What color is she?

[prizmbluekigers]

Here is our other mare who is due to foal about the end of June. Last fall this horse did the same odd color thing where she started to turn darker on her neck, face & shoulders( I would have called her a dark Dun or a Bay at that time) and I just chalked it up to mother nature as the hair grew in and then fell out asn she went back to the original color (Dun, Bay?), but it is happenng again and it seems to be more permanant now so I am posting some pics to see waht folks think. The first one is before the changes so that you can see her overall color then. The rest of them are from yesterday. She still has a visible dorsal stripe. She had stockings about to her knees. All the dark color above the knee is new and her face is going dark. This mare is out of our Dun mare and sired by Silverado (who is out of Mestena and Steens Kiger) and that is all I know about her genetics. Sooty gene gone wild? Could she be changing color? I was prepared to accept her as a Bay or Dun so I don't really care, but I can't wait to see the foal. I plan to DNA test all my horses that have not been done already.


Yesterday:

[nrly]

my husbands BLM Mustang does that she is darker in the summer and lighter and woolly in the winter, she is still a dark bay...

[DianneC]

I've never seen this dramatic a change before that goes back to being light again. But the changes in the face looks like sooty to me. I've seen that as some of the colts born grulla colored (grey with stripes) shed out their foal coats and look black. I'll see if I can find a picture.
Here is Rainy and Ruby

[Michelle Clarke]

I agree, they look like the work of a sooty gene. I know the pict at top looks like she was very young - how old is she now? I wonder if she could have gotten the grey gene (not grullo), from Silverado and it is doing something wierd as it turns her grey...would love to see picts of her in the spring once she sheds out.

[lindad]

My daughter's 37 yr old mare is a bay that does that. Her body coat is quite red to dark mahogony in the summer and almost black in the winter but retains the red shading especially low on her body and her muzzle. She has the coutershade dorsal too. I have recently been scrapbooking photos of her over the 28 years that we have had her and it is hard to believe that she is the same horse. The mini went from chestnut with very light "blonde" flaxen mane and tail to liver chestnut with much darker mane and tail. They are both chameleons. I suspect that feed and suppliments may have an influence on the intensity of color change.
Linda D

[kimk]

Sorry, I'm not seeing the sooty thing. It looks like she is shedding out her darker winter coat to her summer bay color. What you are seeing on her head appears to be winter hair that has yet to shed. She looks bay to me. She's quite cute.

[prizmbluekigers]

Here is a picture from last summer just before I saw the strange color shifting start. She already had some sooty? shading on her neck. If I pull hairs from her coat now they have a dark base, not reddish. In that one shot of her withers area I tried to show a shot of her coat underneath. Thanks for the input, let's see what hits the ground in June.

[DianneC]

Kim, I was thinking those shots were of the winter coat growing in and missed that it is shedding out (of course this time of year). So I think you may be right, she just gets a very dark winter coat. But that is one sign of sooty as well, at least it was in the old buckskin mustang I used to lease. He was almost black in winter. I don't see anything that makes me think grey, does anyone else?

[Michelle Clarke]

With the new pict, she does not look like anything grey in happening. The first pict she looked real young, so she still could have hidden the grey thing. I do belive she has the sooty gene though...

[prizmbluekigers]

Gosh, I may have confused the issue. She WAS a bay color and now is shedding out to this odd color. The darker hair is not her winter coat, the latest pic here is from March of this year when she was reddish for lack of something better to call it and in April we started to see the darker color. I brushed and brushed her this weekend and the reddish hair is almost gone, she is much darker and under her mane on both sides and down the front of her face to below her eye line she appears black as night. I even wondered if the pregnancy could be playing a part in the color anomaly. She still has a little reddish in her mane, but both mane and tail have always been predominately black.

Last fall she started to turn dark and then shed that coat in September and went back to reddish. The only other change I have noticed is that her dorsal stripe is splaying out wider than my other horses’ dorsal markings. It is much wider about 2 inches I guess and feathered down the edges. In a previous picture where her dorsal was visible, it was narrower and more clearly defined. It is fun to watch the changes and the baffled look on my husband's face as he tries to figure out what color she will be. She was originally to have been his horse, but she is too small for his 6'3" body.

[nrly]

my husbands BLM mare does that too, I just thought it was the norm and called her a dark bay.

[kimk]

still looks like a cute little bay horse to me. When is she due?

[prizmbluekigers]

Update on color - she keeps getting darker. She is a sweet thing and she is due somewhere around June 21st. It is not a sure thing, but after we wean the foal I am going to offer her to a theraputic riding program in our area. She is only about 14.3, maybe 15 hands on a tall day and we think her temperment will suit the program. It depends somewhat on whether or not they want to take her green broke. I am trying to acclimate her to things such as weird noises, and things that move but with a new foal at her side and two horsed in front of her for riding, I won't get to her this summer. She does the best one-eyed examination of new things that I have ever seen. She is comical, but ultimately accepting.

[pepper]

The therapy programs are being swamped with horses people are offering right now.If you really want her to go to one she needs to be "bomb proof" & kid gentle.Therapy horses are really special horses that perform amazing work. I'm not saying she's not suitable but there's alot more involved than just a good nature.A friend of mine interviews & examines horses for one group here & she rejects far more than she can accept,which makes her sad cause many of the horses don't have much hope of finding new owners.

[prizmbluekigers]

I didn't mean to sound cavilier about donating her to a program and that is the reason for the "bomb proofing". We do that with all the horses, but in her case we have taken it up another notch. I have an old wheelchair she thinks is normal, we use crutches to walk with while we are beside her. She meets and greets all the kids I can find in our area. So while I want to donate her , you are correct, it's up to them. In our area they area actaully looking for a couple of horses of specific size - small. If she doesn't go to a therapy group, I'll find a good home for her. So far her only nemisis that we have found is the llama down the road. He still scares her when he rears up to full height and makes noises.