Colours of a foal?

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CCLPony

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I was looking at my horses breeding and have found a vast variety of colours in her ancestory, but the main colour seems to be buckskin.

If i was to breed from her with ... say ... a bay stallion what colour would the foal most likely be?

My horse is a grey but her parents were buckskins :)
 
Colour genetics is a vast and complex subject - I would suggest that you post in breeding as there are a few people on there who really know this subject. Good Luck
 
If you give me a few details about her parents, I'll work it out for you, (first you need to find out if it's true buckskin or dun, most people don't know the difference) PM me if you like. I have to do it for work all the time so I'm used to working out red factor, agouti etc
 
CCLPony said:
I was looking at my horses breeding and have found a vast variety of colours in her ancestory, but the main colour seems to be buckskin.

If i was to breed from her with ... say ... a bay stallion what colour would the foal most likely be?

My horse is a grey but her parents were buckskins :)
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Are you sure that your horse is grey? It is impossible for two buckskins to produce a grey, although they could produce a perlino (double cream dilute bay)
 
Serenity087 said:
Am I not right in thinking you need a grey parent to be grey?

Two buckskin parents and I suspect she's really a grey dun, not a grey!

But, for interest, we have a colt out of a dun mare and a chestnut and he's an apricot dun!

Dun/buckskins are lovely colours :D
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I love buckskins tooo! My favourite colour!!
 
Any photos? I think you'd know about it if they were perlino, it might be smokey cream with another gene causing masking (only a tiny chance though)
 
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Duns and Buckskins are two different genes.

The cream gene is a modifier which dilutes the original coat colour, for instance:

A bay (agouti) base with 1 cream gene = buckskin with 2 = perlino
A chestnut (red) base with 1 cream gene = palomino with 2 = cremello

Connemara's are actually buckskins and not dun.

The dun gene is a gene in it's own right. Duns have an eel stripe and often display striping and or cobwebbing on their legs. It is a primitive colour gene, Highlands are always dun and not buckskin as the cream gene does not exist in that breed.

The grey gene is also a modifier and is not a colour, a foal born
with one or two grey genes will be born the colour it would have been had it not inherited the grey gene and will progressively grey out. As the grey gene cannot hide, (ie - cannot jump a generation) one or both of the parents has to be grey.

So in essence your youngster cannot be grey and looks as though she has inherited a cream gene from both parents, if you put her to a bay stallion she will most certainly pass on one cream gene and the resulting foal should be a buckskin, although if she carries red and the stallion does too (red can hide) you have a small chance of a palomino.

All that said, colour is not a good reason to be breeding from any horse unless that horse is conformationally correct.

Hope that helps :D
 
SwingHorse said:
Any photos? I think you'd know about it if they were perlino, it might be smokey cream with another gene causing masking (only a tiny chance though)
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I havn't really mastered horse and hound forums yet, but when i first got her she was a rose dappled grey but now she is starting to get chestnut flecks in her coat, I sent you the pm!
Also quite far back into her family tree there are strawberry roans, chestnuts and blacks
:)
 
Amaranta said:
Duns and Buckskins are two different genes.

The cream gene is a modifier which dilutes the original coat colour, for instance:

A bay (agouti) base with 1 cream gene = buckskin with 2 = perlino
A chestnut (red) base with 1 cream gene = palomino with 2 = cremello

Connemara's are actually buckskins and not dun.

The dun gene is a gene in it's own right. Duns have an eel stripe and often display striping and or cobwebbing on their legs. It is a primitive colour gene, Highlands are always dun and not buckskin as the cream gene does not exist in that breed.

The grey gene is also a modifier and is not a colour, a foal born
with one or two grey genes will be born the colour it would have been had it not inherited the grey gene and will progressively grey out. As the grey gene cannot hide, (ie - cannot jump a generation) one or both of the parents has to be grey.

So in essence your youngster cannot be grey and looks as though she has inherited a cream gene from both parents, if you put her to a bay stallion she will most certainly pass on one cream gene and the resulting foal should be a buckskin, although if she carries red and the stallion does too (red can hide) you have a small chance of a palomino.

All that said, colour is not a good reason to be breeding from any horse unless that horse is conformationally correct.

Hope that helps :D
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Thank you that has helped loads!!! Of course colour isn't the main thing i have found a few stallions I like all of which have correct conformation and beautiful paces!!!

Thank you!!!

:D
 
CCLPony said:
I havn't really mastered horse and hound forums yet, but when i first got her she was a rose dappled grey but now she is starting to get chestnut flecks in her coat, I sent you the pm!
Also quite far back into her family tree there are strawberry roans, chestnuts and blacks
:)
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Hmmm she certainly does sound grey which means that one of her parents must have been, she also sounds as though she may be carrying red. If you put her to a non greying stallion you have a 50% chance that she will produce a greying youngster. The chestnut flecks are 'flea bites' there is a theory that greys with these marks only have one grey gene - hence the 50% chance. If she has two grey genes all her foals will grey out regardless of the base colour.

The only sure fire way of checking is to get her tested.
 
Actually its quite possible for her parents to not have been grey. I had a grey Section C, his dam was chestnut & the sire was Cremello. When Ted was born he was a lovely dun/buckskin colour & then gradually greyed out over the following months. As it turns out his Cremello sire was later tested for the grey gene & was positive for this (i think that is the right terminology, ive not got a clue with colour genetics).
 
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navaho said:
Actually its quite possible for her parents to not have been grey. I had a grey Section C, his dam was chestnut & the sire was Cremello. When Ted was born he was a lovely dun/buckskin colour & then gradually greyed out over the following months. As it turns out his Cremello sire was later tested for the grey gene & was positive for this (i think that is the right terminology, ive not got a clue with colour genetics).
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It is impossible for at least one of the parents not to have been grey as grey is dominant and cannot hide. Your Section C had a greying cremello for a sire, he had both a cream and a grey gene.
 
I won't pretend to be particularily clued up on genetics, but I thought it was impossible for two non-grey horses to have a grey foal?

And it is at least a 50% chance that your horse will have a grey foal. Can grey be homozygous? I don't know, I wouldn't hedge your bets on getting anything other than a grey or bay foal anyways :)
 
navaho said:
Actually its quite possible for her parents to not have been grey. I had a grey Section C, his dam was chestnut & the sire was Cremello. When Ted was born he was a lovely dun/buckskin colour & then gradually greyed out over the following months. As it turns out his Cremello sire was later tested for the grey gene & was positive for this (i think that is the right terminology, ive not got a clue with colour genetics).
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But if a horse has the 'grey gene', it will grey out. So presumably the cremello greyed out, and was technically grey, but this wasn't visible to the eye as he was allready white and had pink skin. This wouldn't be the case with two buckskins? As you would be able to see very clearly if one or other had the grey gene.
 
One thing that you learn when looking through adverts, is that people get the colour of their horses wrong more often than you might think.

Maybe one of the 'buckskin' parents was greying out slowly, so pretty much still looked buckskin even though it did have the grey gene.

Yes, horses can have two copies of the grey gene. :D

In a thread in the Breeding section, the OP states that her horse was black before it greyed out. Therefore it doesn't have agouti (unless it's a seal bay, I've met a fair few 'black' seal bays. ;) ) or cream genes.
 
Faracat said:
One thing that you learn when looking through adverts, is that people get the colour of their horses wrong more often than you might think.

Maybe one of the 'buckskin' parents was greying out slowly, so pretty much still looked buckskin even though it did have the grey gene.

Yes, horses can have two copies of the grey gene. :D

In a thread in the Breeding section, the OP states that her horse was black before it greyed out. Therefore it doesn't have agouti (unless it's a seal bay, I've met a fair few 'black' seal bays. ;) ) or cream genes.
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Thats very possible as the colours were registered when her parents were yearlings. Thanks :)
 
I have a Skewbald Appaloosa who is slowly fading (his patches are more roan now!) Is it likely that one of his parents would have been grey?
 
ShowJumping Superstars said:
I have a Skewbald Appaloosa who is slowly fading (his patches are more roan now!) Is it likely that one of his parents would have been grey?
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Appaloosa is the key word here. Their colour genetics are super complicated! :p I *think* that he is a varnish rather than a grey, but some photos and some help from colour experts could confirm what he really is. :)
 
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