Classic paint

What I consider the classic paint genes are tobiano, frame (lethal white overo), and splash.

Now... the APHA would probably sort of disagree with me, because they include sabino (which I'll cover with the roaning patterns) and generally frames all colors as tobiano or overo (with subvariations of splashed overo vs frame overo vs sabino overo).  Or tovero, which... is not a thing at the genetic level; it's just tobiano plus an overo pattern.

White patterns will almost always have pink skin underneath them, which can make it fun to give a grey horse a bath sometimes.  :)  Sometimes they may have edges where the normal dark skin extends under the white, which produces a look that is apparently highly desirable in the model horse customizing craft community.  (Another random thing that I have knowledge of...)

Also of interest, if you've ever picked up a horse book by a British author (I plead the fifth on how many horse books I have, by the way) - the terms piebald and skewbald just refer to black-based pintos (piebald) and pintos with any other base color (skewbald).

And a tri-color pinto?  That's actually a bay, unless your horse has a chimeric mutation.  Chimeric mutations are when a horse had a twin while in the womb, and the two merged during development.  That's what gives you things like brindle horses (some of which are so neat to look at) and horses where part is black and part is chestnut.  This link has some cool examples.

So let's talk tobiano first.  Tobiano is dominant, so you only need one copy to see the pattern.  The edges of the white are smooth lines, not jagged - like drawing a curve vs. drawing steps.  The horse's head is generally dark with minimal markings (blaze, stripe, star); if they've got a flashy head, chances are they've got another pattern gene causing that.  In general, it's a vertical pattern - it crosses the back and tends to be very up and down along the horse's body.  I've seen it described as oval, but I have a hard time seeing that on most horses

These two are awesome examples of tobiano (from a local show).

White from the knees and hocks down is pretty commonly a tobiano thing, as is white crossing the back between the withers and tail.  Tails may also have white in them.  The chest and flank both tend to be dark, as well - sometimes the dark on the chest and neck is referred to as a shield shape, but I'm iffy on that description.

Better view of that red horse (Is he chestnut or something else? Not sure!) and his tobiano

It's notated in genetic testing as to (off) and TO (on).  Some people say that if there are dark spots in the white, that means the horse is homozygous tobiano (homozygous = both genes turned on), but that may or may not be true.

This is going to be a theme with the white patterns: they can hide. There's a theory - or at least there was - that there are either white enhancers or white suppressors (or both) that determine how much white a horse expresses when it has basically any pattern but the Appaloosa ones (which have their own rules on how they express white).  That means that how a given gene can show can vary wildly from horse to horse.

Tobiano can range from high white socks (usually with even, smooth edges) and a white tail, all the way up to just the head being dark and everything else white.  You can get dark horses who just have a single white spot that crosses their spine.  Googling "tobiano horse" shows a lot of cool examples, although quite a few of them are mixed with other patterns!

Minimal expression of tobiano at the local show

Frame is the nasty one, in my opinion.  Remember, it's got that alternative name of lethal white overo, and it has it for a reason.

Frame is a dominant gene, usually notated as o (off) and O (on), but the chance that you'll ever meet one with both copies turned on is very, very low.  All of these color and pattern genes are mutations of genes the horse as a species already had.  Most of them are pretty benign mutations - they don't really affect anything negatively.

Frame is different.  Frame actually affects the development of the colon when you've got two copies of the gene turned on.  And by 'affects' - it stops it. Foals who are OO are carried to term normally and are born white or near-white.  They typically have blue eyes.  And within a few hours of birth, they start to colic, because their intestines don't actually work, and they have to be put down.

And frame hides pretty effectively sometimes.

In its largest expression, you get a horse where - well, think of it like you're looking at a drawing of a horse.  All the edges are colored in, and the middle is white.

You know, kind of like this. (From a local show)

Or this guy.  (From a local show)

The pattern is generally termed horizontal - it goes along the length of the body, not up and down - and it only ever crosses the mid-line of the body if another pattern is involved.  The edges are jagged and uneven.  Tails stay dark, but the face may have bold white.  Frame can also cause blue eyes.

In lesser expressions, though... it puts points on socks, and that might be all you can see - or it might even just turn the horse's eyes blue, if the horse doesn't have white.  It likes to make other patterns jagged and sharp around the edges, and if the other pattern is big enough - like, say, a large tobiano pattern - those sharp edges might just be all you see of it.

What this comes down to is: test your horse if you're going to breed, if there's any chance mare and stallion might have pintos in their pedigrees and you don't know for a fact that their parents don't have frame.  Don't be the backyard breeder that doesn't test and then goes on FB or forums begging for sympathy for your sick foal.  Don't be the breeder that gets a white foal and puts it down because you assumed it's a double-frame because it's white; double creams can look white and other patterns can produce white foals with perfectly healthy intestines.  Just... don't.  The test is like $25 in the US plus postage to mail in some hair; if you're breeding horses with pinto patterns, you have no excuse.

*cough*  Sorry, had an opinion caught in my throat there.  Let's move on.

Splash (or splashed white) is kind of fun.  There are actually four documented versions of splash - SW1, SW2, SW3, SW4, and a theoretical SW5 (or more).  And off is just sw.  Like cream, it seems to be incompletely dominant; one copy turned on gives you white, and two copies turned on gives you more white.

Two copies gets complex, though, when you've got this many possible types.  Homozygous SW1 (two copies turned on) is fine, and not uncommon.  So far, they haven't found horses with two copies of SW2, SW3, or SW4, so the theory is that those foals may just be aborted in utero.  However, there are horses with test results showing two different versions of splash - say, SW1SW2 - and those are obviously walking around just fine.  (No SW2SW3 documented so far, though.)

As a general concept, highly expressed splash white looks like what would happen if you picked up a model horse and dipped it toes-first into a bucket of white paint.  The topline stays dark, but the face, body, and legs are white, and the tail may be too.  Lesser expressions aren't quite so dramatic.  High white socks/stockings and white belly spots are common.  So are bottom-heavy blazes - where the white on the nose is wider than the white on the forehead - and bald faces.  The edges of the pattern are crisp and even, and blue eyes (or partial blue eyes) are common.

Possible splash - look at that white face!

One side note - if the white reaches the ears, which can happen, there's a chance that the horse will be partially or completely deaf.  It's not true for all horses where the white reaches the ears, because it apparently depends on whether the white reaches the inner ear, but it does happen.

Splashed white 1 is far and away the most common of the four.  It's been found in everything from stock horses to Icelandics to Shetlands, and it's theorized to date back to before the development of most modern breeds.

Borrowing from Wikipedia again - pretty high white expression here.

Splashed white 2 traces from a single QH mare foaled in 1987, apparently, and there are rumors that it's related to the Gunner line of Paints as well.  It looks pretty similar to SW1.

Splashed white 3 is similarly a look-alike for SW1 and thought to be related to a small group of horses; at the time the paper that identified it came out, there were only two examples known.

Splashed white 4 is even more rare!  It showed up in a single (and sterile) Franches-Montagne horse and is sometimes called macchiato.  Equine Tapestry has a great post about him here.

Splashed white 5 and up are mostly theoretical at this point, as far as I can tell - they're believed to exist, but there don't seem to be tests or completed studies yet.  There's some talk about an "Appaloosa splash," but the paper it points to doesn't seem to talk about that at all (as best as I can tell).  There's also a family of Australian stock horses - the Bald Eagle line - that look splash, but thus far haven't actually tested as splash.  (You can see those guys here.)  There are also splash-like (and sabino-like, which we'll talk about in the next post) patterns in Gypsys and Clydesdales that haven't been identified genetically yet.

The Splashed White Project page at Equine Tapestry is actually an awesome place to see some of the variants of splash - she's got them grouped by gene combinations, so you can look at all SW1SW1 horses, or all SW1 horses with frame.

Some combinations can be pretty flashy!  It's not always easy to tell when you're seeing a combination of patterns, but often the major patterns are easy to spot - up and down shapes from tobiano, jagged white from frame, white faces from splash.

At least tobiano and splash on this guy (at a local show)

Tobiano and frame or sabino (see the ragged edges?), same local show

Other side of the same horse

Tobiano, frame, and maybe splash (looking at his face) at the same local show

Either splash (see the belly spot?) and frame, judging by that neck white and the points on the leg white - or sabino, which we'll talk about next. (At the local show)

Now, let's go back to our theoretical horse from yesterday.  Let's say he has splash.  Now his test results would look something like this:

Ee aa CrC zz DD chch toto oo SW1sw lplp

He gets the toto because he doesn't have tobiano, the oo because he doesn't have frame, and the SW1sw because he's got one copy of splashed white 1.

Next post, I'll talk about the roaning patterns: roan, rabicano, and sabino.

Spring is definitely going to be interesting!

So I walk up to Justice today, and I'm greeted with this:

This was two weeks ago:

Baby boy, you're kidding me.

AND your muzzle now looks mottled.

And as for your tail... L to R: normal view, pulling back the side hair, and braiding it.

You're gonna shed out mostly white, aren't you.

And he's now reached his first real baby phase, I think.  Turning right is currently not a thing he thinks he knows how to do.  Instead, he backs up three or four steps, then reluctantly turns as little as possible to go right.  It's all in slow motion, which makes it hilarious, and I don't really feel like I need to scold him for it yet - he turns eventually, and he does respond promptly.  Just... not quite in the right way.

Watering down coat colors for fun and profit

Let's talk dilute genes!  As a reminder, these are: cream, pearl, silver, dun, and champagne.

Cream is notated as Cr (on) and C (off), and it's the one almost everyone is familiar with, even if they don't know it.  That's because cream is the gene that gives us palominos and buckskins!

Chestnut + 1 cream = palomino (taken at a local show)

Bay + 1 cream = buckskin (taken at a local show)

Notice how black's missing?  Black with one cream gene turned on is called smokey black, and it's super hard to tell without genetic testing (or breeding).  A smokey black can look black; it can also look seal bay or almost liver chestnut in color.  It's totally possible I have a photo of one somewhere, but without knowing the test results, I'd have no idea.

Generally, cream is considered one of the genes that primarily affects red areas of the coat.  So chestnuts turn gold and white, and the body of bays turns gold.  And blacks stay dark.

But cream is incompletely dominant (one copy turned on does one thing, two copies turned on does another).  So cream is also responsible for pale, almost white horses with pale blue eyes and pink skin!  Depending on whether they're chestnut, black, or bay, a horse with two copies of the cream gene is called cremello, smokey cream, or perlino.

Pictures borrowed from Wikipedia.  L to R: smokey cream, cremello, perlino

With two creams, you lose most color.  It's still possible to see the difference between the coat and the markings, even if sometimes it requires either a bath or a serious up-close inspection.  Cremellos - chestnut with both cream genes turned on - tend to just look white.  Perlinos - bay with both cream genes turned on - tend to have darker manes, tails, and points.  And smokey creams - black with both cream genes turned on - tend to just be darker overall than cremellos.  'Darker' generally seems to mean 'somewhere between darker yellow and reddish.'

Now, here's where it gets really interesting.

Cream seems to share a gene location with pearl.  Pearl is also called the Barlink factor; it was originally discovered in Andalusians and Quarter Horses separately.  The Andalusian folks called it pearl; the Quarter Horse folks called it Barlink, after the family line where it was found.  Pearl won when the geneticists figured out it was the same thing.  :)  It's also been located in Paints (of course, because of the close Quarter Horse ties), Gypsy Vanners, and Paso Finos (close Andalusian ties there).

Pearl is generally notated as Prl (on) and prl (off), and it's actually recessive.  You have to have two copies of pearl to see the color effects.  A horse with one copy of pearl doesn't show anything.

Well, mostly.  We'll come back to that in a second.

Pearl, like cream, lightens the horse, although it does so more uniformly.  Chestnuts end up kind of a weird pale reddish color, bays similarly go a weird pale reddish color with a much darker mane and tail.  Blacks end up a dark, weird reddish color.  They may also have a unique sheen to their coat, kind of like an Akhal Teke.

Chestnut pearl.  Picture borrowed from Animal Genetics' pearl test page.

If you want to see some really spectacular examples (and some gorgeous photography), check out this link.  It looks like they have at least one chestnut pearl (Sol PM II), at least one bay pearl (Quitasueno VII), and at least one black pearl (Klon), although that's about 48% guesswork on my part!

Now, let's go back to horses with one copy of Prl.  With just the one copy, you won't really see anything.  However, if you have one copy of pearl and one copy of cream, then you get a horse that looks a lot like a cremello, perlino, or smokey cream... but isn't.  This girl is a good example of this (with helpfully provided genetic testing results).

Part of the reason that cream and pearl are thought to share a gene location is because a horse that is CrPrl will only pass down one or the other.  The test results are usually split out, so I'm not sure if the tests for the two are that different or if the scientific community hasn't completely decided that they're in the same spot or what's going on there.

Silver, on the other hand, affects black - not red.  It's also called silver dapple or the wildly inaccurate "chocolate palomino."  Sometimes it's also called taffy, which is just... weird, so I prefer to call it silver.  It's dominant, so you'll see the same effect with one copy or two.  It dilutes down the mane and tail heavily when they're black (ie, black or bay), and it dilutes the coats of black horses.

Chestnuts with silver won't ever show it.  Bays, on the other hand, will actually kind of look like a chestnut with a flaxen mane and tail... until you look closely.

Like this girl - tested out silver bay, but pretty close to chestnut!

Black is where you get what's really the classic silver dapple.

Stock image, blanket permission from photographer to use w/linkback on the image.

Stock image, blanket permission from photographer to use w/linkback on the image.

It's a common color in Rocky Mountain and other gaited horses, and shows up in Morgans and some draft breeds as well.

Silver black horses do tend to darken with age, and the manes and tails of silver bays will do so as well.  We actually have a silver black at the farm - although his color is complicated by varnish roan - so I can show at least some of the darkening over time.  (His mom, the silver bay above, is also still there, but she's pretty static in color at her age.)

A few days after birth.

About 2 months old. I was joking that his registration papers should list his color as 'taupe' at this point.

Around 15 months old

As a 2-year-old

He's three this year, and we're still in the furry stage of late winter, so more photos of him will have to wait for spring. :)

For reasons I do not understand, silver dapple is notated in horse genetics with a z.  Lowercase z for off, uppercase Z for on.  So the boy above is (because I'm cheating and know his genetic results) EE aa zZ LPlp - 2 copies of extension turned on (so black), no agouti (so not bay - still black), one copy of silver (so silver black), and one copy of the Appaloosa gene (so silver black varnish roan).

Also, close-ups of his coat are super fun.  Black + silver dapple + LP roaning = this craziness.

(Oh my god, this is getting long! lol)

Dun is a gene that affects the base colors equally.  It dilutes the body color, leaving a dark dorsal stripe, dark cross on the shoulders, striping on the upper legs, and a dark head and legs.  "Dark" on bay and black means black; "dark" on chestnut means a darker red.  Sometimes you'll see a horse that looks dun, but isn't; some horses just have really dark shading along their spines, but don't have the leg striping.  There's also chatter - which I haven't looked into yet - that there is a gene producing dun that isn't dun, which is the best way I can summarize it.  The discussions I've seen call it non-dun 1 and non-dun 2, which... wtf does that even mean?  So I'm just going to ignore that for now and talk about plain old dun.  It's notated as d (off) or D (on) and seems to be a dominant gene.

I'm lifting some pictures from Wikipedia here, but the best way I've found to see what dun looks like in various colors is to go look up Norwegian Fjords.  They pretty much come in dun, dun, dun, or dun.

Dun on black is called grullo (or grulla), blue dun, or mouse dun.

From here.

Dun on bay can be called just... dun... because why not make things more confusing, but it also goes by bay dun, classic dun, or zebra dun.

From here.

Dun on chestnut is called red dun, claybank dun, or fox dun.

From here.

And because the colors build on each other, you can also get buckskin duns (or dunskins), palomino duns (or dunalinos, a term which hurts my brain so much for some reason), perlino/cremello/smokey cream duns, and theoretically - although I haven't run across one in person - pearl duns and silver duns.

And last but not least - Champagne.  It's dominant, like most of the others, and it's generally notated as ch (off) and Ch (on).  Like dun, champagne dilutes all of the base colors; coat colors lighten, and the horse will go from blue eyes and pink skin at birth to hazel eyes and freckled, pinkish skin as an adult.

On chestnut, it produces gold champagne - which looks an awful lot like a darker palomino!

From Wikipedia, here.

You'll also see gold champagnes with red manes and tails, but this palomino-like presentation is very common.

On bay, champagne produces amber champagne.  It reddens the dark points and lightens the body.

Mare formerly owned by my BO - both the same girl, just different cameras/light conditions.

Different horse, better photo! From Wikipedia, here.

Champagne on brown actually has its own name: sable champagne.  It's much darker than amber champagne, but still has the darker mane and tail and points like bay-based colors do.  This page at the International Champagne Horse Registry shows some good examples.

On black, champagne produces classic champagne - also sometimes formerly known as lilac dun.

From Wikipedia, here.

And like dun, champagne can appear on palominos (gold cream or ivory champagne), buckskins (amber or sable cream), smokey blacks (classic cream), cremellos (gold double cream or cremello champagne), perlinos (amber or sable double cream or perlino champagne), smokey blacks (classic double cream or smokey champagne), red dun (gold dun), bay dun (amber or sable dun), grullo (classic dun)... and can even have silver (amber, sable, or classic silver).  And theoretically pearl as well, although I haven't seen any pictures of one yet.

Champagne is found in most of the stock horse breeds (AQHA, APHA, Appaloosas) and a lot of the gaited horses (Saddlebreds, TWHs, Missouri Fox Trotters, etc).  And almost all American Cream Drafts are gold champagnes.  The thing all these breeds have in common?  They're all American breeds.  So it seems like champagne must have evolved in the US at some point - I've seen a date of 1890, but don't know how reliable that is.

And that ends the non-pattern coat color stuff!  There are definitely theories about other genes that cause specific and unusual coat colors or effects - I mentioned sooty, pangare, brown, and non-fading black, and I've seen stuff about a 'satin' and a color coming from miniatures that's referred to as 'mushroom' - but at this point, I don't know of anything confirmed.  I may come back and do another post on some of that stuff later, because I haven't really talked about the variations of coat color that give us terms like liver chestnut and sorrel.

So at this point, we can say that this:

Ee aa CrC zz DD chch lplp

Is a smokey black grullo.  (Interestingly, I've seen theories that this genetic combination is what produces the super-silvery grullos with the very black head/legs/hair, but I don't know that this was ever backed up with genetic testing.)

Next genetics post starts the non-Appaloosa patterns!  I'm going to break that into three parts, I think: classic paint patterns, roaning patterns, and dominant white.

Basics and coat colors

Since there was a request (Hi, Dom!), I'm going to work my way through the other horse color genetics, a few at a time.

Caveat here: I learned all of this a few years ago.  If I get energetic, I might go look up some of the newer stuff, but that's going to depend on how curious I get. It's also going to be the as-layman's-terms-as-I-can-get version of horse color genetics; I am by no means a biologist and I honestly check out when you get into things like "these genes share the same locus."  (Which I think means they're on the same piece of the gene?  Maybe?)  So a) bear with me, and b) bear in mind that I could be wrong in the details.

Let's tackle the basics first.  Every gene we talk about will have an off state and one or more on states.  Every horse has two copies of the gene, one that came from mom and one that came from dad.  And every horse has... well, pretty much all of the genes they've discovered; what's turned on and what's turned off is what determines what color they are.  All the genes together kind of build a chain of information, and if you know how to read the genetic results, you can generally guess what color the horse is without seeing it.

Some genes are dominant.  That means that if one copy is turned on, you see the effects.

Some genes are incompletely dominant.  That means that if one copy is turned on, you see the effects... but if both copies of the gene are turned on, you see a different effect.  (LP is a good example of this.)

Some genes are recessive.  That means to see any effect, you have to have both of them.  I actually don't know that they've spotted any of the color genes that are recessive for sure?  Most of them seem to be dominant or incompletely dominant.  That said - there are genetic diseases that affect horses (HERDA, I'm looking at you) that are recessive, so it's good to know what it does.

When you write down the genetics, you write them in pairs.  So, for instance, Ee means a certain color.  Generally, uppercase means the gene is turned on; lowercase means it's turned off.  And a question mark, which you'd see as E? or e?, means that half the genetic pair is known, but the other half either is unknown or - as will be the case when I use it as I'm explaining - unimportant.

And now... because we have to start somewhere, let's start with chestnut!

From a local show

Chestnut happens when a gene called extension is turned off and nothing else that would affect the red coat is turned on.  (Some genes affect chestnuts only, some affect black-based horses only, and some affect both - so as long as those are off, you've got chestnut.)

Now, if extension is turned on - one or both copies, as it's a dominant gene - you get black.

Gorgeous Morgan at the same local show

Again, as with chestnut, this assumes that nothing else is turned on that would affect the color.  Interesting side note: there was some discussion about whether there were two types of black - either separate genes or Ee vs EE - one of which fades in the sun and one of which doesn't.  I'm not sure where that debate stands at this point, but it is an interesting point that some black horses fade and some don't.

So what affects the color?  Agouti, grey, cream, pearl, silver, dun, and champagne.  With the exception of agouti and grey, they're generally referred to as dilute genes, and considering how freaking long this post is getting, I'll save the dilutes for another day.

Agouti is kind of special.  Why?  It's what gives us bays and browns, the third "basic horse color" everybody learns.

Who, me?

To get a bay horse, you have to have extension turned on and agouti turned on.  So the horse has to be E?A?.  Now, they could be EEAA; they could be EeAa.  They could be some combination of the two.

Brown is... brown depends on who you listen to.  Some people say brown happens when you've got a horse who is E?AA.  Some people say that brown is actually a different version of bay, generally notated as At - and there was a test for that for a while, but it seems to be unavailable these days.  Some people say that brown is actually bay plus some darkening genes (generally referred to as sooty) and a gene that lightens the muzzle and flanks (generally referred to as pangare). 

Theory at the time I was really researching all of this leaned towards the At gene for brown.  It furthermore suggested that there was an additional gene in there called A+ that produced wild bay (a bay where the black only goes up to the pasterns or so).  I haven't seen any recent, reliable research on the subject, though.

And last but not least for today is grey.  (Or gray, if you prefer that spelling.)  Grey is special because grey ruins everything.

One of the BO's mares, sadly deceased.

Well, okay, it doesn't actually ruin anything except color.  :)

Grey basically takes whatever else you've got going on, color-wise, and just... hides it.  And it's dominant - one copy turned on means you've got a grey horse.  There's some theory back and forth about whether two copies mean you grey faster or not, and there's some fascinating discussion among breeders about whether you can tell if a foal will turn grey before their coats start to turn (answer: sometimes, there are certain characteristics that tend to point that way - but not always)... but in the end?  Grey is grey, and it only really matters what's underneath if you're breeding.

Now, I say grey ruins everything... that's not entirely true.  Grey on a horse with LPlp and a PATN gene does something funky.

Like this mare.  Born so dark a brown she was thought to be black, greyed out to this.

The color basically concentrates in the spots, which either don't ever go grey or go grey so slowly that it's hardly noticeable.  The rest of the horse greys out just like any other horse would.  If you google the Friesian/App cross Mystic Warrior, he's another great example of this.  I'm not sure what would happen if you've got LPLP and grey, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you'd have a white horse!

Filling in

Not the best photo, between the shadows and the shave lines, but he's been an adventure to photograph.

Another cold weekend, complicated by various things (including a late night, a spousal stomach bug, and assorted other fun), meant I didn't get out to the barn.  Instead, have the above picture of a 10 month old Justice, in what is probably the one full-body photo I have of him from 2016 that isn't thoroughly embarrassing.  (Poor baby boy.  I keep thinking of the rule of thumb from the Chronicle of the Horse breeding subforum: three days, three months, and three years are the ages where you can best see what you've got.  Three days and three months?  Beautiful.  C'mon, three years...)

Instead, I figured I should probably explain what the heck I'm talking about when I talk about Justice's color and genetics.

I'm not going to go into color genetics right now, other than to note that I can make some basic assumptions about Justice's.  His father is a chestnut; his mother is a bay.  So I know his extension gene (the thing that determines if you start from a black or red base) and I know part of his agouti gene (the on/off switch for bay, only visible if your base is black).  He has to be Ee A?, because he's visibly bay!  I also feel pretty confident that he doesn't carry cream, dun, or grey; with all three, if you have one copy of the gene turned on, you're going to show it, no matter what base color you've got.  Neither parent is grey, neither has dun, and dad definitely isn't carrying cream, because he's chestnut and not palomino; while it's possible that mom could be a buckskin, she presents as a pretty classic dark bay.

I'm also not going to talk too much about the non-Appaloosa white patterns.  There are a metric butt-ton of them (from the classic paint tobiano, frame overo, and splash to the roans, rabicanos, and sabinos to the dominant white/white spotting, which depending on which one a horse has, what they look like).  If there's interest, let me know; I don't have a problem talking about them - the Ws are particularly fascinating to me - but for talking about Justice, none of it matters.  His registry says no tobiano, no frame, no dominant white, and no to certain types of splash; dad's been tested and carries none of it, and while it's possible that mom might carry one of the ones that likes to hide (frame, for instance), she wasn't required to test.  So we can assume he has none of them.

These two are great examples of classic tobiano.

Classic frame, with the addition of a bald face and some leg markings.

Pretty sure this guy is either splash+sabino or splash+dominant white.

Instead, I'm going to talk about the two parts of the Appaloosa genetic shenanigans.  Part one is what's referred to as the Leopard Complex gene (or LP).  Part two is the PATN genes, the ones that actually dictate the pattern.

LP is an off-on-REALLY ON switch.  If both copies are off, you've got a solid horse.  It doesn't matter what PATN genes the horse might have; they're never going to show, because the thing that activates them is LP.

Hmm, this example looks familiar...  Cessa is known to carry at least one PATN gene, but has no LP - so nothing shows.

If one copy of the LP gene is turned on, then the PATN genes can start to show.  That's when you can get patterns with lots of spots, big or small.  That's when the mottled skin, white sclera around the eye, and striped hooves show up.

Cessa's 2015 foal, Reign of Stars - one copy of LP, and at least one PATN gene. Also Justice's half-sister!

If both copies of the LP gene are turned on, then three things happen.  The PATN gene will show, of course - but the spots vanish or almost vanish, leaving vast white territory.  And the horse will be night-blind.  Horses with both copies of the LP gene turned on produce what's commonly referred to as fewspots - the fully white Apps and the ones with white blankets with no spots on them.

One of the horses at the barn - LP/LP with a heck of a blanket.

The PATN genes are where most of the research into Appaloosa genetics is concentrated right now.  They know that no PATN genes means a horse that can only display Appaloosa roaning (aka varnish roan).  Varnish roan can look very similar to classic roan, but it has one very specific characteristic aside from the Appaloosa stuff (striped hooves, etc): they tend to retain dark areas over prominent bones.

Like Justice's daddy here

And the roaning isn't just limited to horses with no PATN, although it's only called varnish roan when there aren't any other patterns.  Any horse with LP can roan in the non-patterned areas of the coat.

Some horses roan quickly; some don't.  I know one LP/lp individual who is creeping up on 10 and has a few roan patches - and that's it.  On the other hand, Reign looks like she means to shed out almost pure white this spring - and she's only a couple of months older than Justice.

Research has also shown that PATN1 controls large areas of white patterning that cover 60-100% of the body.  Most leopards will have PATN1.  PATN1 is the first (and at this time the only) pattern gene available for public testing.

All the other patterns seem to be built via multiple different PATN genes, very few of which have been identified. For example, they know that PATN2 is related to the blanket pattern, but it's not a strict 1 to 1 relationship; the size and shape seem to be determined by other PATN genes, so a horse with a spectacular, large blanket may or may not pass it down.

Most of the research about LP and the PATN genes is coming out of The Appaloosa Project, and they're still working to understand it.  Any mangling here is totally my fault.  :)

Now, all that explained... when I natter on about this little face:

And what he's got going on with his LP, I've got some thought processes going on:

1. I know dad was tested as LP/lp.  I know mom is the daughter of a Percheron and an Appaloosa, and I know she shows the characteristics of having LP, so she can only be LP/lp.
2. I know mom doesn't have any PATN; aside from her random traveling spot, she doesn't have any white at all.
3. My best guess at dad's pattern is that he's got a blanket.  He's pretty thoroughly roaned out, but he's got spots in roughly the right area for a blanket and two of his three foals bred at the farm have blankets.
4. I know Justice has at least one copy of LP, from one of his parents, because he's got those Appaloosa characteristics.  Based on #1, that means he can only be LP/lp (2 in 3 chance) or LP/LP (1 in 3 chance).
5. If you've got LP and a PATN gene, chances are you're going to see it before the foal is weaned, if not at birth.  Every LP baby I've ever seen, if they had a pattern, it was there at birth or shortly thereafter.  Justice came out brown, continued to be brown through weaning, and honestly didn't show anything but brown until last spring.  So I'm willing to bet he's a varnish roan.

Since I don't plan to breed him (brain surgery this spring!), my wanting to know if he's got one LP or two is about half curiosity; the color of future generations does not depend on this.  It's fascinating that he's throwing out roan spots while his mother stays pretty much solid, because it implies that he's got something she doesn't - and it sure doesn't seem to be a PATN gene.

On the other hand, it is actually kind of important to know if he's night-blind.  Two copies of LP turned on and night-blindness are inextricably linked.  You can't separate them.  You got one, you got the other.  Not that I'm likely to go night riding any time soon, but it will affect how I approach taking him in and out of barns and trailers, and it will affect boarding if I should need to move him from where he is now.

Knowing when it's time to give up for the day

Today has been windy, sunny, and cool.  A little cold to actually be nice weather, but it wasn't bad.

Justice modeled his brand new adult-sized halter for some photos, and we wandered around the pasture for a bit, just hanging out.

It's a little big still, mom.

He gets green instead of blue, because I was informed by my family that both horses were brown and how would they tell them apart?  (Uh, I thought the star and snip might be a clue...)  So color-coding it is!

Granted, if he keeps up this pace of growing random white areas in the week since I saw him last, I may not have two brown horses for long...

All was otherwise quiet on the baby front.  The main herd was a different story.  Not sure if it was the wind or something else, but the one gelding in the group had his head up his butt and kept breaking and running for no apparent reason.  I startled him, I think, but usually you call his name and he comes over to check you out.  After that, everything is fine.  Not so much today; he stared at me like he'd never seen a human before, and eventually bolted.

Coming when called - the first time. Good girl!

Of course, when he blew, the rest of the herd started running too.  I went from having a quiet moment with Cessa to hearing galloping behind me suddenly... and then to throwing out an elbow to protect myself as Cessa took off after them.

Coming when called - the second time.  Again, good girl!

I figured something had spooked them, so I sauntered after and called Cessa again when they'd stopped.  I basically had time to pat her once or twice and the herd took off again.  She followed, but the super-calm mare that belongs to the BO's mom hung out with me for a few minutes. Then, all of a sudden, she bolted.

There comes a point where you acknowledge that you are surrounded by absolute lunatics, and it's really not worth it to keep risking life and limb.  Thaaaaat... was that point.  They weren't freaking out at anything I could see, and they didn't seem to be freaking out at me personally.  I didn't actually need Cessa for anything.  Time to leave them to get the crazies out of their system.

Of course, then I managed to both face-plant on my way out of the pasture and almost twist an ankle walking to the car, so maybe it's just today? lol

Magical color-changing pony

Today was one of those days where crap happened, the BOs weren't up for doing much, and to be honest - after my activities earlier in the day, I wasn't either!

Justice... is growing more white hair.

That white on his eyelids?  That wasn't there Christmas Eve.

I'm honestly, seriously starting to think he's got two copies of the Appaloosa (LP) gene.  I know his dam and sire.  His dam is going to be 7 this year, and aside from a few random appearing and vanishing spots is still solid dark brown.  When I say a few?  She spent part of the summer looking like someone put sunscreen on her nose, and now I believe she's maybe got one more spot somewhere?

His sire, on the other hand, is a roaned-out, minimal-pattern chestnut.  He's got some small spots, but mostly he's white with red accents, in that particular way Appaloosas roan.

We know Justice has at least one copy of LP, because he's got the characteristics.  There's a 1 in 3 chance he's LP/LP, since both parents are heterozygous.  As quickly as he's trying to roan out in comparison to mom...

Starting to look like a real boy (as long as we ignore the combo of baby neck and maximum what-is-that alert mode) - and about to outgrow his halter!

We also made an effort to conquer the puddle of doooooooom.

Or, you know, the puddle of moderate size and a certain amount of concern.

He had to think about it a bunch, but he did walk through it twice, so I'm calling that a victory!

Cessa and I just hung out a bit, taking stupid selfies and trying to figure out how on earth she gets entire seed pods tangled up in her tail and doesn't seem to notice.

So... why are you back there again? I'm just gonna find another one.

Apparently as long as I don't catch her and there's a chance for cookies, I've got a pocket pony.

Cookies. You mentioned cookies.

And I'm totally fine with that... for now.