# What colour is she??



## maddiemaisie (Jul 31, 2009)

Always thought she was black, but she's got lighter each year and now looks brown, she isn't sun bleached in these pics, only just shedded her winter coat, so is she black or is she actually brown? :?


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## Chiilaa (Aug 12, 2010)

Do you have any other photos of her? In all sorts of coats, winter summer etc?


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## maddiemaisie (Jul 31, 2009)

Some more pics at various times of the year


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## maddiemaisie (Jul 31, 2009)

And one more recent one!


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## Chiilaa (Aug 12, 2010)

I am inclined to say she is brown. I see paler soft parts - muzzle, flank etc. She is really dark, which makes it hard.


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## maddiemaisie (Jul 31, 2009)

Yes she does definately have lighter areas, on muzzle etc. She has a foal this year from a pally stallion, as i assumed she was black i assumed him to be black (or smokey black if carrying the cream gene) so if she is technically brown, i assume he too is brown (or if carrying cream what affect does that have on brown?) ?


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## Chiilaa (Aug 12, 2010)

Do you have photos of the foal?


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## maddiemaisie (Jul 31, 2009)

Yes, here he is....


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## Chiilaa (Aug 12, 2010)

Baby looks either black or smoky black to me, leaning towards smoky. Smoky black (black with one cream gene) can be very hard to distinguish from black, but often a smoky black foal will be born slightly darker, as your baby is. However, that is just a guess. I am very confident that he is one of the two


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## maddiemaisie (Jul 31, 2009)

Thankyou  so that would mean mum must be technically black too then?


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## Chiilaa (Aug 12, 2010)

Nope lol. Black and brown are on different loci (meaning they are different genes).

Black and red are together - Ee and EE are black horses, ee is a red horse (chestnut)

Bay and brown are agouti mutations - A is bay, At is brown. Agouti doesn't act on a red horse, but can be carried by a red. It is dominant, so only needs one copy to be expressed. 

Cream is again on a different locus. Crcr is a single dilute, CrCr is double. It depends on the coat colour that the cream has to act on as to what colour the horse is.

So theoretically, we can narrow down the sire's genes a bit - he has to be ee Crcr as he is palomino. A palomino is a red horse with a single cream gene, which makes it nice and easy to figure out those genes. He could be carrying bay or brown, but we wouldn't know as it won't act on his red based coat. We do know, however, that he only has one of these genes maximum, as the foal has a black base with no agouti. So the sire must have a recessive agouti gene, and we can say that he is a? because we don't know what the other gene is.

Mumma is somewhat harder. We know she has at least one black gene, as she is a black base herself. However, we can't tell if she is carrying one or two black genes. So we put her down as E?. Agouti she has to have one (provided I am right about her being brown), but not two, as she can't have passed one on to her foal. So she is Ata. She doesn't have a cream gene (although there is a slight chance she could be smoky black, but I doubt it very much in this case). 

So daddy - ee Crcr a? 
Mumma - E? crcr Ata

The possible combinations from this mating look complicated, but really aren't. Most people assume that an unknown part is heterozygous, just to give complete coverage of possible outcomes. So Ee x ee means 50% of the foals will be red based (chestnut) and 50% will be black based (black, bay, brown). Crcr x crcr means half of the foals will be single dilutes (palomino, buckskin, brown buckskin, smoky black) and 50% won't be diluted at all (chestnut, bay, brown, black). Ata x Aa is the most complex - 25% will be non agouti carriers (black on a black base, chestnut not carrying agouti on red base), 25% will be bay carrying non-agouti, 25% will be bay carrying brown, and 25% will be brown carrying non-agouti*.

Ok, novel finished lol.

*This is the theory currently on agouti dominance, but it is just a theory and not proved yet


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## maddiemaisie (Jul 31, 2009)

WOW i had to read that through a few times to get it to all sink in  but i think i understand it all  so bubba is definately a black or smoky black and mumma is black or brown! Thankyou for your help and all the great information


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## maddiemaisie (Jul 31, 2009)

A few more pics of foal now losing his coat.....


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## MelissaAnn (Aug 26, 2011)

OMG that picture of the hairy pony with the sleepy kitty. SO ADORABLE.


On another note, I wonder if one day genetics researchers will discover that the fading black and non fading black are genetically different. Perhaps they have some mutation that has not been identified.... that will one day make answering questions like this much easier. Genes and mutations are being discovered and identified all the time!


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## maddiemaisie (Jul 31, 2009)

Looking very brown as he's changing colour, do you think he's "black" still?? or is he going to be "brown" ?


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## Chiilaa (Aug 12, 2010)

Based on his baby pictures, I was very confident that he was black or smoky black. The recent photos did start to make me doubt it, but I will hesitate before saying I was wrong. Foal shedding can be fun, and if he is smoky like I think he is, he may do all sorts of queer things.


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## maddiemaisie (Jul 31, 2009)

:lol: so i'll wait for lots more fun changes before we see what he settles on


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## ThirteenAcres (Apr 27, 2012)

I can say with 100% certainty that he carries the adorable gene. That's Ad or ad...=D


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## maddiemaisie (Jul 31, 2009)

ha ha he definately does


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## Army wife (Apr 29, 2012)

They both look brown to me. How cute!!


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## maddiemaisie (Jul 31, 2009)

I thought i'd just add a few more up to date pics....not that much has changed (colour wise) but he has got even cuter :lol: Now 5 months old!!


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## shanoona (Oct 29, 2009)

same colour as my mare  Black or almost black in winter, but with dark bucskin belly in summer, and with ginger "freezings" in mane and tail.... She is a dark brown in th epapers, but i lean into a black bucksin soemtimes.... I shall never know.. 

Most recent-today:









summer:









other summer:









another summer:









winter:









winter:










U see those red parts in her mane?


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## maddiemaisie (Jul 31, 2009)

Awwww she's very pretty and yes her colour is exactly the same as my mare, she has the same red in her mane and same changes throughout the seasons....well whatever they are they are definately the same


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## Cowboy Ringo (Sep 17, 2012)

I would say Chestnut.
I have two papered Tennessee's who are registered Chestnuts, and they get black while in the barn or in the winter, but while outside especially in summer, they turn a brown just like your pics.

Id go with chestnut


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## Chiilaa (Aug 12, 2010)

Cowboy Ringo said:


> I would say Chestnut.
> I have two papered Tennessee's who are registered Chestnuts, and they get black while in the barn or in the winter, but while outside especially in summer, they turn a brown just like your pics.
> 
> Id go with chestnut


This mare is definitely not chestnut. I would love to see pics of your chestnuts


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## FeatheredFeet (Jan 27, 2010)

I think we must remember, that what is put on registration papers as colour of a given horse, is not necessarily true. It is often just what the breeder _thought_ the horse looked like - often at birth or very young. Tons of horses have been registered as chestnut when babies, when in fact they were grey. Also silvers registered as grey. In Miniature Horse pedigrees and registration, we constantly see colours as something they actually couldn't be. It's fun to guess, but the only way to know the truth, is to test.

Lizzie


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## stevenson (Sep 12, 2011)

I would say brown. Not black, not chestnut (red) Not buckskin (tanish)


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## Barrelracer00 (Sep 9, 2012)

I think dark bay, black, or maybe liver chestnut?


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## blue eyed pony (Jun 20, 2011)

Not brown, she would have to have the mealy muzzle. Not dark bay because bays are a fairly uniform colour, and not fading black because a fading black would fade from top to bottom, not bottom to top.

Possibly "black buckskin" as the owner suggests - called smokey black in the USA. I knew what they were talking about straight away because here in Aus we call smokey black, black buckskin, and as far as I'm aware it's the same in several European countries.

edit; that's Shanoona's horse, not OP's horse. OP's horse is brown.


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## Chief101 (Sep 23, 2012)

Might be a seal brown


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## NdAppy (Apr 8, 2009)

Not seal brown...


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## Army wife (Apr 29, 2012)

I say brown lol


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