shetland colours

scottishterrier

scottishterrier

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Jun 18, 2008
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perhaps a stupid question but as the majority of shetlands i see are black was it once that the breed were only black? i was thinking perhaps because of the climate they lived in black would retain the heat better. lol maybe im talking crap

or were shetlands originally all the colours they are now!?
 
No they have always been every colour except spotted. Black was very popular when they were bred as pit ponies down the mines (for obvious reasons) and also has been very popular in the show ring over the last 20 years. Whether there are additional genetic reasons why you see a lot of blacks someone better at genetics than me will have to answer! ;) However I have to say that here on Shetland driving past herds of them you see every colour possible, they are not predominantly black.

Personally I have a grey, a chestnut with a flaxen mane and tail and a bay :D

Oh and Shetland isn't particularly cold, it is wet and very windy in the winters but the temperature rarely drops below freezing. So their thick waterproof coats are an essential but I don't think colour comes into it (good theory though!).
 
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scottishterrier said:
perhaps a stupid question but as the majority of shetlands i see are black was it once that the breed were only black? i was thinking perhaps because of the climate they lived in black would retain the heat better. lol maybe im talking crap

or were shetlands originally all the colours they are now!?
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Hi there you may think this is daft but I see more coloured shetlands than any other colour.mind you I have showen for years now in coloured classes.
Even in native classes they are lots of shetlands..that are all colours but I love all shetlands and minis in general ..By the way dont think you are talking
crap:)
 
It's fairly easy to breed for black (it happened with Friesians... and apart from the odd very rare crop out of chestnut they are now all black) so where someone is breeding for that colour you will see fewer other colours. But it would be unheard of for the breed to start out black and then spontaeneously mutate to carry all the other colours too. It's likely that all colours have been there a long long time.

Interestingly horses left to breed without intervention by man over time develop dun characteristics; dun is known as an atavistic gene and it seems to be the only colour that does that. It's likely that horses were originally mainly dun in colour. Selective breeding for various color mutations over generations have meant that we have the variety of colour we do now.
 
i have a chesnut shettie and so does alison, susan who has her horses in the field across the road from donnas bow, has a dapple/grey shettie? The one that grunts at you, if you have mare with you when you walk past(was only gelded about 3 months ago, broke out one day and tried to mount bryony:eek:)
 
Mainland Scotland is the centre of the Big Black Shetland pony. A lot of well kown studs specialise in big black ponies. That's why you'll be seeing a lot of them!

In the Isles they are no more common than any other colour.

There are 3 studs that spring to mind here that only have big blacks predominantly.
 
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