Anyone want to know about greys and roans...?

Stilz, I'm wondering if you have any pics of him in full summer coat? It's almost impossible to say anything about a clipped horse! In that last pic he looks very palomino - there's a possibility that he has roan as well, or he could be a 'sooty' palomino. A bit like the palomino equivalent of a liver chestnut! Any idea what colour his parents are? Again, knowing parents' colour would be a huge help - I'll show you why in a minute....

Lenvale - he sounds interesting! Could be a form of sabino roaning, or rabicano. Any white in his mane or tail? Any pics? :D

This shows you why knowing parents' colour is an advantage. This filly looks like a silver dapple - black with the silver gene - or possibly a palomino going grey. In fact, she's by a cremello stallion out of a dark bay mare - she is, believe it or not, just palomino with sooty to make it darker.... Without knowing her parents' colours it would have been the last thing most people would have guessed!
 

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...on tis subject. Fred the Frog......he is a sort of washed out piebald but with pink tips to the hair giving him a permanently grubby look. There are totally white patches with pink skin beneath, then there are the washed out piebald grey patches mingled with pink hair tips, underneath these is pink skin. He does not seem to have corresponding black skin under the darker wishy-washy patches.
 
That's interesting Wally. In the pics he does look like he's a tobiano with grey, but you'd expect to see pigmented skin where the colour patches are. Most greys are dark-skinned too. It's unusual to find pigmented hair on pink skin.... need to do some reading and get back to you on this one!
 
brilliant thread chev
please could you help me with my horses colouring. when her coat first comes throung if is definatly black even with a bluey sheen but after a mounth in the sun it fades and turnes brown. here legs are black so is her mane and tail aparts from a few raven high lights. i think her friend annie (palomino) does them for her. is she brown, dark bay or black???

also is their anything i can do to stop her coat fading (not a sheet she wears a rug in the winter and so i like to lets her skin breath and her unconstricted).
 
charlottebronte... this is your Dales mare? I might have to go and find one of the pics you've posted - but basically a black will have black hair, dark skin, and no paler fawn areas anywhere (like around the eyes, muzzle, flanks and so on). AH Mahal is a true black - note on his pics how his muzzle is black too, and he has no lighter areas at all. Virtuallyhorses' Imp, however, is brown - he has the same black or near black colouring on his body, but paler brown colouring at muzzle and so on. That's a brown horse - research suggests that brown (or seal) horses may well be bay with some kind of modifier, possible sooty. One school of thought says that the only difference between a mahogany bay and brown is the degree to which the darker hair is spread over the body.

So... if she has brown anywhere, she's not black - she's either seal brown or dark bay. Lots of blacks do fade in sunlight, so that's not really an indication (there is a form of black known as non-fading black, or true black - but it's not that common) but the key question is whether she has lighter points.
 
And entreat.... you're guaranteed a dilute foal - a cremello has two dilute genes, so can't help but pass one on to baby! Your mare has one grey and one bay parent - so she only has one grey gene - you have a 50/50 chance of a grey foal.

We don't know what base colour your mare is - under the grey she could be black, bay or chestnut - no way to tell to be honest (unless you fancy sending some mane hair off to a lab!).

So baby will get one red gene and one cream dilute from daddy.... and either black or red from mum, maybe a bay, maybe a grey... :D

Possibilities are palomino, buckskin, or smoky black (which would appear black) depending on mum's genes. They'd all have a 50% chance of greying out.
 
Well looking at those I think he's almost certainly a palomino of sorts - so chestnut with a cream dilute. I think he probably has something along the lines of a sooty gene at work in there too though - if he hadn't had the cream, he would quite likely have been a liver chestnut. The Palomino Society are not at all keen on sooty palominos - they like them clearly golden! - but I actually really like them. You get some really interesting variations and shades. He looks like he's a beautiful colour. :)
 
I'd call him a dark palomino. He's definitely not strawberry roan - that's chestnut with a roan gene, which causes the body colour to be evenly mixed with white hair while the head, legs, mane and tail are unaffected. Your boy, however, has no dark points typical of roan, and his mane (and presumably tail!) are diluted to white, or near-white - that's typical of a cream dilute, which is what causes palomino on a chestnut horse. I'm sure there's something else at work there too - to give him that sooty appearance - more than likely the same gene that causes dark bay and liver chestnut, or similar.
 
Wally said:
...on tis subject. Fred the Frog......he is a sort of washed out piebald but with pink tips to the hair giving him a permanently grubby look. There are totally white patches with pink skin beneath, then there are the washed out piebald grey patches mingled with pink hair tips, underneath these is pink skin. He does not seem to have corresponding black skin under the darker wishy-washy patches.
Click to expand...

I'll have to investigate Bobby's skin colour now as he also has the pink tinge just like Fred....although he is older and so more greyed out now.
 
all points are black

no all her points are black and they do not fade in the sunlight. does this meen she is black as somebody tryed to tell me she is dark bay but this is a pic of her summer coat coming through
 
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She looks pretty black there.... the decider really is to look at her in a summer coat and see if there's a brown sheen to her body, or a more 'blue-black' one. Or to be absolutely conclusive, have her tested for agouti! Some dark bays are so dark they're virtually black in appearance while others are much more obviously brown. Looking at her muzzle there she does look like a black.

A friend of mine bought a black mare, who was really a very dark bay - she had a very brown sheen over her shoulders and hindquarters once her summer coat was properly in. It's almost impossible to say with some horses.... and really not worth arguing. Some people do just seem to love to tell black owners that their horse is really brown!
 
Here's one for you Chev!!

This is my childhood pony. She doesnt follow the rules, what do you think she is colour wise?? I have my own thoughts, others have theirs. She was 13.3hh of unknown breeding. Did not have white sclera or stripey hooves, or a dorsal stripe although she did have a dark stripe down the middle of her tail.
She was somewhere between the ages of 9 and 14 here, she never changed colour. Anybody is welcome to put their thoughts forward.
 

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