
Lastly, you must tell the manager how many shows to enter your horse in per rollover. You do this with the ‘Total Shows’ column, where you can select 1 or 2. If you do not put anything in this box, the manager won't enter any shows for that horse. Note that this is 1 or 2 shows per AM or PM period!
A couple other things to note:
1. The Ranch Manager won't enter your horse in championships like the Futurities or others! If you want to enter those, you will need to do so manually.
2. If you tell the Ranch Manager to enter a horse in a Level that they do not qualify for (don't have enough points), then the Manager won't be able to put them in any shows and you will just get a notification that they couldn't be entered.
3. The Ranch Manager will only enter horses whose Condition is at least Moderately Thin. Thin or lower Condition horses will not be entered in shows even if you have them selected to, and you will receive a notification that they are too thin to enter.
¶ Okay, I set up the Ranch Manager, but when will it actually do things?
The Ranch Manager works every evening at 8 AM EST.
¶ What about free accounts?
I'm sure you are wondering, can free accounts ever get a Ranch Manager? The answer is sort of. Ranch Managers are available only for Ranches with active subscriptions, but, you can turn a free account into a subscription Ranch if you want! To do this, you can purchase a renewal subscription in the Store and assign it to your free Ranch, for half the price of the regular subscription.
Subscriptions are still monthly, and can expire, so the Ranch Manager will only work while you have an active subscription. If you paid to add a subscription to your free account then decide not to renew, then that account will revert back to a free account and you will not have access to the Ranch Manager. Expired extra subscription Ranches will not revert to free accounts, however. They will just become unplayable until the subscription is renewed.