# Name of color/pattern?



## usandpets (Jan 1, 2011)

This is one of the mares we rescued. She is guessed as a QH and about 9 years old. I assume she is considered as a gray but is there a term for the "freckles" or spots? They are mostly black but there are some that are brownish. Would it be called leopard spotting? I'm thinking not because the spots are so small. Anyway, where she has shedded out, like the shoulders, are the spots. I'm thinking the rest of her body will be the same when she finishes shedding. 

























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## franknbeans (Jun 7, 2007)

Looks like a flea bitten grey to me.


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## usandpets (Jan 1, 2011)

Okay. Thanks. I forgot about that, being flea bitten.
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## sinsin4635 (Dec 1, 2009)

Yep, flea bitten., & very cute!


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## sinsin4635 (Dec 1, 2009)

Now that I think about it, I don't recall seeing very many, if any, flea bitten Quarters though.


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## NdAppy (Apr 8, 2009)

Fleabitten grey happens in every breed that has grey.


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## MacabreMikolaj (May 9, 2009)

She seems to be shifting from dappled to flea bitten causing the dark lower legs.
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## sinsin4635 (Dec 1, 2009)

Ya, well, you see alot more flea bitten Arabs than any other breed.


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## MacabreMikolaj (May 9, 2009)

Sinsin - all horses go through the same greying process. All horses will be flea bitten grey in between dapple grey and practically white. Some horses go through it faster (some foals grey in the womb and can be born almost white) and some slower, but ALL greys will be flea bitten at some point. 

So perhaps there are more GREY Arabs, but there are not more "flea bitten" greys than regular greys because all greys will reach that point.
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## sheenaschlytter (Aug 10, 2012)

she has an arab face to me


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## riddlemethis (Jun 3, 2008)

MacabreMikolaj said:


> Sinsin - all horses go through the same greying process. All horses will be flea bitten grey in between dapple grey and practically white. Some horses go through it faster (some foals grey in the womb and can be born almost white) and some slower, but ALL greys will be flea bitten at some point.


No they won't. Heterzygous horses tend to be fleabitten and homozygous horses tend to NOT get fleabites. Not all horses gray out the same. Some get tons of flea bites and some get NO flea bites. 

Some don't even "look" gray at all.


It totally depends.


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## Peppy Barrel Racing (Aug 16, 2011)

Grey is a funky gene. This horse is like 17 or 18.








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## franknbeans (Jun 7, 2007)

Do that horses legs look really funky to anyone else? Sort of like he is going in 4 different directions!

I would consider that a roan. Is it not?


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## riddlemethis (Jun 3, 2008)

The horse in the post immediately above yours is gray.
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## Peppy Barrel Racing (Aug 16, 2011)

I was showing a neat grey example that horse is like 18 and he has greyed minimally.
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## franknbeans (Jun 7, 2007)

Interesting.


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## usandpets (Jan 1, 2011)

Another question related to grays. Do all turn white? If not, what are the chances she will stay a gray?
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## Peppy Barrel Racing (Aug 16, 2011)

usandpets said:


> Another question related to grays. Do all turn white? If not, what are the chances she will stay a gray?
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


No they don't all turn white some turn flea bitten some are darker some are lighter. Or in the case of the horse pictured above some retain some of thier pigment though that doesn't happen a lot.
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## Chiilaa (Aug 12, 2010)

Peppy Barrel Racing said:


> No they don't all turn white some turn flea bitten some are darker some are lighter. Or in the case of the horse pictured above some retain some of thier pigment though that doesn't happen a lot.
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


Flea bites aside, I want to disagree. All greys will eventually turn white - it's just that sometimes they "beat" the process by dying before that point. If they all lived as long as the greying process took (which can be very individual) then they would all be white when they stopped if that makes sense?


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## Peppy Barrel Racing (Aug 16, 2011)

Chiilaa said:


> Flea bites aside, I want to disagree. All greys will eventually turn white - it's just that sometimes they "beat" the process by dying before that point. If they all lived as long as the greying process took (which can be very individual) then they would all be white when they stopped if that makes sense?


Oh really? Never thought of it like that, but it makes sense.
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## MacabreMikolaj (May 9, 2009)

Are we sure the roany/grey doesn't actually have some Appy genes? Looks an awful lot like varnish to me?
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## riddlemethis (Jun 3, 2008)

Positive 100%. And he's tested gray. As is his brother who looks identical to him.
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## NdAppy (Apr 8, 2009)

Add into that that varnish with grey tends to grey extremely fast from what I have noticed.


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## sinsin4635 (Dec 1, 2009)

riddlemethis said:


> No they won't. Heterzygous horses tend to be fleabitten and homozygous horses tend to NOT get fleabites. Not all horses gray out the same. Some get tons of flea bites and some get NO flea bites.
> 
> Some don't even "look" gray at all.
> 
> ...


 I thought this was true cuz my sister had a fleabitten Arab that never dappled.


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## RiskyFilly (Oct 15, 2011)

Don't have much to contribute to the Grey conversation but I really like the look of this gal!


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## Cherie (Dec 16, 2010)

We have always had one or more gray stallions over the last 50 years. We sold our last gray stud 2 years ago and he went to the UK.

We actually think there are two slightly different gray genes: 

The one gets flea bitten as they gray out and never turns white; they just keep getting more speckles as they age. The flea bit spots will be reddish brown if they carry the red gene along with the gray gene, even if their base color was not red. Some of these horses turn white and then start getting more fleas bit spots as they get older. The last stallion that was like this was Classical Silver. He had no red gene so he only sired bays, browns and grays and sired 80% grays. ALL of his gray foals got flea bites unless they were out of gray mares that had turned plain white. Those had an 80% chance of getting the speckles.

The other gene turns lighter and lighter and sometimes never dapples if the base color is is not dark. They all end up white if they live long enough. The stallion we just sold was like this. He carried a red gene and was foaled grullo or dun before he turned gray. Few of his foals dappled out and none of them got the speckles if they were not out of gray mares. It was always fun to see what the foals would do out of daughters of the other gray stud that had the flea bitten and dappled foals. He sired a lot of duns and most of his gray foals were born dun and grayed out by the time they were 5 or 6, never dappled or got flea bites (unless the dam was a dappled gray or the foals were born dark) and the ones born dun kept the dorsal stripe until they were 10 or 12 like their sire did. We still have several of these faded out duns from the stud sold 2 years ago. They never dapple much but the ones foaled bay, brown or black (dark base color) dapple out beautifully.

Our gray Playgun son (sold about 10 years ago) carried a red gene and sired all colors. Playgun is white and our Playgun son also sired foals that turned plain white unless they were out of gray flea bitten mares. I still have one of his daughters (I think 12 or 13 years old) and she is almost white with no speckles coming at all. She was foaled bay so dappled out before turning snow white.

I also raised and trained Arabians back in the 60s and 70s and they also had many that turned snow white and others that got flea bitten. I think the numbers of snow white ones greatly outnumbered the flea bitten ones, but there were both. All of the ones that traced to Skowronek and Nabor* were snow white. We had some other Arabians, mostly Polish, that got flea bitten. Again, the ones that dappled out the most were born dark and not born red.

So, after so many years of breeding and owning several hundred gray horses, they all followed these these gray 'rules'. We have been waiting to see if they ever identify the two distinct gray 'patterns'. There has always been a parentage and thus genetic difference between the ones that turn snow white and the ones that get speckles.


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## NdAppy (Apr 8, 2009)

It's thought that a homoygous grey (GG) will turn white without fleabites, and a heterozygous grey (Gg) will go fleabitten.


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## Chiilaa (Aug 12, 2010)

Cherie said:


> We have always had one or more gray stallions over the last 50 years. We sold our last gray stud 2 years ago and he went to the UK.
> 
> We actually think there are two slightly different gray genes:
> 
> ...


This is a good observation, but it is a misinterpretation of causality. There is only one grey gene, and I doubt very much that another will ever be found, there is no reason to believe it will.

What you are seeing is something genetic, yes. But it is not two different grey genes, it is something else - the "fleabitten" code. Just like all bay horses are black based, so all fleabitten greys are grey based, and it's the same gene as non-fleabitten. Just something ELSE aside from that causing the fleabitten pattern.


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## Cherie (Dec 16, 2010)

> It's thought that a homoygous grey (GG) will turn white without fleabites, and a heterozygous grey (Gg) will go fleabitten.


This has to be a wrong assumption as I have had many snow white mares out of bay, brown, black and sorrel mares. I have a white Playgun granddaughter out of a bay mare right now. Playgun, himself, is snow white and is sired by the Sorrel Freckles Playboy but is out of a snow white mare. She produced another gray son by a sorrel stud that is also snow white. They cannot be homozygous for gray with only one gray parent. 

I do not think there are two 'completely different' gray genes, but I would bet on one have a slight mutation from the other. I have never seen the two different patterns ever cross the genetic lines. They have always had a direct line to one dominant gray pattern or the other or it is a 'crap shoot' if they can have both from two different pattered parents. I have never seen either pattern skip a generation so it is dominant trait.

The same is true of the Arabian, Nabor*. I had two different Nabor* daughters I trained out of bay and chestnut mares and both were snow white like him.


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## Kayella (Feb 11, 2012)

I vote grey, definitely.  Those "black spots" may be where she just cut herself and the hair grew back in as her base color, which looks like black. Or it could be "flea bites" but those large black spots seem like old cuts to me.


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## texasgal (Jul 25, 2008)

I wouldn't call Playgun snow white .. the recent pics I've seen he is pretty fleabitten.


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## NdAppy (Apr 8, 2009)

Cherie said:


> This has to be a wrong assumption as I have had many snow white mares out of bay, brown, black and sorrel mares. I have a white Playgun granddaughter out of a bay mare right now. Playgun, himself, is snow white and is sired by the Sorrel Freckles Playboy but is out of a snow white mare. She produced another gray son by a sorrel stud that is also snow white. They cannot be homozygous for gray with only one gray parent.
> 
> I do not think there are two 'completely different' gray genes, but I would bet on one have a slight mutation from the other. I have never seen the two different patterns ever cross the genetic lines. They have always had a direct line to one dominant gray pattern or the other or it is a 'crap shoot' if they can have both from two different pattered parents. I have never seen either pattern skip a generation so it is dominant trait.
> 
> The same is true of the Arabian, Nabor*. I had two different Nabor* daughters I trained out of bay and chestnut mares and both were snow white like him.



:rofl: I don't follow the grey as much as the other colors, and last I heard that was the thinking. Only been around two greys in my life and both were white at a young age, but both also carried LP which seems to accelerate the process even more.


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## verona1016 (Jul 3, 2011)

Chiilaa said:


> This is a good observation, but it is a misinterpretation of causality. There is only one grey gene, and I doubt very much that another will ever be found, there is no reason to believe it will.
> 
> What you are seeing is something genetic, yes. But it is not two different grey genes, it is something else - the "fleabitten" code. Just like all bay horses are black based, so all fleabitten greys are grey based, and it's the same gene as non-fleabitten. Just something ELSE aside from that causing the fleabitten pattern.


That's what I was thinking, too. Fleabitten and non-fleabitten grays will both test positive for the DNA tests for gray, so they're the same gene. We're still a long way from fully understanding every gene and what it does, which is why there are lots of color variations that we currently can't explain or test for (what makes some chestnut horses dark and some light?) I'd say it's very likely there's a heritable genetic component to fleabites; we just haven't singled it out yet.


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## JavaLover (Nov 7, 2009)

sheenaschlytter said:


> she has an arab face to me


Though she don't really seem to have the "build" of an Arab.
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