Greying Out

[horseygal90]

Is there anyway to tell what colour a horse was before it greyed out? Or if it was just grey from birth... Without knowing the parents colours? Like, if they have dark eyes, they were black/bay before or something... :)

[Mehitabel]

no, not really.
they're never grey from birth though - grey is a colour modifier, so it always changes the base colour.

[chev]

All grey foals are born base-colour; so bay, chestnut, black, whatever. If you're lucky enough to have a foal registered (as some are) as bay going grey, or chestnut going grey (some are noted as bay (will go grey) or similar) then you'll know from their papers.

If you catch them before they go white, sometimes you can see what colour they started - you'll see black legs on bay and black based greys, for example.

But otherwise, no. The only way is to have them colour tested - take a sample of tail hair complete with roots and send it off to a lab, and they'll be able to tell you what colour the horse is genetically (in other words, what colour it was before it went grey).