# grey progression



## lilkitty90 (Nov 11, 2009)

ok genetics are a love of mine. and there is this old cowboy dead set in if its grey its a blue roan.. there is a horse bought from an auction by a friend of mine who is CLEARLY grey, but because he has a little grey around his eyes and nose, with a white face he is blue roan. his explanation is once a horse hits 4 his color is set no matter what. :lol: so if its a grey it will be completely white before the age of 4 according to him.. and he helps register horses.. no wonder registery colors are in such deep trouble lol

if anyone is so kind to have progresson pictures (as many as you got i don't mind!) where you can pretty much clearly tell its the same horse (by the same marking or the same person) so he cant try to disclaim it with a close estimated age with the pictures so i can prove to him that his horse is grey. ignorance usually doesn't bother me, but when you deny TRUE information that has facts to back it up. i must prove my point.


----------



## lilkitty90 (Nov 11, 2009)

oh and a picture of the greys.
his name is unali
















unali and his little brother who is a yearling. and unali is 4 btw. thats why the guy says he is a blue roan.. because he is over the age of color change..


----------



## Beauseant (Oct 22, 2010)

The graying progression of our 6 yr. old OTTB, Beauseant:

may, 2010



















august, 2010



















December, 2011 















And WOW>>>>look at this sudden accelerated dappling and graying... 

Last week:


----------



## smrobs (Jul 30, 2008)

Haha, gotta love those folks who are completely set in their ways.

I have a decent photo progression of Dobe except for the first picture which is a scan of a really crappy polaroid.

Him at 3 years old









Him at 4









Him at 5









Him at 7









Him at 8









And him this year at 9


----------



## bubba13 (Jan 6, 2007)

Bones at four:










Bones at...six, maybe?










Bones at nine.










She's going the other way...gonna be a bay roan before too long.... :lol:


----------



## Beauseant (Oct 22, 2010)

Yea, she is.... is there such a thing as reverse graying???!!

Our boy was mostly black when we bought him two years ago, starved to a body score of 2.... now he is one fat dude, and with the increase in food and his weight gain, his graying and dappling has accelerated dramatically. Especially within the last year. He is now six


----------



## bubba13 (Jan 6, 2007)

Nope, just heterozygote repigmentation (fleabites).


----------



## caleybooth (Mar 11, 2011)

Wow Bubba! Bones looks like a different horse from his 4 year old pic to his 6 year old pic! I have a gray also. She's 8 and is still a little bit dark dappled. I wonder if she'll just go white or get flea bites?


----------



## lilkitty90 (Nov 11, 2009)

thanks guys! i really hope this helps him, bones is last picture may be a bad idea then he probably WILL call him a bay roan.. lol, you know cuz the black aon the muzzle and around the eye


----------



## NdAppy (Apr 8, 2009)

Poor Bones. lol She is gender confused. 

Hope you can get him convinced, if you can't I wouldn't waste to much energy on it. There are a lot of people who are _determined_ that greys are roans and roans are greys and no amount of evidence convinces him otherwise. 

What shade of "roan" is he calling his two greys?


----------



## NdAppy (Apr 8, 2009)

Oh and I would LOVE to hear his explanation for appy varnish if he thinks color sets at 4...


----------



## rbarlo32 (Aug 9, 2010)

Would post pics of one of my grey shetlands but he is in his full winter coat which is alot darker then it was last summer

heres some of my greys now no progresion pics sorry
Lorenzo as a yearling he is redgistered as a blue roan though neither pearant was








Him rising 2








His half brother Napier rising two me thinks redgistered as piebaldd going grey








Napier and our grey gelding brootis (brootis was rising 3)








Brootis being his normal grumpy self this april


----------



## bubba13 (Jan 6, 2007)

caleybooth said:


> Wow Bubba! Bones looks like a different horse from his 4 year old pic to his 6 year old pic! I have a gray also. She's 8 and is still a little bit dark dappled. I wonder if she'll just go white or get flea bites?


It's a funny thing. There does seem to be some genetic factor to it, for certain. Arabians in particular, I've noticed, seem to get the most fleabites. Like this crazy-looking guy:










Homozygous horses tend to gray out faster and go whiter than heterozygotes. Whether homozygotes ever get fleabites, I don't know. Anecdotally, I've heard that they do. Scientifically, I don't understand how they could--but there's a ton about genetics we have not worked out....


----------



## trailhorserider (Oct 13, 2009)

I have a feeling some of that may be sweat, but I have seen Arabians in magazines that are VERY fleabit and look like that and they are lovely! Gosh, Arabians are gorgeous. 

I have been told that fleabit grays get MORE flea bites as they age. Is that true? (I used to think that gray horses always got whiter and the color never came back.) 

I've owned two fleabit grays but neither were very dramatic. And I've never been able to tell if they were getting more or less flea bites.


----------



## smrobs (Jul 30, 2008)

I tend to believe that they do get more of them as they age. Dobe is certainly developing more as he gets whiter...but some of them are hard to see because it's easy to mistake the buckskin fleabites for just being dirty LOL.


----------



## lilkitty90 (Nov 11, 2009)

lol the guy that owns the horses trust me judgement. its they guy thats "training" the horse that tells him its a blue roan 

and NdAppy Varnish = roan
grey = roan
and apparently brindle = roan
he posted a picture on facebook of Reckless dan the famous grey brindle QH, and said it was registered as a blue roan even with a white head, i looked up his owned information and his papers and posted them and said he is registered as GREY and posted the links explaining what brindle is, he then proceeded to tell say "this chick would try to prove god mispelled the word bible.. i'm done here" case one and closed lol


----------



## bubba13 (Jan 6, 2007)

Look at the endurance horse's face, even. He is sweaty, but he's also extremely fleabitten, with probably more bay spots than white areas on him.

And yes, fleabites do increase with age. General progression is along the lines of
original base color
roany
steel gray / dapple gray / rose gray
dapples and fleabites
white and fleabites
entirely fleabitten
....at least for those heterozygotes who go through the fleabitten steps. Some horses will stay in a dark gray state nearly indefinitely; others will quickly turn pure white and stay that way (I would imagine that those are nearly all homozygotes).

For example, here are two aged homozygous gray stallions. This is Bones' grandsire:










And here is his son, Bones' sire:


----------



## lilkitty90 (Nov 11, 2009)

gorgeous horses, usually i don't like flea bitten horses but i think Bones wears it well!


----------



## MangoRoX87 (Oct 19, 2009)

I'll upload some of my horses pic's when I get home


----------



## Red Gate Farm (Aug 28, 2011)

lilkitty90 said:


> ok genetics are a love of mine. and there is this old cowboy dead set in if its grey its a blue roan.. there is a horse bought from an auction by a friend of mine who is CLEARLY grey, but because he has a little grey around his eyes and nose, with a white face he is blue roan. his explanation is once a horse hits 4 his color is set no matter what. :lol: so if its a grey it will be completely white before the age of 4 according to him.. and he helps register horses.. no wonder registery colors are in such deep trouble lol
> 
> if anyone is so kind to have progresson pictures (as many as you got i don't mind!) where you can pretty much clearly tell its the same horse (by the same marking or the same person) so he cant try to disclaim it with a close estimated age with the pictures so i can prove to him that his horse is grey. ignorance usually doesn't bother me, but when you deny TRUE information that has facts to back it up. i must prove my point.


I'm interested in hearing how it went when you show him the pictures :wink:. I wonder if he'll change his mind or still insist the horse is a blue roan?


----------

