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Island Madame was a little solid bay mare born in 1991. Her parents are unknown but it’s possible will be figured out at some point. For a while her nickname was Gypsy before her name was figured out. None of Island Madame’s foals have been found to have been kept for the herd, but records are spotty when she was young so you never know. Her ID number was 8B and was the number her foals were sold under at the auction. Her most distinctive feature was that big snip on her face. We got her on video at my first Pony Penning in 1995 and always remembered her with her big snip even many years before knowing her name. I was tickled to spot her as a yearling in my friend Kathy’s photos a couple years ago. Island Madame was a bay and appears to have had two copies of agouti. Out of 12 known foals she had 3 bays and one buckskin. No black foals which is an indicator she may not have had two copies of agouti as she would have had no choice to pass it on to all her foals. https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/bay.html The rest of Island Madame’s foals were chestnuts. A chestnut foal has to have both parents with chestnut so as a bay she carried it recessively. This is one of the easier things to figure out using offspring if a pony’s parents are unknown. https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/chestnut.html She was a pretty bright bay, at least in the summertime. She darkened up a good bit in the wintertime. Color shade and aren’t well understood yet but it’s something that we can definitely see. https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/colorshade.html It’s very likely Island Madame had some kind of white/pinto pattern. I don’t think it’s splashed white based on her foals. Instead I think it was one of the more recently discovered patterns like the W group or the Eden White group. More and more ponies are testing to have one or more of these. https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/white20.html https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/white34.html https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/white35.html https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/eden-white.html  
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Surf N Turf is a 2008 dark bay/brown mare born at Thousand Welcomes Farm in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Both of her parents were born on Assateague. Her sire is dark/bay brown tobiano Chesapeake Powhattan’s Promise, 1998 son of Witch Doctor and Promise of Summer. Surf’s dam is chestnut Tidewater Millennium Surprise, 2000 daughter of Surfer Dude and Satin and Silk. Surf is a current and longtime member of the 𝑪𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒄𝒐𝒕𝒆𝒂𝒈𝒖𝒆 𝑷𝒐𝒏𝒚 𝑫𝒓𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝑻𝒆𝒂𝒎. She’s currently the only non-Misty descendant on the team. Surf represented her uncle Surfer’s Riptide at Breyerfest 2025. Surf N Turf’s test results: A/a, E/e, nd2/nd2, TO/n, EDXW2 Surf has one copy of black and one copy of red, reflected as E/e. She has one copy of agouti which makes her a bay. You may have spotted that I called her a dark bay/brown. Brown is something that pretty much everyone thinks is different genetically from a bay, but it hasn’t been found yet. If you compare Surf with a bay they look quite a bit different. Interestingly her sire and his sire Witch Doctor were also a browns. Time will tell if the theorized difference in brown is found. https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/brown.html She doesn’t have a dorsal stripe or any other primitive markings. That shows up on her test as non-dun2, or nd2/nd2. https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/primitivemarkings... Her sire was a tested homozygous for tobiano so he passed it on to her. Surf’s dam was solid so she didn’t have it to pass on, nether of her parents had tobiano either. So Surf is heterozygous for tobiano, TO/n. https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/tobiano.html I’d wondered if Surf had something in addition to tobiano, she has a fairly big blaze and the edges of her pinto markings are jagged. And indeed she does! She has one copy of Eden White 2, or EDXW2/n. Surf is the first Chincoteague to test to be a combination of Tobiano Eden White 2. https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/eden-white.html   A different type of historical pony for the first post of the new year! This is a filly sold at the 1996 auction. Her auction number is 87 which, at that time, matches to her dam’s number. Mare 87 was solid buckskin Misty Dawn. Best guess on the filly’s sire is Gunner’s Moon as Misty Dawn was in his herd for years. But no other evidence to back that up. Misty Dawn and Gunner's Moon were later the parents of Poco Latte PW. The fascinating thing about this filly is she was a solid bay, no white at all, with two blue eyes. My best guess for years was she had splashed white and some crazy white suppression that eliminated it. I still think she had white suppression, but now that we know Chincoteagues also have the Eden Whites, W34, and W35 that can cause blue eyes. Several ponies with these white patterns have been solid so now they're a real possibility for this filly.   Summer Breeze is a 2006 mare that was born after Pony Penning. She’s also known as Summer’s Gentle Sea Breeze and Cee Cee, for the C marking on her side. She was just kept for the herd and not sold as a buyback. Summer Breeze’s old ID number was B37 and her early foals were sold under that auction number. Summer Breeze’s parents are bay tobianos Miracle Man and Binky’s Breeze. She’s had one foal kept for the herd, bay tobiano Danny’s Girl Splash. Through her Summer Breeze has had two granddaughters kept. Summer Breeze’s likely genetic makeup: E/E, A/A, TO/n Summer Breeze is a dark bay which is a combination of black/extension and agouti. All of her 13 foals have been bay so it appears she has two copies of both. If she had recessive chestnut she would have had a chestnut foal, three of her foals were by chestnut stallion. Granted that’s not many foals so it’s a guess based on the information we have. Similarly, since she hasn’t produced a black foal, only bays, it seems she has two copies of agouti. https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/bay.html Both of her parents were tobiano but only one passed their tobiano on to her. Four of her foals have been solid and they couldn’t have been if she had two copies. She has cat track spots on side with the narrow stripe. These are more common on tobianos with two copies of tobiano, or homozygous. https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/tobiano.html https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/cattracks.html Summer Breeze has some kind of white suppression going on. Suppression trying to stop tobiano putting white on her is what gives her that backwards C on her right side. If you study that marking it looks like there’s a piece cut out of her pinto white. https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/occludingspots.html She’s a dark bay like her sire was. Color shade is something that’s still being studied. One study found that bays with one copy of black/extension are lighter in color than bays with two. Since Summer Breeze appears to have two copies that correlates. It’s also possible she has sooty that’s helping make her a dark bay. https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/colorshade.html https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/sooty.html   |
Amanda Geci
Info and updates about Chincoteague Pony Color. These are also posted to my Facebook Page. Archives
January 2026
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