"Silver Dun".. it's grey.

On the subject of passports - I'm not sure how easy it would be. I mean how far would you go? Would my bay horse just be described as bay or as 'black, agouti, sabino' as those are all the colour genes he has that are visible. If the latter then there are certain foals that would have a fair old genetic testing bill to pay before they could be passported.
 
DabDab said:
On the subject of passports - I'm not sure how easy it would be. I mean how far would you go? Would my bay horse just be described as bay or as 'black, agouti, sabino' as those are all the colour genes he has that are visible. If the latter then there are certain foals that would have a fair old genetic testing bill to pay before they could be passported.
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I don't think it's about listing the genes it carries. I think it's about listing the traits it displays in a way which is accurate, but understandable. So we had a chestnut flaxen roan with splash white, and that's what should have been written on her passport. Names for colours can vary place to place but the names of genes are pretty constant; rabicano and roan often get mixed up for example. But again going back to the horse theft example, looking for a bay rabicano instead of a bay roan would make finding it much easier. I mean if Diva got horsenapped for some reason I wouldn't say she's a homozygous appaloosa with two copies of both Lp and PATN1 because that wouldn't help find her, necessarily. But saying she has shell covered hooves and freckles and hates the dark, which are homozygous appaloosa traits , might. And with your bay sabino...there's lots of bay horses and lots of horses with random white bits but different genes add white is different ways, with W20 or splash white or whatever. So saying it's a bay with sabino might make all the difference because it's about being able to identify the animal.

That said I don't think passports really count for much. Yes they are a legal requirement but with every horse passported to a separate organisation it isn't policeable in the slightest, regardless of how the horse is actually described, in my opinion.
 
Well I'm not sure the main purpose would be for if they got lost - if I lost my horse I would put out a picture and the microchip number, not the passport.

And the thing is that those aren't Appaloosa traits, they're Lp traits. There are Appaloosas without Lp and there are also non-appaloosas with Lp.
 
DabDab said:
Well I'm not sure the main purpose would be for if they got lost - if I lost my horse I would put out a picture and the microchip number, not the passport.

And the thing is that those aren't Appaloosa traits, they're Lp traits. There are Appaloosas without Lp and there are also non-appaloosas with Lp.
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Oh I meant what I ignorantly call "appaloosa gene" traits. as in Lp patn1 or patn2. not the breed, Sorry :p (She isn't an actually appaloosa horse so far as i'm aware?).

Half the words i use to describe genes are incorrect tbh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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Diva&Rosie'sMum said:
Oh I meant what I ignorantly call "appaloosa gene" traits. as in Lp patn1 or patn2. not the breed, Sorry :p (She isn't an actually appaloosa horse so far as i'm aware?).

Half the words i use to describe genes are incorrect tbh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Yes, sorry, didn't 'complete the thought' when replying - what I mean is that if you take your example, surely the only logical conclusion is that you have to list the actual genetics if you go down the 'colour must be correct on passport' route. Writing Appaloosa on the passport of, say, a knabstrupper is as misleading as writing Dun on a Connemara's passport (potentially even more so as at least with a 'cream dun' Connie people know exactly what you're on about).

The only way to separate semantics from science is to list the genes.
 
I don't see why you would need to call a bay a black agouti, that wouldn't be accurate anyway, given that agouti isn't something they have or don't.
I think for most phenotypes it is perfectly possible to write their phenotypes in a manner that is genetically still representative, which is important given that there are lots of genes we still haven't identified. Anything spotty can be a bit random in expression at times so listing the genes won't necessarily tell you what it looks like still, where as if someone called it a few spot most people would know what that looked like.
 
Diva&Rosie'sMum said:
I don't think it's about listing the genes it carries. I think it's about listing the traits it displays in a way which is accurate, but understandable. So we had a chestnut flaxen roan with splash white, and that's what should have been written on her passport. Names for colours can vary place to place but the names of genes are pretty constant; rabicano and roan often get mixed up for example. But again going back to the horse theft example, looking for a bay rabicano instead of a bay roan would make finding it much easier. I mean if Diva got horsenapped for some reason I wouldn't say she's a homozygous appaloosa with two copies of both Lp and PATN1 because that wouldn't help find her, necessarily. But saying she has shell covered hooves and freckles and hates the dark, which are homozygous appaloosa traits , might. And with your bay sabino...there's lots of bay horses and lots of horses with random white bits but different genes add white is different ways, with W20 or splash white or whatever. So saying it's a bay with sabino might make all the difference because it's about being able to identify the animal.

That said I don't think passports really count for much. Yes they are a legal requirement but with every horse passported to a separate organisation it isn't policeable in the slightest, regardless of how the horse is actually described, in my opinion.
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Actually given that the vast majority of the equine world has no idea what rabianco is you would probably have more luck asking the general populace to look for a bay roan.

Just as if Stan (above) had gone missing I’d have had more luck saying chocolate dun rather than sooty buckskin.

You are asking the general population to keep an eye out for a horse, it works better if you keep it to terms your very basic horse owner would recognise.
So for the few spot,I’d probably describe her as white with freckles in order to trigger people’s thought process. If you said few spot people would be expecting a blanket apply with only a few spots on her blanket
 
ester said:
I don't see why you would need to call a bay a black agouti, that wouldn't be accurate anyway, given that agouti isn't something they have or don't.
I think for most phenotypes it is perfectly possible to write their phenotypes in a manner that is genetically still representative, which is important given that there are lots of genes we still haven't identified. Anything spotty can be a bit random in expression at times so listing the genes won't necessarily tell you what it looks like still, where as if someone called it a few spot most people would know what that looked like.
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I'll have to politely disagree.
If people are insisting on accuracy then it has to be accurate. Otherwise I'm not really bothered - I can see in front of me what colour the horse looks, I don't need the 'correct' English term to be on the passport.

ETA: if you ever have cause to look into pet rabbits you will find that 'Agouti' is exactly how the applicable coat colour is described.
 
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but black agouti isn't accurate?

What do you do about genetic effects that have not yet been identified?

Surely the whole point of a passport (given the other thread on that ATM) is to be able to match it to the horse in front of you, if the known genetics doesn't do that how does it serve that purpose?
 
But that's my point - I don't think a system of 'correct' passport descriptions is possible right now, so we are stuck with colloquial descriptions on passports.

The rabbit people may not be entirely accurate by calling a colour 'agouti', but they're closer than horse people are with 'bay'
 
I don't think passports need to go in to the fine details, providing the basic information given is correct. I.e. a bay horse can have subcategories of different genetic bay but the horse is still bay. In comparison, a flaxen chestnut is not palomino or a dun is not buckskin. On my phone so I've just typed that quickly and it might not make much sense!
 
Diva&Rosie'sMum said:
Oh I meant what I ignorantly call "appaloosa gene" traits. as in Lp patn1 or patn2. not the breed, Sorry :p (She isn't an actually appaloosa horse so far as i'm aware?).

Half the words i use to describe genes are incorrect tbh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Made me smile. My 'also not a real appaloosa' has her colouring on her passport as 'appaloosa markings'. Doesn't really narrow it down much does it? Could be anything from barely spotted to loudly leopard coloured.

Apparently she's a bay roan snowcap - who also can't see in the dark (& getting whiter by the year given this photo is 12 months old and now her face is more white than pink!)

13592804_10153617314586771_7788890144181416764_n.jpg
 
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Hoof_Prints said:
I don't think passports need to go in to the fine details, providing the basic information given is correct. I.e. a bay horse can have subcategories of different genetic bay but the horse is still bay. In comparison, a flaxen chestnut is not palomino or a dun is not buckskin. On my phone so I've just typed that quickly and it might not make much sense!
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But (sorry, I will go away soon and stop banging on :p), so imagine all vets are instructed to put the 'correct' colour on the passport. Who's version of 'correct' term? What about for the horses that have a non describable colour?

I think starting to come up with more and more colloquial terms for certain combinations of horse colour genetics I think is what a)encourages unscrupulous types to invent nonsense like "silver dun" and b)encourages the ordinary buyer to think that maybe this is an interesting new colour definition rather than seeing it for the nonsense that it is.
 
DabDab said:
But (sorry, I will go away soon and stop banging on :p), so imagine all vets are instructed to put the 'correct' colour on the passport. Who's version of 'correct' term? What about for the horses that have a non describable colour?

I think starting to come up with more and more colloquial terms for certain combinations of horse colour genetics I think is what a)encourages unscrupulous types to invent nonsense like "silver dun" and b)encourages the ordinary buyer to think that maybe this is an interesting new colour definition rather than seeing it for the nonsense that it is.
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This is why there needs to be better education on the genetics.... at least for vets or passport people or breed societies. Lots of colours are the same thing just with different names; if people could say, yes well, that "tricolour" is actually just another name for a bay tobiano, it would be fine, but people don't recognise that that's what it is. Which is where, I think, problems arise, and you get all sorts of "fancy new colours" which are actually just different names for pre existing colours.
 
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