I have read the SO4 Manual - Section 4.1.2 on breeding and would appreciate some further advice from you more experienced breeders. Are there any minimum or maximum age limits for the sire and dam and if so, is there any significant differences of foal potential at either end of these limits.

Welcome, Collier!

As far as I know there are no min/max age limits for breeding (breeding horses ingame die at varying ages over 14-ish) and I've never noticed any difference in the quality of foal produced by either older or younger parents.

Hope that helps.

Providing the horse is getting older in the stud barn rather than on the track, I haven't found age a problem. I do find that the ratings can play some part in breeding so if it is for example a former Group 1 winner with a high of 130, now in the low 100's racing into it's old age, then it's more than likely not going to be as good at producing quality offspring as if it was retired nearer it's glory days. However, it's very rare my horses aimed at stud race past 4 and I only give them 5 years breeding so if your talking about horses 10+ and older it may be different, I wouldn't know.
You can breed with horses at 2 but don't expect great results as there stats and peak levels won't of developed fully in that time.
I find most of the horses in the game quite distance restrictive anyway but one thing I have noticed over the years is if you breed cross-distance, ie a 6f horse with a 10f horse to get a miler, there is a far greater chance the yearling you get will be garbage and tripless, (the bigger the gap between the two breeding distances, the more likely I find this becomes the case) than if you breed say two milers or a 7f horse and a miler.

I have tryed for a full season to try and breed a 2yo without sucess. Also can l ask do you use horses prefered distance or actually what they do on track, as i had a hombreed who won everything at 7f but said prefers 1m1f so l put it with another 7f group 1 winner of mine who did win few at 6f so was expecting a great 7f horse but came out horse will prefer 1m 1f again???

It was with SO2 that I bred with a couple 2yo's, with older horses rather than together, but as I say none of the resulting horses were any good Westy. From what I remember it did take a fair few attempts for the breeding to be successful.
Sometimes the preferred distance of the yearlings can be a bit odd. I've had a 10f horse produced by two milers and I even had in SO2 a mile horse at two which then changed to a 6f horse at 3. Go figure!! I generally pay attention to what they do on the track for distance rather than the preferred distance and I find that the traits of the dam tend to pass on to the yearlings a lot more than that of the sire, include distance limitations.

Thank you all for your help........most welcome
Peter

Very good acurate post.

It depends on what horse you want. If you are aiming to breed a specific distance then look at the breeding indicator. I find this works best. Its trial & error.

I can agree with weird distance. I had a horse in the league last year Indian Lights. A top 5f horse. Its breeding indicator was 1m1f lol.