Colour question: blue roan?

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Lacuna

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I adopted BC Captain from Burford just under two months ago and to my horror he is not colour-fast! He arrived virtually black and is now an odd grey/roan. I should send him back as he is not as advertised :-D

Seriously, he is listed as a blue roan on his passport and I've not come across one before. Could one of the very knowledgeable people on here tell me a bit more about the colour and genetics involved?

When he first arrived (early March):
Captain1.jpg


Taken last week:
Captain%202.jpg


Not very visible on these photos but he does have quite a large splash of white over his tummy.
 
he is a black sabino, it is the sabino causing the roaning :) and obviously shows up more in his summer coat? Some would call him a blagdon cob ;).
 
:) Roans change with the season.
Mine used to go grey in the winter and almost black in the summer.
When he was clipped he was black underneath :)

Makes life more interesting. :D

Faracat is your go to expert on genetics.
 
Blue roan is roan on a black base coat. You get a big colour change between season , especially on a horse with a long winter coat as the undercoat and guard hairs are different colours. Looks like yours is in the winter coat in march, has now lost one layer of his coat and will look different again when his summer coat is properly through.
 
I think he could still be roan. A true roan has head and legs of base colour (so black in the case of a blue roan).

If I am not mistaken it's rabicano which is often associated with sabino which causes roaning on the flank/belly.

He is definitely sabino though :)
 
I'm voting for sabino rather than roan as well - as it looks like his head has gone lighter along with his body? True roans heads would usually stay dark I think.
 
Many thanks everyone - I'm not too familiar with the technicalities of horse colour so makes for very interesting reading. I'm assuming that Blagdon is just a term given to this type of colouring?

Any suggestions on where to start reading up on colours/genes?
 
Sabino is sometimes called Blagdon in the UK when it is very 'roany' and the horse is a cob or heavy horse eg a clydesdale.

whitehorseproductions.com/equinecolor.html is a good place to start if you want to learn more about colour.
 
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