An add on to Sunday's post about my pony, Misty's Hurricane Izzy. I thought I'd share her non-color test results. Just because I can!
Izzy has one copy of DMRT3 which is known as the gait gene. Izzy's not gaited, but I've noticed she'll have some weird transitions between gaits sometimes. I'm told this is common for non-gaited horses with this gene. Her temperament tested as curious and vigilant. That checks out as she's always got an eye out, takes a bit to trust, and is on the hotter side. Her performance tested as Endurance. Lines up with her Arabian ancestry. She has little inbreeding with her Genomic Inbreeding Value at 2.7%. Breed ancestry testing is still in its early stages. The main problem is that most horse breeds are a combo of multiple breeds. Many breeds can't be genetically isolated from another. Chincoteagues don't have a genetic marker that all of them will have so determining if a pony is a Chincoteague through breed testing is impossible. Izzy's a great granddaughter of the Arabian Al-Marah Sunny Jim on her sire's side and the Mustang Broken Jaw on her dam's side. Izzy's ancestry report from Etalon said: -26.1% Near East. That Arabian great grandsire but with a bit of Akhal Teke at 3%. -24.1% North Sea. 13% Icelandic and 8% Shetland. Also 2% Fjord and 1% North Swedish. -21.2% European Heavy Horse. 7% Belgian, 6% Freiberger, 5% Fell Pony, 3% Clydesdale. The most surprising to me, perhaps from the Mustang? -9.9% Ibearian/Spanish breeds. 5% Paso and 5% Andalusian. Little bit of Mangalarga. Not much of that famed Spanish blood in my girl. -9.2% Carriage Horse. 8% Saddlebred and 1% Standardbred. Old American breeds. -7.5% Thoroughbred -2% Exmoor Pony Izzy's ancestry testing also included matching with related ponies. She matched with a descendant of her sire's sire Lightning of Chincoteague, a descendant of her sire's dam Misty II, and a descendant of her damsire Ocean Star.
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The last pony in my tested ponies series is my own! If you have a color tested pony and would like me to feature them just message me with their test results and some pictures.
My pony Misty's Hurricane Izzy is a Misty descendant and a daughter of chestnut tobiano Misty II's Henry. Izzy's solid black dam Stars Black Velvet was born on Assateague in 1994. Her test results weren't a surprise to me because what I know about her family but there's still things to discuss and learn from! Izzy is a bay and she tested as A/a, or has one copy of Agouti. Agouti restricts black to the points. Because her dam is black and can't have agouti, that means it came from her chestnut sire. Henry's sire is a bay so that's likely where it came down from. She tested as E/e which means she has one copy of extension from her black dam. The combo of extension and agouti are what made her a bay. The small e means she has a copy of recessive chestnut. Since her sire is a chestnut he passed one copy on to her. Chestnuts always pass one copy of chestnut on to their offspring. She doesn't have a dorsal stripe or any other primitive markings and her test reflects that as nd2/nd2. Izzy is obviously a pinto and she tested as TO/n. She only has one copy of tobiano because only her sire is a tobiano. She has a good bit of roaning. While her type of roaning is more common on tobianos with two copies of tobiano, she has it with only having one. In my opinion she has a lot of white and a rather large star to be tobiano only. If she has another white/pinto pattern then it's one that hasn't been found yet. I've run every white test available on the market and she doesn't have any of them. She had three foals with three different stallions, here's what she had: Chestnut tobiano splashed white. Sired by a chestnut tobiano splashed white. Black tobiano. Sired by a brown tobiano. Bay tobiano (a lookalike!). Sired by a homozygous black tobiano. He's not really a historical pony, but this handsome stallion is the main progenitor of another sooty family I've been tracking. This is 1994 dark bay or brown tobiano Tuffer Than Leather. He never lived on Assateague and was born on Chincoteague. Tuffy was a prolific sire and has descendants on Assateague through his black tobiano daughter Baybe. His granddaughters on Assateague are Randy, Little Miss Sunshine, and CLG Bay Princess.
Many of Tuffy's foals are sooty, some very dark sooty. Misty's Twist O' Mist is my go to example of a sooty palomino. Peregrin Took was born bay and as an adult is a shade similar to Tuffy. Chestnut daughter Mahogany's name is self explanatory. Half Chincoteague daughter Cowgirl is a bay only slightly lighter shade than her sire. I'm also seeing sooty in some of Baybe's descendants. Baybe's son Rainbow Boy Ray grew up to be a sooty palomino tobiano. You may be thinking, what? That's a black pinto. In the right light he had a brown nose and flanks. My photos don't quite show that. And he's sunbleached in the headshot. A friend has a foal photo of Tuffy and he was definitely a bay as a newborn foal. He got darker as he grew up which is common of many sooties. The color test of his daughter Misty's Red Dawn also tells us he's not black. She has one copy of agouti. Blacks cannot have agouti because having it makes them bay. Dawn's dam is definitely black so the agoui had to have come from Tuffy. She didn't inherit his sooty though. We know so little about the genetics of sooty. It's all observation right now. Here's what's on my website: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/sooty.html Have a sooty descendant of Tuffer Than Leather? I'd love to see! Today's historical pony is the stallion Gunner's Moon. He was a very dramatic looking sooty buckskin. He's quite a dark buckskin with a lot of black in his coat and often had vivid dappling. Gunner had a dark "mask" on his face which is common in sooty buckskin. I talked about sooty in our previous two historical pony posts and you can learn about it on my website: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/sooty.html
We don't know the genetics of sooty but Gunner was an example of how it appears to be inherited. Many of his foals seem to have inherited his sooty, both on and off the island. Notably his sooty buckskin daughter Poco Latte PW who then passed it on to many of her foals. Other offspring like Merry Teapot's High Bid didn't have sooty. We'll see what science can uncover one day about the inheritance of sooty. Until then I try to track what families, like this one, seem to have a lot of sooty ponies. Gunner's Moon was sometimes described as a dun. It came up on the email digest group (yes I'm old) and I was pretty sure he wasn't. So the next time I was at Pony Penning I went looking for him to verify. I checked his legs and his body for striping, nope. I climbed up on the fence to take a look at his back for a dorsal stripe, nope. I took the last picture after I verified he didn't have any primitive markings. He died the next year before I could see him again. Gunner's Moon also appears to have been half Arabian. He definitely had the look. Read about the long history of Arabian outcrossing here: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/arabian.html Today's featured pony may look like a relatively plain chestnut with a bit of white, but her genetics are much more interesting! This is Misty's Red Dawn, a great great great granddaughter of Misty. Her dam is Misty family from the Misty II line. Her sire Tuffer Than Leather also sired Baybe who lived on Assateague. Dawn is representing the Chincoteague Pony at Kentucky Horse Park’s breeds barn this year. Go see her perform if you can!
Dawn tested as SW1/n which means she has one copy of splashed white 1. It's common for ponies with only one copy to not visually be a pinto. SW1 is the same pinto pattern that Surfer Dude and Surfer's Riptide appear to have, although untested. I wasn't too surprised she had it with the way her blaze is crooked. Funky looking white markings are often a subtle indicator. Ponies that appear to be splashed white are found on both sides of her dam's family. Dawn has brown eyes, but her dam has a blue eye and a half brother has two. Those types of blue eyes are a common characteristic of splashed white. Dawn's sire doesn't appear to have splashed white, just based on looks and offspring. She's e/e because all chestnuts are. Dawn's a great example of chestnut being recessive. Her sire is a brown tobiano and her dam is a black tobiano. Dawn tested as A/a which means she carries agouti. Agouti tells black on a pony to be restricted to the points, aka a bay. But since she doesn't have any black then agouti doesn't have anything to do. Her having it does mean she could have a bay foal, if the sire provides the black pigment. Interestingly Dawn had some primitive markings as a foal. But as an adult she doesn't and she also tested as not having any, nd2/nd2. She's my usual go to example of foal coat only primitive markings. This is Herman's Fancy Ruby who was probably born in the 1980s. Her CVFC identification number was A23 and she had the nickname Clown before her name was figured out.
She was a buckskin tobiano with sooty. The golden tones to her coat and her foals are what tells us that she was a buckskin. Sooty adding dark hairs to her coat caused her to look so dark. Because she was a sooty she got darker as she aged. The first photo is from 1987 and while dark she was fairly light colored. The next photo is from 1992 and Herman's Fancy Ruby looks the most like a buckskin. In the last photo she is very dark. It's from 2001 and she died that winter. I'm also eyeing the jagged-ness of the edges of her pinto pattern. Tobiano's only are usually smoother than that. So she may have had another pinto pattern lurking in there. Like many older mares we don't know if Herman's Fancy Ruby has any descendants on Assateague. Given her long life it's certainly possible! She was on the cover of the 1996 Chincoteague Island brochure and the 1999 Pony Penning issue of the Chincoteague Beacon. Learn about sooty on my website: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/sooty.html This little mare is Starfish who was born in the late 1970s. Her CVFC identification number was 02. Starfish was a palomino tobiano who also had sooty. Sooty mixes black hairs into the coat color and darkens it. Sooty is often quite dramatic on palominos. Learn all about sooty on my website: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/sooty.html
The look of sooty often varies with age and thanks to Starfish's long life we can see how she changed. The first photo is from 1981 and the second two years later. The photos are old but you can see she has a bit of dark on her face and some on her legs. These are common indications of the presence of sooty. She's fairly light colored otherwise. The third photo is around 20 years later in 2002. Starfish is a good bit darker palomino than she was as a young mare with quite a lot of dark on face. She got very dark as she reached the end of her life. The last photo is from 2004 and Starfish died in 2005. Dappling is common with sooty and she often did through her life. Starfish has no traceable descendants on Assateague at this time, but considering she lived on Assateague for close to 30 years it would be foolish to rule it out. There was a another palomino pinto mare she was often with and were sometimes mistaken for each other, perhaps a daughter? Starfish's first known foal was born in 1978 and amazingly her last was in 2004! This handsome colt is Ace's Tidewater Promise, a son of popular island stallion Ace's Black Tie Affair. He's a full brother to Tidewater's Reflection of Ace who is living on Assateague. Tide lives at Kerkaken Acres in Virginia, near Chincoteague.
It's obvious from looking at him he's a buckskin so he tested as CR/n. Which means he has one copy of the cream dilution. His dam Tidewater Treasure is a buckskin so he inherited it from her. She passed her copy of cream on to her foals a little over half of the time. Because of the color of his parents Tide had two possibilities to be homozygous for something, tobiano and black. Because both of his parents are tobiano there was a possibility both could pass it on to him. Tide tested as TO/n which means he only has one copy of tobiano or heterozygous. Tide's sire is black and his dam is buckskin so they both could have passed a copy of black or E on to him. Ace's dam is chestnut and Tidewater Treasure's sire is chestnut so that tells us they both carry recessive chestnut. Tide tested as E/E so he's homozygous for black. He does not carry recessive chestnut so he can't sire chestnut foals, even if the mare is chestnut. He can only sire black and bay foals. Since Tide is a buckskin with a black sire he should test as having one copy of agouti. And indeed he did with the test showing A/a. Agouti restricts black to the points which creates bays and buckskins. Tide's full sister Tidewater's Reflection of Ace is solid black so she didn't inherit their dam's copy of agouti. Midweek color history tidbit from the Richmond Times Dispatch on July 27, 1945. An "albino" stallion is mentioned in a report from that year's Pony Penning. There used to be wild pony rides as part of the festivities, or how long could spectators ride a wild pony. One spectator won the contest on the "albino stallion". Double dilutes were and are often called albinos so it's extremely likely this unknown stallion was a double cream dilute. Maybe we'll find out more about him eventually!
More about double dilutes: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/doubledilute.html Double dilutes have a long history on Assateague and this mare is one of them. This is Snowball who my friend Deb Noll photographed in the early 1980s. I think I've spotted her in a book photo or two also. It appears she was called Cotton by researcher Ronald Keiper during his study of Chincoteague Ponies in the 1970s.
There are three types of double dilutes and they all generally look the same so there's no way of knowing which she was. Snowball has the very pale cream coat color, pink skin, and bluegreen eyes that are the characteristics of double dilutes. In one of the books I think I spotted her in she has a buckskin pinto foal and the stallion she's running in behind is a chestnut pinto. If that stallion was the sire of her foal than she would have been a perlino or a smoky cream. If he wasn't then who knows! Learn more about double dilutes on my website: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/doubledilute.html |
Amanda Geci
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July 2024
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