Can someone tell me what color my pony is?!

[chubbypony]

Dollie was born almost a silvery frosty white. When her baby hair fell off she was chestnut with a light mane/tail. She was malnurished when I got her as a weanling. Because of this she couldn't seem to shed properly so I body clipped her in the summer. Underneath her ragged brown coat she was a lovely silver dapple. Another year winter hair grew back brown and when she shed out the next summer she was a brown dapple. Now she is a charcoal color and still has the light mane and tail. What color is she going to be? Is there a name for a coat that is never the same shade from one year to another? She is almost three. If she was going to lighten into a gray she should have started by now.

Also the parents colors are questionable. I know the dad was chestnut, but the mom(who was quit dirty and muddy when I say her) looked as though she could be either a white/gray or a white appaloosa with a very light sprinkling of spots. If the mom was gray then my baby would probably be gray. The white is usually dominate. Right?

Here is picture of the mare with a coat of many changing colors.
http://image36.webshots.com/37/7/89/35/281278935Tefbtw_ph.jpg

[Kerry Claire]

Wow that was mind-boggling!!! Very interesting though! I'm afraid I'm not very good with colours but there's bound to be someone on here who is. I think Chev's into colour genetics etc :)

Dollie looks gorgeous! How tall is she?

[chubbypony]

She is about 10.2 hh. She is a little on the chubby side. She is a speedy little driving pony dispite her chubbiness. She had such fancy knee action she looks part Hackney. She is also very interested in everything. She tried to help me build a snowman this winter and then when I wasn't looking she tried to climb him. That was the end of that poor snowman. :p

[jUmPingIsLifE]

Do you have any pictures of your baby? my guess is probably as good as yours haha, i dont really know- i would guess a dark dark grey and she'll probably just lighten up as years go by and when she is older probably a lighter grey.
sounds like her mom was a fleabitten grey.

[chubbypony]

I know the mom wasn't flea-bitten. I have had nothing, but flea-bitten horses up until Dollie. These spots look more appaloosa(ish). They were a steel gray and only flecked the rump. Also the mom had very mottled skin around the mouth and eyes indicating that she was appaloosa. I've never heard of a flea-bitten sheltand either. Anyway I thought if the mom was not carrying the gray gean(sp?), than there a possiblity that Dollie doesn't either. Perhaps she will be liver chestnut. But that wouldn't make any sense because she was very close to white when she was born. That strange too because grays are born dark, not light.

[jUmPingIsLifE]

that does sound like an appy. if in the case she is its very possible yours will end up with the same spotting on her rump. i have seen "solid" appys who all of a sudden after up to even a year of life will all of a sudden grow spots and have heard that years after birth they will all of a sudden start growing spots. not sure if that is true but i heard it.

[chubbypony]

My mare also has a very broad white part on her upper eye. I thought I remember someone saying that Appys can have weird eyes. Eyes with more white around them.

[entreat]

Looks like a dark grey to me, but Chev is the colours wiz around here.
Going by my dodgy opinion, I would say she's a grey bay - that being a bay, but with the grey over the top (yes, Grey, in it's many shades, is not a 'colour' but a cover (as I understand?), so your pony may be bay underneath, but the grey covers it eventually. (is it possible to get a bay horse if you have a chestnut parent?? Ask Chev!)

She's just gorgeous all the same!!

[galadriel]

Was the sire a flaxen chestnut?

[chev]

She looks like a silver dapple - which would fit with the pale silvery coat at birth. Did she have white eyelashes as a foal?

Silver dapple is a gene that dilutes black on the body to a chocolately colour, usually leaving the colour on the face and legs a shade or two darker as seems to be the case with your mare, and black mane and tail hair to a lighter shade again - it can be so pale in some cases it appears white.

Mum does sound like she carried on of the Appaloosa patterns, with or without grey as well (or possibly varnish roan) - the Appaloosa patterns can show up later in life (especially varnish roan - that gradually takes over any other colour or pattern the horse acrries in a similar way to grey) so you might see changes like that. Your mare is not grey though - greying starts around the eyes, not on the body - and her face is darker than her body. And as you say, foals destined to grey out are generally born darker than foals with no grey.

Dad.... could have been a form of silver dapple (some liver chestnuts with flaxen manes are in fact black with silver dapple) or could have been an ordinary chestnut that carried the silver gene. Silver doesn't usually show up on red coats like chestnut at all. He could even have been bay with silver - because bays have a red body the silver gene doesn't dilute body colour - but their legs, manes and tails, having black pigment, are diluted - the result is very often almost indistinguishable from chestnut with pale mane and tail.

Your mare looks like she has a healthy dollop of Shetland in there - silver dapple is often found in American Shetlands. She's a beautiful colour. I'm jealous!! :D

[chev]

Here's a page on silver dapple - look at the photos of the bay with silver and the flaxen chestnut - you see what I mean about indistinguishable! The only way to tell in some cases is genetic testing. That can tell you whether your mare has a black base coat or red.

http://www.mustangs4us.com/Horse%20Colors/z_silver_dapples.htm

[Kerry Claire]

Chev - how on earth do you know so much about the colour genes of horses!?! :eek: Is it an interest/hobby or do you use it for work? When I saw a few of your posts a couple of months ago I was determined to find out more because I find it all really fascinating, but they didn't have any books at the library (too specialised!) and the ones I found on the internet were really expensive! :rolleyes:

[chubbypony]

So this color seems rare. Can she be bred with a specific color for something unusually colored?

I am pretty sure she had the white lashes. Looked like it in the baby pics.

She certainly does have the shetland "smarty pants". She so good at getting herself into trouble. You can see it in her eyes. She's hunting for trouble. I can hear the sound track to Mission Impossible in my head when she walks over to my husband. She sneaks up to him when he's working and starts nuzzling her way up his back and then runs away before he turns around. He tries to chase her and she just lopes along just our of reach. She loves it. It's their game.

She is also such a great driving pony. I think she kind of looks like a shrunkin' Halflinger.

[chev]

Kerry Claire - try Amazon. I got some great deals on second hand books there. :)

chubbypony - silver dapple is rare in the sense that it doesn't occur in all breeds, but it's surprisingly common in some breeds (the Rocky Mountain Horse, Mustangs, and American Shetlands and Welsh ponies being a few of them). It only works on black pigmented hair, so you also need a horse to have black somewhere for its effects to be seen.

Any foal you crossed her with would have to have silver and black somewhere for the effects to be seen - unless you cross to another black with silver dapple, the odds are against you breeding a foal like that.

She is a lovely mare and sounds like a real character! :)

[Nicole5310]

I wish I could see the pic. But it does sound like silver dapple on bay to me, and it is definately in the shetland breed. It sounds like she inherited it from the sire because like Chev said it is only expressed on black and it could well have been carried on the chestnut. If the mare has appy patterning and your pony is only three she may well start to develop appy colouring too. Then she may have got the silver from the mare too, I guess you just wont know :D

Still its a nice colour to have, something a little different :) have fun with your pony.

Kerry Claire I learned all I know about colour on the internet just run a seach through Google. I have now helped quite a few people on my local forum. I just found it all so fascinating I had to learn more. Now I cant find any new stuff, but I still find people to discuss colour with. Wherever I came across pages that contradicted other websites I asked on the CPEA bulletin what was correct so I knew I was on track.

[Kerry Claire]

OK - thanks guys :)

[Miriam]

I wish I could see the pic. .

Me too. Wonder why that is

[Kerry Claire]

Chev - any chance you could recomend a specific book for me?

[galadriel]

For those who can't see the photo, try visiting the link directly:
http://image36.webshots.com/37/7/89/35/281278935Tefbtw_ph.jpg

My thought was that if the sire was a flaxen chestnut, perhaps he was truly a bay or black silver dapple; the bay/black silver dapple can appear to be a dark flaxen chestnut. And as chev points out, a true chestnut won't express silver dapple, even if he's carrying it.

Kerry Claire, there are a number of very interesting websites with a lot of color information. Here's one of my favorites:
http://www.vgl.ucdavis.edu/~lvmillon/coats.html

And another good one:
http://greenfield.fortunecity.com/dreams/799/hc/horsecolors.htm

[chev]

There's a couple worth reading :) . One is 'Equine Colour Genetics' by DP Sponenberg - it's really in-depth and has a section on donkey colouring too.

Also try 'Horse Genetics' by Ann Bowling - it covers more on equine genetics (like parentage testing, the horse gene map, performance traits and so on) than just colour but it's one of the best books on colour genetics you'll find.

There's another published later than those two called 'Horse Colour Explained' by Jeanette Gower, which is pretty good - not as in-depth as the first two in some ways though.

You'll find some discrepancies between them - mainly down to notation, as each geneticist tends to use their own notation (and theories!). So Sponenberg's notation differs from Bowling's (the flaxen gene, white gene and so on) but neither is wrong - the majority of work on the genetics of horse colour is still theoretical, and how it's written or the ideas behind it does vary according to which scientist is writing it.

[chev]

This site is one of my favourites; definitely worth a look. Also has links to even more information....

http://www.mustangs4us.com/colors_and_color_patterns.htm

[Kerry Claire]

Thanks Galadriel and Chev - do you think I'll beable to understand them? If they're aimed at adults with a lot of technical language (I've only done genetics at gcse level) I don't know how much trouble I'll have understanding them.

[galadriel]

They're not hugely complicated :) Take a look--they're aimed at people who don't know too much about color genetics yet.

[chev]

I didn't even do biology at GCSE - this is how I learnt everything I've posted about genetics. :) Give it a go - most of it is explained really clearly, and once you get your head round the basics it's a lot simpler than you think.

[chubbypony]

I have no way of knowing or asking about the sire. I mean whether he was flaxen chestnut or not. He was reg. grad A mini. That I know. See when I got Dollie she was a rescued pony. We stumbled upon the farm looking at another mini they had on-line. The farm was a dump and Dollie(6mo old) and her mom were the worst off. Dollie was small enough that we could take her home in our van(no trailer at that time), so I chose her. I wish we could have rescued them both. I still feel guilty to this day.

Anyway as you can image I don't feel like asking those people any questions. Even in her horrible condition(skinny, raggedy coat and long hooves) they thought she was a champion pony and wanted an arm and a leg. We managed to talk them down and ran with our pony before they could change their minds.

On the way home in the car Dollie got a little nervious. I was kind of scared she was going to act up. But, I just popped the coffee can of feed and she put her two little front legs up on my lap and nibbled. What a great pony.

Yeah, for 4-H we learned a bit of genetics, but it's been awhile. When I was boarding and the lady there was breeding QH's a lot, I got to see the genetics work. That was very neat. It made much more sense when it was applied. ;)

Here's my webshots site with all my horse and pony pictures.

http://community.webshots.com/user/shimmer4u