Tiger Lily, nicknamed Waterbaby, is one of the oldest mares on Assateague as she was born in September 2002. Her sire was the chestnut tobiano Maryland transfer Cherokee Chief and her dam the bay tobiano Voyager. The late Suzy's Sweetheart was her full sister and my friend Devin owns her full sister from 2000. Her dam was nicknamed Swim Mare because several of Voyager's foals were the first foal ashore and raffled as the Neptune foal. That's why Kelly Lidard nicknamed her Waterbaby when her name was unknown.
Maryland transfers: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/assateague-horses.html Tiger Lily is a chestnut which means she has two copies of chestnut or red. Chestnuts require two copies of red in order to be that color because it's recessive. Her sire was chestnut but her dam's pedigree is unknown so we don't know where her bay dam got her copy of chestnut. Tiger Lily passes one copy of red on to all her foals regardless of what color they are. Chestnut: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/chestnut.html She's a tobiano pinto like both of her parents but her foals tell us she inherited one copy of tobiano. Of her 17 foals she's produced three solids. If she had two copies of tobiano then all of her foals would have been tobiano pintos. Statistically her foals get her tobiano 50% of the time. But all of the stallions she's had foals with were also tobiano and their contribution gives the appearance of skewing the statistic. Tobiano: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/tobiano.html The edges of her pinto markings have a roany outline to them. This is called mapping. Mapping: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/mapping.html Waterbaby has some non-mapping roaning to her coat. Tobiano pintos often have roaning to their coat. It's currently thought to be something that tobiano does occasionally and not a separate inheritance. Not related to color, but I find it interesting that only 4 of Tiger Lily's foals have been fillies. She's produced 13 colts out of 17 foals!
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Mappy is one of the most recognizable historical ponies. She was born in the mid to late 1970s and her parents are unknown. The black and white photo is from the 1978 book Island of Wild Horses by Jack Denton Scott. Her identification number was #50 and her registered name appears to have been Fiddle Faddle. Mappy was retired to Stan White's farm in Florida where she died in 1999. My dear friend Kathy O'Dette was one of her biggest fans and owned her 1984 colt Stormy. The second photo is one of Kathy's from 1991. Kathy got to meet Mappy in her retirement at the invitation of Mr. White in 1998. The last photo is one Kathy took of an elderly but still feisty Mappy in Florida.
Mappy was obviously a black. She had several chestnut foals so that means she carried recessive chestnut. So she would have tested as E/e. https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/black.html She was a tobiano pinto and her most defining feature was her big cat tracks. Cat tracks are characteristic of tobiano pinto and are more common on homozygous tobianos. Homozygous tobianos have two copies of tobiano pinto and all of their foals are tobiano also. All of Mappy's foals I've seen pictures of were tobiano so it seems that she was homozygous. https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/tobiano.html https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/cattracks.html Mappy's tobiano pinto appeared to have been affected by white suppression. You can really see it on her right side where she has a big roany C marking. It's mismatched with the big white marking on her left side like something is keeping the white away. Several of her foals were minimal pintos also. https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/minimaltobiano.html Thanks to Kathy's pictures we can track Mappy for a large portion of her life and it doesn't appear that any of her foals were kept for the herd. Mappy was in the herd of the chestnut stallion Simon for most of her life. Some of her fellow herdmates were the previously featured historical pony Paint the Wind and Surfer Dude's dam Gremlin. After Simon died she and most of Simon's mares ended up in the herd of Broken Jaw. I hold out some hope that one of her foals we don't know of was kept for the herd. Today's tested pony is Misty II's Henry born in 1998. He's likely the last living great grandson of Misty and the closest related to her to get a full genetic testing workup. Henry's owner and breeder is my friend Kendy Allen. His sire was bay tobiano Lightning of Chincoteague who was born on Assateague in 1988. Henry's dam was half Arabian chestnut tobiano Misty II, the last living daughter of Stormy. He's family to me as he's the sire of my pony Misty's Hurricane Izzy.
Henry is a chestnut so he tested as such as e/e. His sire is bay, carrying recessive chestnut, and his dam is chestnut. https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/chestnut.html Interestingly he tested as homozygous for agouti. Agouti causes bay but it has nothing to do on chestnuts so can "travel" unseen for generations. His sire was bay and got one copy from him. I had to dig on his dam's side as both of Misty II's parents were chestnut. Misty II's Arabian sire Al-Marah Sunny Jim had bays in his pedigree so it may have come from one of them. Otherwise it could have come from Wings's bay dam. Or an unknown bay in Pied Piper's ancestry. My pony is a bay with a black dam so Henry's two copies of agouti showed up in her. https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/bay.html Henry tested as possibly having primitive markings, nd1/nd2. But since he has so much white we can't see if he does or not! https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/primitivemarkings.html Both of Henry's parents were tobiano pinto and he did inherit it from both of them. He tested as TO/TO or homozygous for tobiano. All of Henry's five foals were tobiano pinto. Homozygous tobianos are known for having lots of cat tracks and roaning. I think it's interesting that Henry only has a little roaning and a couple cat tracks. https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/tobiano.html https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/cattracks.html https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/roaning.html Henry tested to have the pinto pattern Eden White 3. EDXW3 is my guess as to why he has such a big blaze and so much white. Much to my sadness my Izzy didn't inherit it from him. Henry has a pedigree with a lot of old blood considering his sire was born in 1988 and his dam in 1974. So it seems EDXW3 has been in Chincoteague Ponies for a long time. Even though we don't know which side of the family he inherited it from. Interesting to think about! https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/eden-white.html Something not color related, Henry has the gene that causes gaited horses called DMRT3. He's not gaited, but horses like him will occasionally pace a stride or two. My pony inherited DMRT3 from him and she will pace a couple strides every now and again when I'm working her. It's kind of cool to watch for! An addendum to Saturday's post about Ace's Black Tie Affair. Using old rules Ace would have been called an overo because his pinto white doesn't cross his back. An overo is any pinto that's not tobiano. Chincoteagues have been tested to have 5 of the over 50 non-tobiano white/pinto patterns.
Overo usually refers to frame overo. The white "frames" the body, usually has a white face and dark legs, and the white does not cross the back. We now know that tobiano sometimes doesn't cross the back so we have to throw that rule out. Here's a picture of bay minimal tobiano Rosie’s Teapot and a bay frame Paint Horse mare that was at the barn I board at. Compare them and you'll see they in general look pretty different. Rosie’s Teapot has white on all 4 legs and minimal white on her face. The Paint mare has dark front legs and an almost bald face. Rosie’s Teapot’s pinto has much smoother looking edges and is less jagged and disjointed looking than the Paint mare's. There were two historical instances of frame in Chincoteagues. Thankfully it's far in the past and no longer present. Frame is the cause of Overo Lethal White Syndrome (OLWS) and would be a serious problem with contained feral herds. Read more here: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/framepinto.html Ace's Black Tie Affair, Ace for short, is one of the most popular stallions on Assateague today. He was born in 2007 and is sired by the Maryland transfer stallion Centaur and out of the half Arabian Susie Q, aka Lady Hook. Both of his parents are deceased. I remember seeing his dam sold as a buyback at the 1996 auction so I always looked for her. I was really glad when Ace was kept so she'd have a legacy on the island.
Maryland Transfers: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/assateague-horses.html Arabian Outcrossing: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/arabian.html Ace's black color is what makes him so memorable and popular. His genetic makeup as a black means he has at least one copy of extension which causes black. Black: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/black.html Since his dam was a chestnut that means Ace carries recessive chestnut. Chestnuts always pass one copy of red on to all their offspring. Even if (like in Ace) you can't visually see that it's there. If we didn't know what color his dam was we'd still know he carried red because he has sired chestnut foals. The parents of chestnuts must both carry or be chestnut for the foal to be chestnut. Chestnut: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/chestnut.html Ace is a tobiano pinto. His sire was solid so he inherited it from his dam. Because only one parent is a tobiano he only has one copy of it, known as heterozygous for tobiano. He passes tobiano on to his foals statistically 50% of the time. Ace has sired tobiano pintos and solids out of solid mares. The old rule was that a tobiano had to have white crossing the back (I learned it too). Testing and close observation has disproven it and Ace is one that thoroughly breaks that rule. Tobiano: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/tobiano.html You may be thinking, what? Ace doesn't look like a pinto! That's because he has something suppressing the amount of white tobiano was trying to put on him. Ace is what is commonly called a cryptic or a minimal tobiano. His socks and one body spot are all tobiano was successful in putting on him. There isn't a genetic test for whatever is suppressing pinto. It does appear to be genetic based on observation. That's been seen in other breeds and we can see it with Ace. His dam showed signs of her pinto white being suppressed and so did her dam, just not to the level Ace's is. We can see it in his foals also because many of his foals are minimal pintos. Here's hoping one day there's a genetic test (or a few) for white suppression! Cryptic Tobianos: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/cryptictobiano.html This historical mare has become one of my favorites, even though I didn't really notice her much when she was alive. Paint the Wind was born in 1979 and died in 2005. Her identification number was 0. She was sired by the bay pinto half Arabian Gordo and her dam was a black pinto called Laverne. One of her foals may have been kept, but right now she doesn't have any known descendants in her current herd. Given her long life we can't rule that it out.
Paint the Wind was a dark bay or brown. As you can see in Linda's picture she had an obviously brown nose. It's thought that brown is somehow genetically different but the how hasn't been found yet. Brown: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/brown.html Her most defining feature was just how much white she had. Her dam Laverne also had a lot of white. She had tobiano, her looks and her foals tell us that. She also likely had splashed white. Her sire Gordo appears to be the source of splashed white in the Surfer Dude family. We can't rule out she could have had another white pattern also. She's sometimes mistaken for the tobiano splashed white stallion Hot Air Balloon. Mixed Pinto: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/mixedpinto.html Paint the Wind had at least two chestnut foals so she carried recessive chestnut. Even though neither of her parents were chestnut. Chestnut: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/chestnut.html Paint the Wind became a favorite because in my photo archival work I always seem to see her. She was born the same year and had the same sire as Surfer Dude's dam Gremlin. The two appeared to stay together, even as their stallion changed, until Gremlin died in 2000. The pair joined the stallion Simon's band as yearlings and stayed with him until he died. Paint the Wind was even considered as a possible dam of Surfer Dude for a while because she was behind him in one of the first foal photos found. I hope one day we can find that she has descendants in the herd. I'd talked some about today's tested pony's results in the past but I realized I never really went through them! This is Riptide's Cocoa Dream. She's by flaxen chestnut Surfer's Riptide and out out bay Pappy's Pony. Both of her parents are still on Assateague and her full sister is black Barbara's Tasi. She lives at Grit & Grace Family Farm. Thanks again to her owner Jamie for sharing her results and these pictures!
Cocoa tested as e/e which means she's a chestnut. Chestnuts must get red from both parents. Her sire is a chestnut, that one's easy. Cocoa's bay dam carries recessive chestnut, from her dam. Chestnut: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/chestnut.html She tested as having one copy of agouti or A/a. Her bay dam passed a copy of agouti on to her, but not the black. Agouti causes the black on bays to stay on the points but it doesn't have anything to do on a chestnut. Bay/agouti: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/bay.html Cocoa's primitive markings test was nd1/nd2. This result means that a pony would sometimes have a dorsal. She does have a dorsal stripe similar to her sire's, she likely inherited it from him. Primitive markings: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/splash.html The most interesting part of Cocoa's test results is that she has two pinto patterns. The first wasn't too much of a surprise, splashed white 1. Her sire is well documented to have SW1. Cocoa also has a blue eye which is common for ponies with SW1. The second is White 20 or W20. She's currently the only Chincoteague tested as having W20. It primarily acts as a booster to another pinto pattern or puts minimal white markings on a pony. Splashed white: www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/splash.html White 20: www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/splash.html Cocoa has three things that aren't testable but we can see them. The first is sooty which darkens and adds black hairs to a pony's coat. Her dark chestnut coat likely comes from her having sooty, it's common in her sire's family. The second is flaxen. The light hair in her mane and tail is flaxen, which also came from her sire. The last is white suppression and it's keeping SW1 and W20 from putting a lot of white on her. It's also causing her star to be odd shaped. We know that suppression is genetic but not the how. It could have come from either parent. Sooty: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/sooty.html Flaxen: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/flaxen.html Thought I'd mention that I've been periodically adding example pictures of colors that are not found in Chincoteagues or are historical colors. I thought it would be useful to have visual examples to be able to better understand what those colors look like. The pictures are of a variety of different breeds. Pictured is a gold champagne American Cream Draft that lives at Kentucky Horse Park.
https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/unknown.html https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/historicalcolors... I've also added pictures from other east coast island herds, those are scattered about. Some of the herds are similar to ours in colors and history and others are very different. I think it's valuable to learn about these Chincoteague "cousins". Happy New Year! I've had two series running for the past year and decided to change it up and add a third. So posts will be color tested pony, historical pony, and current herd pony. Starting the new current pony series with 15 Friends of Freckles! I've gone through the known and assumed color of current ponies in the past so this will be similar to that.
15 Friends of Freckles, Freckles for short, is one of the most recognizable mares in the current herd on Assateague. She was born in 2006 and was sired by the chestnut tobiano half Arabian North Star and out of the bay tobiano LZS Mark's Island Liberty. Both of her parents are long deceased. Her dam's sire was Copper Moose, another of the half Arabians. Half Arabians by Premierre: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/halfarabian.html Freckles is a bay like her dam was. That means she has a copy of extension, which causes black. And a copy of agouti which restricts that black to the points, which is a bay. Freckles has had a black foal so that tells us she only has one copy of agouti. If she had two copies of agouti then she couldn't have produced a black foal. Bay: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/bay.html Her sire was a chestnut so that means she carries recessive chestnut. If that wasn't known her foals tell that story also, she's produced two chestnuts and a palomino. Since chestnut is recessive both parents must have it, visible or hidden. Chestnut: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/chestnut.html She's very obviously a tobiano pinto and it appears she has two copies of tobiano, known as a homozygous tobiano. All 12 of her foals have been tobianos. Freckles received a copy of tobiano from both of her parents. Tobiano: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/tobiano.html The spots that inspired Freckles name are called cat tracks, alternatively paw prints or ink spots. Cat tracks can be found on tobianos with one copy but when they have two copies they tend to have many like Freckles does. Cat tracks: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/cattracks.html The edges of Freckles white markings have a roany outline to them. This is usually called mapping. It can happen on any white markings. It's pretty common but hasn't been studied to know if there's a genetic component. Mapping: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/mapping.html Freckles has a blue eye. Her granddam Carol's Little Freedom also had a blue eye. So have several of her foals. Blue eyes in horses aren't a separate inheritance like they are in people. Instead they're linked to a pinto pattern. Splashed white is the most common reason for Chincoteagues to have a blue eye or two. So Freckles may have it. We've also recently found other pinto in Chincoteagues via testing that can cause blue eyes. So she could have one of those instead. At this point without test results from one of her siblings or foals we can't know for sure. The way that Freckles pinto pattern is so complex and broken apart is another indication that she has an additional pinto pattern affecting her tobiano. Mixed Pinto: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/mixedpinto.html Splashed White: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/splash.html Here's historical Chincoteague Pony is from over 70 years ago and a color that's no longer found in the breed. This mare is Beaufort Misty who was born in 1952. She was born on Beebe Ranch and was bred by Clarence (Grandpa) Beebe. Ehrman Mitchell bought her and another grey mare, Beaufort Blue Bell, from Beebe Ranch and she lived at his Beaufort Farms in Harrisburg, PA. These photos are from a Beaufort Farms scrapbook that was offered for sale online. She also appears in From Ponies for Young People by Ehrman Mitchell.
If you're familiar with pony breeds you probably noticed that she looks quite a bit like a Welsh Pony. That was my first impression upon seeing her photo. There's solid evidence that she's a Welsh cross. A Beebe Ranch ad from 7 years later advertised Chincoteague/Welsh crosses. A Welsh Pony stallion living on the ranch survived the 1962 nor'easter. More on Welsh outcrossing: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/welsh-pony.html Grey has a long history in Chincoteagues but hasn't been in the breed for many years. Grey is dominant so if none were kept in breeding herds after a while it eventually disappeared. Grey in horses is somewhat like it is in people. Ponies are born a color and that that color disappears as the pony greys out. I picked these two photos because it was taken some years apart and shows Beaufort Misty becoming lighter. More on grey in Chincoteagues: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/grey.html I also added pictures of greys of other breeds to the page to provide examples and visually show how grey works. |
Amanda Geci
Info and updates about Chincoteague Pony Color. These are also posted to my Facebook Page. Archives
February 2025
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