Dilute genes - cream, silver dapple, dun, champagne and pearl

Thanks Chev
The stallion owner commented that Velvet is the darkest black on a foal that she has ever seen on her stallion's progeny. She too was surprised how dark she was. She also confirmed that her Perlino is also double Agouti. He has produced Palominos as well. She 100% guarantees palomino or buckskin foals from non grey mares - I thought that was very brave ;)

I must admit searching for photos of Black Buckskins from foal to adult has proved unfruitful for me. So I will post photos of Velvet at different stages in case someone has a similar colour breeding experience.

Lynda
 
Hi chev

i posted before about double dilute in my previous post but could you explain it to me???

If you read my post (with the Pic)

Nikki xxxx
 
Sorry Nikki, missed your question :eek:

First off, a double dilute is just a horse with two cream genes. Put at it's simplest;

Perlino = bay with two cream genes. Homozygous perlino can mean a couple of different things... it could be that they mean homozygous for cream - in that case, it's pretty obvious! It could mean he's also homozygous for agouti (bay) *and* cream - which is what it should mean. That would mean that he'd only ever throw buckskin or palomino foals to solid mares (bay, black, chestnut) as the stallion willuma mentioned does. It is guaranteed in a case like that - he will always pass on both cream and bay, so foals to solid mares can only ever be palomino or buckskin.

Homozygous cremello is kind of self-explanatory. The stallion would have two copies of e (chestnut) and two copies of Cr (cream). On chestnuts, the only possible outcome is palomino. On bays, you could get buckskin, palomino, or smoky black, depending on the exact genetics of the bay.

There's no such thing as homozygous palomino. Homozygous means a horse carries two copies of a certain gene (cream, in this case). Homozygous cream = cremello, perlino or smoky cream. A palomino is a chestnut horse with *one* copy of cream - heterozygous for cream.

I think the stallion's owners are trying to make clear that any foal born would have at least one copy of cream (possibly two, if the dam carries a copy of cream too).

I'm guessing that when you say strawberry roan you mean chestnut with roan? If so, the cremello stallion is actually perlino or smoky cream - chestnut roan is chestnut base with a roan gene. In order to produce a bucksin foal (bay with cream) the sire has to pass on black; so we know that the stallion has a black gene. That makes him either black with two cream (smoky black) or bay with two cream (perlino). It's impossible to say without testing him, since chestnut based horses can carry bay and will still be chestnut - but the one thing we do know is that the stallion is not cremello. :)

He is homozygous for cream, certainly; not cremello, not 'homozygous for palomino', and possibly, if the last foal you mentioned is smoky black and not buckskin, not even homozygous for bay. :)
 
Thanks chev i was just unsure as to what she meant.

She breed lovely horses and one day I would like to own one of her horses (like the one in the piccy) do you think that a clydesdale X arab would have anything anatomically wrong with it???

The 2 offspring I have seen have great movement and conf is good but someone told me that it was a blasphemy to X arabs and draughts is this true???

I'm just curious I guess as I have my heart set on one of these horses for the future. Arab X with lighter horses don't suit me as I am quite stocky myself and I prefer to have weight under me :rolleyes:

This is the stallion

Thanks

Nikki xxxx
 
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People have been crossing Arabs with Percherons for a long while and they are rather nice (but Percherons have Arab in their genetic makeup anyway).

Crossing with a Clydie could be a bit hit and miss, like crossing Shires and TBs here to produce heavyweight hunters, get the mix right and you get a useful and nice looking horse, get it wrong....

and there is no way to tell!
 
Nikki, is the pic you posted the stallion that's homozygous for cream? If so, I'm afraid his owner has got it wrong; he's a palomino; chestnut with one cream gene. He's heterzygous for cream, so there would always be a 50% chance of a dilute foal when he was used on solid mares. The reason he's produced cremello on a palomino mare is because both parents have passed cream on.

The main difference in breeding terms is that using a cremello stallion guarantees a dilute foal; using a palomino doesn't.

Echo ambatt with the cross - Arabs and Clydesdales are very different in type and height; you could end up with a lovely foal, or you could end up with something that has the height, head and feather of a Clydesdale on little Arab legs... Bit of a gamble that one!
 
Thanks Chev

I suppose it's like most crossing it's a hit or miss!!

Thanks for clearing all that up for me!!!

Nikki xxx
 
Chev, your post on duns was fascinating (I have always loved duns - but oddly never had one ...) especially about it being an atavistic colour.

Tell me, please, about the colour of the Exmoor ... sometimes I have read it described as "wild bay"; sometimes I have read that they occur as "bay, brown or dun".

They seem to me to be remarkably similar to many Przewalski's horses in "markings" (for want of a better term - ie mealy muzzle, belly, groin and axillae) although lighter in "shade" (which is understandable given the environment).

Here is Przewalski's :
Przewalski.jpg

and here is Exmoor :
Exmoor.jpg
 
fascinating!

How can you work out though what the colouring of a foal could be!? if you know the colourings of the foals parents, grandparents and great grandparents?

Everyone has tipped so far that my foal ist going to be chesnut with a star.:eek: :D

(its driving me absolutely potty waiting for my foal to appear.)
 
Edited to add the pearl dilution to thread...

Pearl has been documented in Iberian/Spanish horses, and Quarter Horses. It is a reccessive gene, meaning a horse must carry two copies in order for the gene to be expressed. One copy does not alter the appearance of the coat colour and two copies means it will be fully expressed.

It does, however, react to the presence of the cream gene; if cream is present, the pearl dilution gives the appearance of a double dilute.

On a chestnut base, the coat colour is diluted to a pale apricot colour, including mane and tail, and the skin appears pale. In combination with cream, it produces pseudo double dilute colouring, including blue or green eyes.

More information and genetic testing can be found here, and this site explains more.
 
i have seen an andalusian stallion described as champange. i was wonder what colour combos could result from breeding with a palomino and bredding with a chestnut. the chestnut father was bay and the mother was chestnut. i dont know i that makes any differnce.

thanks:)
 
The dun zygosity test is available now, for select breeds. The gene itself has yet to be identified but certain markers associated with dun are now known in some breeds.

The dun test is not yet available for PRE, Andalusians, Lusitanos, Paso Fino and Peruvian Paso horses, in whom the markers have yet to be identified.

I didn't know that champagne was about to become available, but a test for pearl dilution is available now too.
 
Looking at duns, how do 2 grey parents produce 2 yellow dun offspring and 1 grey dun? The grey dun has a grey/ black face and grey/ brown body which will presumably go grey eventually. The yellows appear to have no grey in their faces.

Are both parents originally yellow dun gone grey or one a grey dun and one a yellow dun? Though one, if not both, has a white mane & tail - would this be the case with a dun gone grey?
 
It's basically the same as two greys producing bay offspring; both parents obviously have only one copy of grey, and in the case of the yellow duns neither has passed the grey on. In the third, one or both has passed on grey, resulting in a foal that goes grey. :)
 
So is a grey dun effectively a yellow dun going grey? I'm confused then as I thought a grey dun had a different base colour :confused: I thought from your initial post on duns that the yellows would be dun on bay and the grey dun would be dun on black with a grey gene?

Which would make parents some kind of dun but both gone completely grey, including in 1 case having grey mane & tail and no dark points any longer :confused:

The only thing I remember about genetics was on tall & small peas. I don't think it ever went much beyond that, and I guess this is a little more complicated:D
 
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Problem is the terminology really. Strictly speaking a black + dun would be called black dun, mouse dun, grullo or grulla; but because the dun dilutes the body to a greyish shade, people call them grey dun. It's a bit like the fabled cream dun; that gets used to describe various duns most of whom have no cream in there at all.

Dun + grey would be grey dun... but once the grey has really got to work on them the dun becomes invisible and they're called grey.

We're only just startign to understand the various colour genes really and terminology varies from one place to another, so there's lots of inconsistency when it comes to naming colour (especially when dun gets involved!).
 
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That makes sense. He's been described to me as a grey dun and definitely to go grey and also a silver dun that definitely won't grey out :rolleyes: No evidence of him going grey yet, but from white hairs on his face I assume he will.

I was just surprised to find 2 yellow dun full sisters and couldn't figure out how the various colours came about, as I assume this certainly isn't based on yellow :)

Conf5.jpg

1-1.jpg
 
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