Not to resurrect a dead conversation, but this really interests me.Treve wrote: ↑Mon Jun 04, 2018 12:46 amMilkie's female side is murkier, a lot more unraced mares... But Milkie himself was described as a light chestnut initially while looking at old ads and clippings of him from the 60s and 70s. If he could be registered as a chestnut why not other palominos before him? And I can definitely see how smokey blacks could pass as dark brown, heck I could even see how sooty buckskins could pass as dark bay or brown. As an aside the only ancestor I could find in common for these two stallions is Sir Gallahad. I'm too tired and a bit too lazy to see how he (or if either Milkie and Glitter Please) traces back to the Byerley Turk, but if the Byerley Turk was in fact an Akhal-Téké as is suspected by some historians rather than an Arabian as previously thought, it's not a stretch that he could've carried a dilute gene at the very foundation of the Thoroughbred breed.Miss Woodford wrote:Oh, there are certainly conspiracy theories about the parentage of Milkie and Glitter Please, the only two sources of all dilute TBs. None of their ancestors were known to be dilute in color, and with no photos or DNA testing we have no way of knowing if there were in fact the "secret buckskins" that color breeders claim somehow carried down the gene for hundreds of years without being detected. The rumors are that Milkie was actually a QH cross (probably 1/4 or 1/8) while GP was a Saddlebred cross; both of their female families are fairly obscure. I'll let you make up your own mind about that...Ridan_Remembered wrote:Please don't misunderstand what I'm about to ask, as I do not mean in any way to cast doubt on this colt's breeding, but I wonder if some of the unusual coloring we see from time to time in Thoroughbreds might come from less-than-ethical breeders crossing a TB to a non-TB, then registering the foal as a TB. If this happened, it would have been more likely back in the pre-DNA days. Are Thoroughbreds DNA tested for registration these days?
Another issue is that several color-bred horses (notably the stallion Goldmaker) have had their papers pulled by the JC after it was discovered that they were conceived via AI, so their offspring cannot be registered as full TB.
After all this reading I'm not certain I buy the conspiracy theories.
I went back through Sir Gallahad’s pedigree, since he’s the only common ancestor of Milkie and Glitter Please, and some very interesting things came up.
Birdcatcher is present thrice in Sir Gallahad’s pedigree through his dam, Plucky Liege. Birdcatcher as we know is the namesake for “Birdcatcher spots”, which are the little white dots that can be found anywhere on a thoroughbred’s coat. Birdcatcher also appears once in the pedigree of his sire, Teddy.
Sir Gallahad also traces back to Bend Or, another horse who is known for and is the namesake of spots, through Teddy. Bend Or appears twice in Teddy’s pedigree.
The Alcock Arabian, one of the main ancestors to all gray thoroughbreds, appears on Sir Gallahad’s sire side, through Alcock’s best son Crab.
Sir Gallahad does in fact trace back to the Byerley Turk, through both his parents, along with Elcipse, the Darley Arabian, and the Godolphin Arabian. The main gang’s all here.
A stallion literally named “Bloody Buttocks” appears twice on his damside. You guessed it, he was named for having blood marks on his butt (or at least according to Pedigreequery).
I may have missed a couple inbreedings (probably did the father back I went) but in closing it looks like Sir Gallahad had quite a few spotty, weirdly colored ancestors.
Hope she goes to a great home who appreciates her!
She's already G3 placed with a second in her first start, at Kyoto.