Changes in coat colour- what age? (pics)

[Law]

Hello
I was wondering if anyone has youngsters whose coats have changed colours and when this typically happens?
I've got a friend whose youngster was liver chestnut and greyed out at around 2 years old. (normal I gather)

My two year old is buckskin (passport and I would say) but the vet identified him as bay recently. He has a *very* mealy muzzle and light points up his stifle and more recently his whole coat has lightened mostly all over.
Below is a recent pic and one from last summer showing his light face.

Apologies for the long post but my question is, is he likely to stay dark/bay/buckskin or is there a chance that he will lighten all over? Makes no odds, i'm just curious. Also posted pics of him as a baby.

This week

Last summer

Dam is buckskin, sire is bay

Any thoughts? (other than how long is this post!)

 

[Truly]

He is a dark buckskin

Most foals have a lighter babycoat until they shed out..even bays.
Vets usually get the colours wrong unfortunately as they don't have a lot of colour genetic knowledge..they have so much else to learn as well

A lot of Haflingers get called palomino on their passports because they look a little like it with their flaxen manes.
Buckskin is like palomino..you get lots of different shades.
But it looks like your boy is dark buckskin

..he may change slightly with Summer/Winter coat though but won't lighten right up.
You can get a test to prove it!
He is lovely btw

 

[Law]

Thanks for your reply and thanks for saying he's lovely

 

[Fahrenheit]

I thought he was buckskin and it was my vet who confirmed he thought he was also, obviously he is very experienced repro vet, the only way to know 100% is to get him tested but i've seen buckskins darker than him... I prefer to refer to him as a chocolate buckskin... may not be technically correct but sounds great

 

[KarynK]

Definately buckskin, there is a tinge of yellow in the winter coat long hairs and less obviously in the summer but that muzzle is a giveaway. Do you have some pictures of mum and dad? Mum looks golden in one and darker in another.

I am really interested in what separates the golden buckskin from these darker but not black shades, they still show yellow if you look hard but something is limiting it's dilute effect. I think it may be the tan gene, there is a company in the USA that do colour testing and can separate bay from brown (black and tan) but too few have gone through the test yet to establish the shades of black and tan. We know cream has little effect on a black coat so does the black and tan coat colour allow enough black hairs in the coat to hide the yellow???

My own TB mare is homozygos for black and tan, in the same test group a horse that appeared black tested with one black and tan and one black gene, so it may be this base colour that forms the very dark buckskin often mistaken for bay?

I'll stick my neck out here and say I think that At is more prevalent in the GB thoroughbred than actual bay.

I might get very curious in the summer when I am less busy and feeling rich and send some mane samples from these and yellow buckskins over to see if I am right!

I bred a dun that everyone thinks is bay, I made the vet put him down as dun, he had a very doubtful look on his face as he did it! He is not yellow but a really bright red, but he is not red, he even has chocolate coloured legs near the coronet which turn black further up the leg, he has tested Ee (black carring chestnut) and over that A At (Bay carrying Black and Tan), though because the majority of horses by that stallion were that colour, two from black mares, I am not so sure that the Black and Tan has much influence on the dun here.

It's a lot more complicated than a lot of people think and I think there are a lot of factors at work on the shades of coat, My sister and I would love to know what constitues he very dark liver chestnut that is almost black in shade, much like TB Denman, she tried to get a sample from him to test last year but he was on his summer break and it never came off.

Some said that liver horses were ee aa, but my sis proved that wrong when she did her first coat colour theory a couple of years ago. It is such a mystery still!!!

 

[Fahrenheit]

Mum in her various shades through the year

any recommendations for what colour stallion I should be using to get a similar shade??

 

[Fahrenheit]

Oh and the foal in those pics is Booty and not Taz

 

[Law]

[ QUOTE ]
Oh and the foal in those pics is Booty and not Taz

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm loving Taz golden tips across most of his body

and his very, very golden muzzle. I realise that it might not come across so well on various screens and monitors.
Teffy I hope you don't mind me asking about this... I was just curious as his coat is changing immensely

 

[Fahrenheit]

I didn't mind at all... am always open to correction, just glad it appears we were correct as afterall it was a guesstimation on my part

 

[Fahrenheit]

Finally a picture of dad... (photobucket was playing up after I did ^^^^^)

 

[KarynK]

You would probably not know without some DNA testing but dad looks suspiciously like my "bay" mare that turned out to be AtAt Brown (Black and Tan to be correct) If my theory on this is right the mare would be a bay herself, but we would not know what her other so called AGouti gene would be.

Getting a bit technical here but I think that my sister is right and that they have the genetic coat colour series wrong in the horse. Like she says Agouti is banding of hair, yellow and black. There was an experiment carried out on TB chestnut hairs in the early part of the 19th Centuary, those chestnut hairs showed in the yellow spectrum of colours, and bays tested in the red spectrum. So are black and chestnut what is left of the original agouti in the horse which no longer exists and what we now call Agouti (Bay/Brown) the extension or E gene in the horse that keeps black to the extremities? It would make a lot more sense.

She was also right BTW about so called seal browns being Black and Tan, before they found the gene, clever girl my sis!

My mare below is AtAt, what until a few months ago everyone would have said was a typical bay! But a TB stallion tested that was very black in coat colour with a tiny tinge of brown in summer tested Ata, so all but black.

So if that is the case are all yellow buckskins in fact true bays and the ones that look bay with a yellowish tinge, like yours various degrees of black and tan. If thats the case you need to find out what a true bay looks like, I haven't got or seen one of those yet.

Like I say I might send some hairs over for testing in the summer, need the dollar to go up!!!! So I might be asking you for some mane hairs from yours and we might know more, until then it's all theory and anyones best guess. Of course there might be loads of other genes that get your Buckskin shades and then we will have to wait.

 

[Fahrenheit]

Your very welcome to hair from any of my horses (I even have some from my deceased stallion)... I find it all very intriguing (and confusing!) her next foal is going to be her last and I haven't decided who to use yet, I would really like a dilute but don't want to compromise on conformation/ability etc etc.

Your sister sounds very intelligent... I'm not sure I will ever get my head round all these colour genetics!

 

[Law]

[ QUOTE ]

Your sister sounds very intelligent... I'm not sure I will ever get my head round all these colour genetics!

[/ QUOTE ]

My first thought when I read the post was *whoosh* ! (And I did genetics in my degree!)

I only wondered if he might go lighter at all or if he might when it might happen!

I brushed his tail last night and made it totally tangle free. At the same time I noticed that the hair round his bum cheeks

is going golden too!

(right in under the tail

)

Love the 'highlights' that are going on too

 

[Fahrenheit]

Perhaps you can send Taz hair to KK as well, if she wants it... however she may find that Taz's highlights aren't down to genetics at all but more down to Law's home highlighting kit... lol!!

Do you fancy coming and brushing a few tails round here??

I took the scissors and mane knife to some manes earlier

 

[KarynK]

I knew absolutely nothing about colour inheritance a few years ago, didn't give a stuff as long as it went fast and jumped!

It was all thanks to Spike the dun in my pictures below that sis and I have become wrapped up in all this. He has a brilliant conformation and is off to his first Dressage test on Sunday so I did get what I bred for hopefully with an eventing future ahead of him! BUT there were no spots, and WHY became 5 years of study, still ongoing, long phone calls and all the genetics books we could read and lots of testing!

She had a head start as she has bred Siberian Huskys for 30 odd years, its not fair really as dog breeders get litters and they can see the colours at work much easier!!!

With the Buckskins, I had one myself years ago an bl**dy minded but talented Connemara TB, I thought he was a dun!!! He was Yeller and went off white in the winter, brown in spring then a beautiful shiny gold in the summer, I suppose he was the buckskin equivalent of the minted coin palomino.

I have also ridden a dark Buckskin as a kid she was brown in winter and dark with the tell tale yellow bits in the summer, we called her a mouse dun, her mother was nearly black with brown soft parts (sound familiar?) and her father a palomino, so thinking back again if you are getting a lot of black hairs in a coat then there is less yellow shown.

None of the buckskins I have been around have ever faded so apart from the change at foal moult they don't change, not like Appys!

I will probably be after hair later in the year so I will take you up on offers! I am getting more convinced I'm on the right track so I will need a slap soon!!!

 

[daisalph]

My foal is likely to be bay - 50% chance of tobiano. The mare is solid bright bay, the stallion dark bay tobiano. Will I be able to tell early on whether it will turn out bright or dark bay?

 

[varkie]

I'm curious - what makes people see a dun in those pics? Because when I look at those pics, I see a bay with pangere possibly - nothing there jumps out at me as being buckskin.

Of course, the easy way to determine it for sure is to test him for the cream gene, and find out for sure - the lab in Cornwall does it for about £16.

And buckskins do colour change during the year - I own one, and she is very different, winter to summer. She is a buckskin, with I believe, sooty.

 

[varkie]

Further to my post, I went away yesterday, and looked closely at my own bays - of which I have several. A couple of them also have cream bum fluff, tummy fluff, leg fluff, mealy muzzles etc. And they are most definitely bays, not buckskins in any shape or form - there is no cream gene in them, nor has there been in their lines for generations - if at all! It would appear it is quite normal for some bays to have creamy tufts, but it doesn't necessarily make them buckskins.