Historical Pony: Island Madame

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