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This week's featured tested pony is Assateague's Spirited Lady from Hart’s Island Pony Ranch. As her name implies she was born on Assateague and is by the bay tobiano Ajax and out of chestnut tobiano Courtney's Island Dove. Both of her parents are still on Assateague. Lady is a seemingly plain solid bay but her genetics are very interesting! Lady's basic makeup as a bay showed up as E/e and A/a. She has one copy of extension that gives her black pigment and one copy of agouti which restricts that black to the points. The small e means she carries recessive chestnut. Chestnut was inherited from her chestnut tobiano dam. In the second photo you can see that she has a dorsal stripe. And in the third can see that she has leg striping. She's the best example of leg striping I've seen in Chincoteagues. Despite these she's not a dun. Her primitive markings are from a mutation called non-dun1. Lady tested as having two copies or nd1/nd1. She'll pass a copy of nd1 on to all her offspring so there's a high chance her foals will have some kind of primitive markings. Now for the really interesting part. Lady the solid bay tested as having four white patterns! They are White 34, White 35, EDXW2, and EDXW3. She's the only Chincoteague to date that has been tested to have W34, one of two known to have W35, and of the first to be found to have Eden Whites. I'd eyed both of her parents as having something other than tobiano so that part wasn't a surprise. All four patterns have been discovered within the past 2 years so we don't know a whole lot about them and why a solid bay could have them. Perhaps some kind of white suppression keeping any of them from putting white markings on her. Or maybe they're white boosters that require a more visible pinto pattern in order for them to appear. Maybe more than one copy changes things. More research and time will tell! Lady is expecting a 2025 foal and it will be bay, black, or chestnut. The sire Cyclone II is homozygous for tobiano so the foal is guaranteed to be a tobiano. I'm looking forward to seeing if Lady's unseen white patterns show up or affect the foal's tobiano!   
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I've always thought this foal was really cool and apparently the photographer, Ruthvan Morrow, did too. Mare and foal appeared on three different postcards that were sold on Chincoteague years ago. Sketches of them also appeared on things like banners and plates. The filly's? bald face and high whites look a whole lot like splashed white. Is a great example of very typical splashed white markings. Can't really tell if the foal has blue eyes or not. The colors of the postcard are a bit funky but the foal is looks baby chestnut colored. It has a prominent dorsal stripe. So the foal likely had nd1 which produces non-dun primitive markings like that.    Check out the offset star and snip on this otherwise solid chestnut foal! My friend Deb Noll took this picture on Assateague in 1987. Face markings are usually centered. What caused this funky star and snip? Without knowing anything else about this foal or its parents I'd guess splashed white. It can do odd things to markings sometimes and can be used as an indicator of a pony having it. Looks like foal has hind socks too. Splashed white ponies are often seemingly solid and not visibly pinto. We're finding splashed white is pretty common in Chincoteague Ponies. It could be another white/pinto pattern that is causing this markings weirdness, but without knowing more about this foal all I can do is guess!  My friend Rebekah at Hart’s Island Pony Ranch has tested more of her ponies, including two mares born on Assateague, so we're going to go over their test results. Starting with Sweet Island Dreams. Dream was born on Assateague and is a daughter of Don Leonard Stud II and CLG Bay Princess. The first photo is one I took of her as a foal, looking quite bewildered at the chaos of Pony Penning! Dream tested as E/e which wasn't a surprise since she's a buckskin and her sire is chestnut. The big E means she has black and the little e means she has recessive red/chestnut. Since she's a buckskin she should have at least one copy of agouti. Agouti restricts black to the points making a bay, and buckskins are bay with the cream dilution. Dream has one copy of agouti that she likely inherited from her buckskin dam. Since she's a buckskin she should have one copy of the cream dilution. And that's what her test showed as CR/n. She tested as nd1/nd2 which means she might have primitive markings like a dorsal stripe. She doesn't but her foals could based on what the sire has. Dream tested as homozygous for tobiano pinto or TO/TO. That means she inherited a copy of tobiano from each of her parents. And she'll pass a copy on to all of her foals so they will all be tobiano. Many homozygous tobianos have cat tracks or roaning but she doesn't. An exciting part of her results is that she tested as having one copy of EDXW3 or Eden White 3. Eden Whites were only discovered this year and she's one of the first two Chincoteagues to be found to have it. It's so new we don't completely know how it can interact with tobiano yet. I have eyed her sire as having something else beside tobiano, perhaps this is it. More testing and research is needed! She's expecting a 2025 foal by Cyclone II. The foal is guaranteed to be a tobiano pinto and a 50% chance of being a cream dilute. The foal will be tobiano and then could be bay, chestnut, black, buckskin, palomino, or smoky black. Quite a few possibilities! If you have a tested pony and would like me to feature them shoot me a message with their info and some pictures!   This uniquely marked mare is Unbridled Beauty. She was born in 2001 and tragically was put down due to an unknown affliction in 2006. She had no offspring. Unbridled Beauty was the last foal of the long lived mare Love Affair. She and her dam in 2001 is the first photo. Her sire is thought to be the Maryland transfer Hot Air Balloon. I talked about him in last week's post. Unbridled Beauty's buyback donor Suzanne Craig is one of the wonderful pony ladies that greatly contributed to our knowledge of the ponies. As you can see in the lovely headshot by Kelly Lidard, Unbridled Beauty had two blue eyes like her presumed sire. Blue eyes are a common characteristic of splashed white 1. The appearance of her pinto pattern certainly looks like she was a tobiano splashed white. She had a big unusually shaped blaze. The beautiful photo of her with the deer shows her spots of color were "broken apart". There are things that splashed white 1 tends to do when combined with tobiano. It's likely Unbridled Beauty's splashed white came from her sire. But her dam can't be ruled out either as her tobiano pinto pattern is someone unusually shaped. The last photo is my picture of her at Pony Penning 2005 before she became ill. Her best buddy was Thetis, another presumed daughter of Hot Air Balloon. Thetis had a significant impact on today's herd and I think Unbridled Beauty would have too had she lived.     |
Amanda Geci
Info and updates about Chincoteague Pony Color. These are also posted to my Facebook Page. Archives
October 2024
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