# "Sooty" Palomino?



## shesinthebarn (Aug 1, 2009)

I have a QH gelding who is just turning 3. I got him in the fall and he was a very light coloured palomino with heavy dappling on legs, rump and shoulder. He is shedding out to be a VERY dark, sooty palomino. I too thought he was dirty until I looked closer. Some of the hairs are pretty much black and he has what seems to be webbing appearing on his face. His Sire is a sooty buckskin and his dam is a dunalino. I have similar questions to yours - when he came to me he was underweight and wormy. Would good nutrition and care cause such a difference in coat colour, or will he get back the same very light colour again in the fall? Are "chocolate" palomino and "sooty" palomino the same thing? I'm not good with colours, but I know there are some members on here who are...


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## aneternalflame (May 25, 2009)

My mare is a sooty palomino. They tend to have some dark hairs in the mane and tail, as well as tons of dappling. I'm putting a link below to show you how much the sooty gene can effect a palomino horse. Sooty palominos change colours from season to season.
Morgan Colors- Palomino Morgan Horses
And as for chocolate palomino, I would say that's just a dark palomino. A horse can be a dark palomino without being sooty. That page shows a ton of different shades of palomino.


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## Indyhorse (Dec 3, 2009)

Here's some pictures of Misty, now that she's dried off. The pictures don't show the brown/dappling near as dark as it actually looks in person - my camera is getting old, I think. But you can kind of see how her "roots" on her mane are dark, like a bleached blonde. (Her roots look about like mine do at the moment, I need to get my hair done again *lol*)


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## aneternalflame (May 25, 2009)

I forgot to mention, palominos with the sooty gene will generally darken with age. She looks like she might be sooty to me, especially with the dappling and grey hairs in the mane. In one of the pictures on the link I put up, there is a palomino with a darker grey mane as pretty much the only sign of the sooty gene.


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## Indyhorse (Dec 3, 2009)

They _WILL_ darken with age. Okay, that pretty much explains it then, I think. I guess up until now, they only real manifestations were the dark roots in the mane, and it just took a long time to start showing up in the rest of her coat. I was just curious what would cause her to go dark after 10 years! Thanks!


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## Juna (Apr 4, 2010)

Beautiful pony!


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## mls (Nov 28, 2006)

aneternalflame said:


> I forgot to mention, palominos with the sooty gene will generally darken with age.


Not necessarily.

We have a palomino mare that only gets that dark when she is bred - then lightens out again to a nice light gold. The vet said hormones. Really odd when she carried her only colt. Chocolate that year.


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## aneternalflame (May 25, 2009)

But does she have the sooty gene? And I said generally, not that they all will.


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## Indyhorse (Dec 3, 2009)

mls said:


> Not necessarily.
> 
> We have a palomino mare that only gets that dark when she is bred - then lightens out again to a nice light gold. The vet said hormones. Really odd when she carried her only colt. Chocolate that year.



Okay that's fascinating! Misty is having some whacked hormones right now. She tried a couple times to "steal" Freyja's 2 week old foal (who is taller than she is, it's ridiculous), then started getting a little edema in her udder area and bagging up slightly. She cycled all winter long, and was last in heat right before Freyja foaled, plus I have spoken to previous owners so I know there is no way she is bred, but she having a bit of false pregnancy brought on by being around Fiona, I'm guessing. Maybe that is influencing it? This is why I was asking if there could be environmental factors to the coloring. That's really interesting!


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## Indyhorse (Dec 3, 2009)

Juna said:


> Beautiful pony!


Thanks! She is the best little pony I have ever come across, worth 10 times what I paid for her. My son (in the pictures) is autistic, and she is amazing with him, will do anything for him.


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## shesinthebarn (Aug 1, 2009)

Indy, I just wanted to say that your son is SO CUTE! I love the cheeks and the whispy hair - I think my little boy will look a lot like that as he gets older. Your son is adorable with his pony, what a cute pair!


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## shesinthebarn (Aug 1, 2009)

Oh, wanted to add that I'll post pics of my colt when I get a chance to take some. I was grooming his today and where he is finished shedding out, he's nearly black in some places - it's strange looking!


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## Indyhorse (Dec 3, 2009)

Shesinthebarn ~ aww thanks. He's a heck of a kid. People always think he's older because he's so TALL, he's actually just turned 6, he's in kindergarten. Everyone says he looks like a lil Harry Potter (probably because of the hair hehe, it's unmanageable). He doesn't mind, he's a Harry Potter ADDICT right now. At 6 he's already read the first two books by himself. Making him wait on the next few because they start getting a little scary. :shock: He and his pony are a heck of a team, though! Would love to see pics of your colt, please do post pictures!


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## RoyalsRebel (Sep 24, 2009)

Not to throw in a kink, but since you don't know the breeding, I suppose there is a slight possibility of her being a silver dapple.... Google images will show you how similar a silver dapple and a sooty palomino can look. I know that the sooty gene tends to give horses more of a patchy look though - usually it's like someone threw a bag of soot in the air and it settles down over their back - the back can be a bit darker and down the shoulders and rump and they can have a 'cobwebbing' or darker mask over their face. The silver dapples usually (from what I've seen before) look more uniform in the dark-light colours in the coat.....

I'd lean toward sooty though, just from what I can see


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## wild_spot (Jan 30, 2008)

I think Wildey has the sooty gene.

He's a typical bright chestnut, but in summer, when he gets his summer coat, he gets black dapples on either side of his butt and one on the left of his neck under his mane.

They dissapear in winter, and reappear in summer, every year.

Makes him unique :]


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## Indyhorse (Dec 3, 2009)

RoyalsRebel said:


> Not to throw in a kink, but since you don't know the breeding, I suppose there is a slight possibility of her being a silver dapple.... Google images will show you how similar a silver dapple and a sooty palomino can look. I know that the sooty gene tends to give horses more of a patchy look though - usually it's like someone threw a bag of soot in the air and it settles down over their back - the back can be a bit darker and down the shoulders and rump and they can have a 'cobwebbing' or darker mask over their face. The silver dapples usually (from what I've seen before) look more uniform in the dark-light colours in the coat.....
> 
> I'd lean toward sooty though, just from what I can see


See, I had actually kind of thought about that last year. I remember seeing a thread posted on here before about silver bays, and had wondered in her case, last year her legs looked very silver, but she had no other spots that appeared so, and no dapples in her coat at all last year, which she is clearly developing this year (the pictures I took really don't demonstrate the extent, or how brown they are). Over the winter she was just kind of an orange teddy bear. *lol* But this spring, the area that were silvery on her legs last year are growing in very brown now. I wonder if they were areas that would have been sooty, and lacked pigmentation due to poor diet?


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## Indyhorse (Dec 3, 2009)

Okay, my magical color changing pony is just throwing me for a loop *lol*

Since I have not had her for a full year (I got her in September) I'm not yet familiar with her coat processes. Now that she's shed most the way out, almost all the "sooty" markings she had earlier in her shed, across her shoulder and rump, have disappeared. She'd now finishing out to how she appeared to me last year. 

Maybe a little more info is in order. She was sold to me as a palomino haflinger. *lol* The fact that palomino haflinger is impossible aside - she is clearly not a haffy at all, not even part haffy as far as I can see. My vet believes her to be a section A welsh, though without any parentage to test to there is no way to confirm. I had also questioned last year whether she was even palomino, and not instead a very light flaxen chestnut, she really seems too dark a shade to be palomino. But as her winter coat grew in, she was a very light, almost buttermilky-white with orangey highlights in her long coat, and I forgot until now just how dark she is in her summer coat.

All the dapples are disappearing as her coat comes out (a few are still vaguely visible, but that's all where she hasn't finished shedding). Now that the coat on her legs has come out, she's gone back to the silvery gray markings on her legs, instead of the darker brown she had a few weeks back. The "roots" of her mane remain dark - they have always been that way.

So, I'm starting to move away from "sooty palomino" for her, because I'm not convinced she is even palomino. I'd be more inclined towards a mealy chestnut, but she doesn't really resemble that either. I looked up some more pictures of "silver dapple" that RoyalsRebel mentioned, but that seems to be a different coloration than "silver bay" (I thought they were the same). She doesn't have any real black/gray markings aside from the gray on her legs, so I don't think that's it. The silver bay seems to fit in general, but all the pictures I am finding are far darker shades than she is.

She's an enigma! It doesn't really matter of course outside my own curiosity. But I'm one of those people that has to know once I start wondering about something. So what do you think? Mealy Chestnut? Sooty Palomino? Silver Dapple? Silver Bay? Or something else entirely? I should just get her tested. *lol*

Again, my camera sucks for getting colors accurately, I apologize. I hope this gives you the general idea though.


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## hillarymorganstovall (Mar 27, 2010)

What a cutie!! 

I don't know much about it, but I think that they change colors a lot... Here are a few pictures from a horse rescue in MS, she is a sooty palomino and these are the pictures from their site.


I'm pretty sure this is when they rescued her!!!









I think this one is in the fall... I'm not sure...









and this one is recent...










You can really see how much she has changed colors...


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## mct97 (Jan 19, 2010)

She may have some fjord in her. That would explain the dark roots of the main and dark spots on the body.


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## Appyt (Oct 14, 2007)

Whatever color she is, she is gorgeous...


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## Cat (Jul 26, 2008)

I wonder if she is a buckskin with the silver dapple gene? I've been looking at a lot of rocky mountain horse pictures lately and one of the websites I stumbled across had a silver buckskin and the coloring was very similar. I need to see if I can find that pic again...


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## hccumminssmoke (Oct 19, 2009)

Cat said:


> I wonder if she is a buckskin with the silver dapple gene? I've been looking at a lot of rocky mountain horse pictures lately and one of the websites I stumbled across had a silver buckskin and the coloring was very similar. I need to see if I can find that pic again...


This is a yearling stud colt that one of our good friends raised. He is a nice Silver Buckskin...and with our bay mare and palomino stud (w/ a silver gene) chances are HHF should raise one soon...

Nate


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## Indyhorse (Dec 3, 2009)

I really don't see buckskin on Misty, her "dark points" aren't nearly dark enough, and her mane is definitely blonde, with just dark roots. Only a few stray blacks in her tail. I would be inclined to think she is just a pangare/mealy chestnut if it weren't for the dark muzzle and the dark grey/silver on her legs.

I'm leaning towards a silver bay with her at this point....the picture below is a silver bay that is marked IDENTICAL to her, with the exception of he does not have her white coronet bands and white star/strip combo. This picture shows what Misty's coloring looks like in person much more accurately than my poor camera and limited skills captures!


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## apachiedragon (Apr 19, 2008)

Now I'm curious about mine. I wonder can one have both the silver dapple and the sooty gene together? I have a breeding stock paint Buckskin that looks almost exactly like the silver buckskin colt above, except when he sheds in the spring he gets large dark brown, almost black patches over both shoulders, almost a foot in diameter, and another over his rump. He is so pale everywhere else, that he looks filthy, but it's just his odd coloring. I'll try to take pics at some point. But is it possible to have both, or are his dark splothes a throwback to his paint gene? He has no white except for his hind socks.


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