Grey parent means grey horse eventually?

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I've seen lovely little filly in field i hack past owned by an undesirable, Her mum is grey and she is bay with wide blaze and 4 white stockings, will she deffo end up grey to?
 
Not definately, depends if she inherited the 'greying' gene. What colour is dad? All grey horses have at least one grey parent, but a grey parent can have a non-grey foal.
 
Well I would have thought if she is bay now she will always be bay. I thought grey horses tended to be black when born. My boy was black when a foal now he is a sort of dappled grey going whiter by the day.
 
rachk89 said:
Well I would have thought if she is bay now she will always be bay. I thought grey horses tended to be black when born. My boy was black when a foal now he is a sort of dappled grey going whiter by the day.
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Greys are born black or chestnut. If you don't know what colour it was born then black foals have lovely dark dapples then black fleabites. Chestnut foals have slightly brown edged dapples then brown fleabites.


If the youngster is bay it will always be bay. It will not grey out.
 
Highlands aren't born black or chestnut yet can still end up grey?

As far as I understand it the grey gene is a dominant gene which modifies any colour and causes them to depigment with age.
 
Most Highlands are dun though are they not in some way shape or form?

I do remember a beautiful bay Highland and some blacks but they are super rare.
 
Sorry but my grey mare was born piebald and her son was born dark bay and now is steal grey, No idea on who the foals dad is as they are in herd of 20.
 
I was really more pointing out that greys aren't always black or chestnut at birth!

I had a black (grey) horse which at 20 has got brown flea bites and used to have dark dapples so I think your theory is incorrect, sorry.

Bay highlands are not particularly rare either.
 
Any colour horse can grey out, not just those that are born black or chestnut. Whether this one will or not is entirely down to the genes she's inherited (or failed to inherit).
 
Grey is a modifier rather than a colour gene. Its also dominant so only obe copy is required for it to show itself rather tysn two.

My grey mare has a dark bay daughter with almost no white on her.
 
One of my grey mares was born bay. I bought her at rising 3 when she looked to be more bay roan, she is now pretty grey, with a fairly black mane, aged 16. Reminds me I must get her passport updated!
 
It depends if the mare is heterozygous (one copy) or homozygous (2 copies) of grey. Same if the sire happens to be grey too. You only need one copy for a horse to be grey, so if both copies are grey any offspring will all be grey,
 
EKW said:
Greys are born black or chestnut. If you don't know what colour it was born then black foals have lovely dark dapples then black fleabites. Chestnut foals have slightly brown edged dapples then brown fleabites.


If the youngster is bay it will always be bay. It will not grey out.
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Aw man now I don't know what colour he was as a foal. I was told black but seen no evidence of it. He has black dapples and blackish mane but he has brown spots on his head and neck. Maybe he was tri coloured lol.
 
No such thing as tri coloured, or at least it is very rare, skewbalds with black mane and tail are Bay Tobiano not tri coloured as most call them.
 
It doesn't matter if the foal was born pink with purple spots and lime green stripes, if it has inherited one grey gene (or two) it WILL grey out.

Greys can have non grey offspring. If the above foal doesn't inherit any grey genes it will remain pink with purple spots and lime green stripes.

Here is my gelding with his dam and while he isn't as wildly coloured as the fantasy foal he will not grey out as he has no grey gene. His dam has one copy so each foal she has, has a 50% chance of inheriting it from her. His sire has no grey genes.

AnyaPrince.jpg


Still flaxen chestnut (with sabino).

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Faracat said:
Tri-coloured is a term for dogs, not horses.
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Ok I didn't know. Lots of people including people on here make the same mistake.

I don't really care what colour my horse was as a foal either it makes no difference as he is grey now. It would just be nice to know what he may have looked like when born as i doubt he was born grey. Either way he seems to be trying to colour himself with mud to look like a palomino. Don't think he likes being grey or clean.
 
we have a beautiful ''proper '' dapple grey that was born bay have seen a lot of dun foals that go grey,
best way to tell what colour a foal is going to be is by looking at the googles that come around the foals eyes when the coat changes
 
Winnie has black flea bites, she was pie bald, then blue and white, then totally white and now has flea bites coming in on the parts of her that had colour. All this and she's not 8 till the end of this month. Merlin her foal was dark bay with a tiny white star, he is now steel grey and dappling, his mane and tail are white.
 
rachk89 said:
Ok I didn't know. Lots of people including people on here make the same mistake.

I don't really care what colour my horse was as a foal either it makes no difference as he is grey now. It would just be nice to know what he may have looked like when born as i doubt he was born grey. Either way he seems to be trying to colour himself with mud to look like a palomino. Don't think he likes being grey or clean.
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Don't worry about it. I guess that because so many horses people have dogs, the term has crept in, but it doesn't really mean anything worthwhile when applied to horses. Hell, I could argue, that logically my chap is tri coloured as he is flaxen, chestnut and white, so is made up from three colours. ;)

Knowing what colour a foal was before greying out is more important with breeding stock. As you said, beyond that it's just a nice thing to know. :) You are correct he wouldn't have been born greyed out, but he might have had a few grey hairs starting to come in. My grey had started to grey out in the womb, bless her.
 
Faracat said:
Don't worry about it. I guess that because so many horses people have dogs, the term has crept in, but it doesn't really mean anything worthwhile when applied to horses. Hell, I could argue, that logically my chap is tri coloured as he is flaxen, chestnut and white, so is made up from three colours. ;)

Knowing what colour a foal was before greying out is more important with breeding stock. As you said, beyond that it's just a nice thing to know. :) You are correct he wouldn't have been born greyed out, but he might have had a few grey hairs starting to come in. My grey had started to grey out in the womb, bless her.
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Yeah its what someone said about the chestnut that has confused me. I know his sire was black so guessing his dam was grey. But the brown spots where on earth did they come from? One of them is quite big on his forehead. Then he has more brown flecks over his face and then like I say the black mane and black dapples. His tail has a brown tinge to it too in places.
 
How old is the filly? If they are going to grey they often start a much more intense colour than if not/tend to look more adult in colour ie a black foal is usually mousey, a black foal with grey is very black.
 
rach a bay horse can be a red carrier (Ee instead of EE)
the mare who had to be grey could have been anything underneath too :)

If he has large brown spots/splodges to you mean like bloodmarks? which are somatic mutations/bits that didn't get the go grey instruction.
 
rachk89 said:
Yeah its what someone said about the chestnut that has confused me. I know his sire was black so guessing his dam was grey. But the brown spots where on earth did they come from? One of them is quite big on his forehead. Then he has more brown flecks over his face and then like I say the black mane and black dapples. His tail has a brown tinge to it too in places.
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I'd love to see photos, he sounds very interesting.

Odd things happen with greys, have you seen greys with 'bloody shoulders' or 'blood marks' in other places? They aren't anything to do with blood, but areas of the coat that fail to grey out.

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Then there is a gene called 'sooty' and that adds black pigment. This can cause chestnut based colours (and modified black based colours, eg bay, buckskin etc...) to end up with black dapples. So a palomino with a grey gene could end up with rich black dapples before the grey gene fully greys out the sooty.

ETA - you beat me to the blood marks Ester. :D I type too slowly. :p
 
Ester she's 2 weeks old, She's in a field I hack past 3 times a week, been watching the mares foal one by one, Filly is the last one.
 
Faracat said:
I'd love to see photos, he sounds very interesting.

Odd things happen with greys, have you seen greys with 'bloody shoulders' or 'blood marks' in other places? They aren't anything to do with blood, but areas of the coat that fail to grey out.

513c2e528e9aaa84af1923094ea1796e.jpg


Then there is a gene called 'sooty' and that adds black pigment. This can cause chestnut based colours (and modified black based colours, eg bay, buckskin etc...) to end up with black dapples. So a palomino with a grey gene could end up with rich black dapples before the grey gene fully greys out the sooty.

ETA - you beat me to the blood marks Ester. :D I type too slowly. :p
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Definitely not as big as that the spot on his forehead is about an inch big i guess (it always confuses people into thinking he is bleeding) and then the weird brown flecks that remind me of roaning but surely can't be? I will try and get close up pictures this Friday I won't see him til then thanks to work unless he needs to see the vet again.

Ester the dam may have been born chestnut sadly I never saw her. I have only seen pictures of his sire online who doesn't seem to have greyed out from black can't find any pictures of that at least (why couldn't he have passed on the black gene to my boy he would look clean then?!).
 
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