horses with unique coloring/facial markings

[Mylute]

Silvery Moon has a boy on the ground, posted in foals thread.

[ElPrado2]

It could also be that they just did not register the paint marked foals.

[Mylute]

Silvery Moon in western tack.




https://www.facebook.com/Silvery-Moon-621787744518586/

[Miss Woodford]

It could also be that they just did not register the paint marked foals.

Back in the "old days" horses with lots of white (particularly white legs, or with blue eyes) were considered to be less sound or less quality and so the horses that were perhaps minimally expressed frame overo or sabino didn't get the chance to produce the flashy colored horses that are being bred now. That's not to say that pinto TBs didn't exist. The old folk song "Skewball" (or "Stewball" in some American variants) was about an actual 18th century skewbald - a gelding, of course.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skewball
http://www.tbheritage.com/Portraits/Ske ... ball1.html
In the American versions of the song the Skewball vs Gore's grey mare match race often gets conflated with the Ten Broeck vs Molly McCarty match race more than a hundred years later.

[Mylute]

Here's another blonde beauty. Unsure of the name, maybe Tachyon can help us out.



https://twitter.com/Zoosimi1113/status/ ... 5437331456

[lurkey mclurker]

Here's another blonde beauty. Unsure of the name, maybe Tachyon can help us out.



https://twitter.com/Zoosimi1113/status/ ... 5437331456

Two beauties, I'd say - jockey Nanako Fujita is awesome as well.

Filly is Tomatoma, 3-yr-old, Lohengrin x Best Material (Agnes Tachyon). She finished 16th of 18 over 2000m for maidens on yielding turf.

https://www.jbis.jp/horse/0001220201/

[lurkey mclurker]

G @LongBallToNoOne
4h 4 hours ago

3yo unicorn 2. BUTCHINI (King Kamehameha x Shirayukihime (Sunday Silence) won on debut in impressive style at Hanshin over 1400m.
There will not be a better looker win on the planet this month #fact
A full little bro to the talking horse BUCHIKO #blood

(replay at link)
https://twitter.com/LongBallToNoOne/sta ... 3445595137

photos via @emi20131109

[Ridan_Remembered]

G @LongBallToNoOne
4h 4 hours ago

3yo unicorn 2. BUTCHINI (King Kamehameha x Shirayukihime (Sunday Silence) won on debut in impressive style at Hanshin over 1400m.
There will not be a better looker win on the planet this month #fact
A full little bro to the talking horse BUCHIKO #blood

(replay at link)
https://twitter.com/LongBallToNoOne/sta ... 3445595137

Very handsome horse. Will he eventually turn all white like grays, or will he remain spotted his whole life?

[Mylute]

G @LongBallToNoOne
4h 4 hours ago

3yo unicorn 2. BUTCHINI (King Kamehameha x Shirayukihime (Sunday Silence) won on debut in impressive style at Hanshin over 1400m.
There will not be a better looker win on the planet this month #fact
A full little bro to the talking horse BUCHIKO #blood

(replay at link)
https://twitter.com/LongBallToNoOne/sta ... 3445595137

Very handsome horse. Will he eventually turn all white like grays, or will he remain spotted his whole life?

Pretty sure he'll have his spots for the rest of his life, aside from the little gray hairs of old age.

[tachyon]

Yes.
But Butchini is not a colt but a filly.

Butchini(JPN), 2016 filly by King Kamehameha, is the 12th white thoroughbred winner in JRA, seven of whom are out of Shirayukihime(JPN)(by Sunday Silence).

[lurkey mclurker]

Omgosh tachyon you're so right - not like Graham to get that wrong but now I remember how we were kind of side-eyeing the choice of name for a petite-ish filly.

Ridan - the white hairs are a result of the dominant white genetic trait/allele and not regular graying-out. Basically what happens (if I understand it right) is that the white overwrites the bay base coat which is why you still see some patches of bay. In some horses a lot of the base coat shows through, while in others you might see all white except for the ears, for example.

I find it interesting that the JRA has "white" as one of the official registered colors, unlike some other registries. In some cases the horses are (or at least were, back when I was following it) registered under the base coat color instead.

[Ridan_Remembered]

Omgosh tachyon you're so right - not like Graham to get that wrong but now I remember how we were kind of side-eyeing the choice of name for a petite-ish filly.

Ridan - the white hairs are a result of the dominant white genetic trait/allele and not regular graying-out. Basically what happens (if I understand it right) is that the white overwrites the bay base coat which is why you still see some patches of bay. In some horses a lot of the base coat shows through, while in others you might see all white except for the ears, for example.

I find it interesting that the JRA has "white" as one of the official registered colors, unlike some other registries. In some cases the horses are (or at least were, back when I was following it) registered under the base coat color instead.

Thanks lurkey...your explanation is much appreciated. I know almost nothing about color genetics in horses. The only two horses with white spots or patches that I remember from 60 years ago are Candy Spots and Mongo. They had nothing in common in their pedigrees except that they both had The Tetrarach in their 5th generations. The Tetrarch, of course, was spotted.

This is Candy Spots (foaled 1960), who won the 1963 Preakness. As you can see, he did have numerous splashes of white spots.


And this is Mongo (foaled 1959), who had a white patch on his right rear leg. I don't think he had any other white markings on his body except the blaze and sock.


The Tetrarch (foaled 1911). He was registered as a grey although he never completely lost some of his spots even as he whitened with age. In paintings of him, The Tetrarch's base color seemed to be chestnut...very reminiscent of BUTCHINI. Even all these generations later, The Tetrarch seems to be the primary source of white spotting in Thoroughbreds. Whether he could also be the source of pinto-like coloring, I don't know. Without researching BUTCHINI's complete pedigree, I do know she has at least one strain of The Tetrarch through Sunday Silence.

[lurkey mclurker]

Hey Ridan,

My genetics may be several years out of date, but from what I have read it seems that in addition to dominant white, TBs have been genetically identified as carrying genes for both overo and sabino (and possibly splash too?), which are also spotting patterns. Sabino can be responsible for the white markings on Candy Ride and Mongo (Marquetry had it too, more recently in the early 90s); overo is more of what you see on Silvery Moon (GER).

My initial genetics learning back in the day (a good 15 years ago now) came from Arabians, which called the patterns like Butchini's "maximum sabino" instead of dominant white. My own chestnut sabino Arabian gelding looked a lot like Marquetry, with an additional belly spot and a question-mark blaze.

[Retrospectiv]

Hey Ridan,

My genetics may be several years out of date, but from what I have read it seems that in addition to dominant white, TBs have been genetically identified as carrying genes for both overo and sabino (and possibly splash too?), which are also spotting patterns. Sabino can be responsible for the white markings on Candy Ride and Mongo (Marquetry had it too, more recently in the early 90s); overo is more of what you see on Silvery Moon (GER).

My initial genetics learning back in the day (a good 15 years ago now) came from Arabians, which called the patterns like Butchini's "maximum sabino" instead of dominant white. My own chestnut sabino Arabian gelding looked a lot like Marquetry, with an additional belly spot and a question-mark blaze.

TBs carry frame overo, and a number of white spotting patterns (which replaced the dominant white moniker). They do not carry sabino (Sb1).

[lurkey mclurker]

Oh yay thank you for correcting! What pattern makes the sabino-like markings in TBs, like Marquetry then? Is it just a very small amount of overo?

[bare it all]

Very sad news. Latte Macchiato, Yukichan's 2YO filly, was put down in Japan due to training accident on Tuesday, per the netkeiba.com twitter account. I believe she was by Novellist.

[Gemini]

Barbara Livingston @DRFLivingston

Here's a horse of a different color....

FASHION'S TOUCH (Old Fashioned) is a 4yo filly at @fairgroundsnola . Previously trained by Hugh Robertson, she has a solid record of 2 wins and 3 seconds in 9 starts. She was claimed for $5,000 in her most recent start by Eric Heitzmann.

Further in the thread is a link to a vid of Fashion's Touch as a newborn chestnut foal, without any spotting apparent (as obvs it was her foal coat, I assume the spotting appeared as she began to gray out). So cool!

https://www.facebook.com/woodfordthorou ... 165648674/

Since the spotting appeared after she was born, I wonder if this is a case of vitiligo? I recently read an interesting article about a cat with vitiligo and recalled this horse.

[Mylute]

Youngster by I'm All the Talk is blonde.

https://www.facebook.com/32013385135648 ... 858514801/

[Ridan_Remembered]

Youngster by I'm All the Talk is blonde.

She's quite pretty and seems very correct. I definitely do not know how to judge a really good walk from just an ok one, but that filly does seem to move very fluidly.

[lurkey mclurker]

Queen's Mallacoota (JPN - Gold Allure), photos via @kissamura