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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   
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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.    |
Amanda Geci
Info and updates about Chincoteague Pony Color. These are also posted to my Facebook Page. Archives
September 2024
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