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Ritsika · Jan 23, 2016 5:43 PM

I recently bred my Vault of Stars stallion with a few smokey black mares and the combination shocked me. These are the two foals that had me scratching my head and full of curiosity.

I had the second one color tested because the Breeders Club wasn't giving me all the disclosure I wanted. I knew she couldn't be silver but that was the first thing that came to my mind. She turned out to be Smokey Grullo Splash Tobiano Appaloosa ( Ee aa CCcr dD gg Ff SstyS PP KittoKit SpsSps LlpL ECA3P+ECA3P+ WF: Medium )

I decided to scan the horse community for similar cases and found quite a few:

Another smokey grullo appaloosa

A smokey black appaloosa

A smokey black appaloosa

They range from the milk chocolate to coffee to sepia. Compared to non-LP smokey black foals - who are all shades of black - with variations of sooty:

Smokey Black

Smokey Black sooty+

Smokey Grullo sooty+

Am I safe to assume that the LP gene expressed with heterozygous cream on a black base is what makes the color turn brown-ish? If so, why does this occur? If not, what is making the foals less black and more brown?

Cheers · Jan 23, 2016 6:07 PM

The range of colors is amazing. Quite a few of my silver blacks this season are noticeably chocolatey. Certainly I know that I can't visually pick the difference between black and smokey black, but I can usually see the difference between smokey Grullo and plain Grullo, especially if I look at a bunch one after another, like when I'm going through a pasture of foals.

RoseFlute · Jan 23, 2016 6:11 PM

It looks like the ones you have here that are much lighter than the others have Dun, which will dilute on black a lot more than cream will. :)

Salvistar · Jan 23, 2016 8:40 PM

I do think your LP smokey grullo looks more brown tinted than the normal grullo gray. I don't see anything else it could be other than the LP.

Abbey Road · Jan 24, 2016 9:54 AM

Thanks for posting this, very interesting! It seems like Lp does interesting things with cream, my buckskins are odd colors too.

Ritsika · Jan 24, 2016 3:52 PM

@Cheers, the color range is amazing!

@RoseFlute, correct. The colt is not a dun and he is the dark coffee color - almost the color of a non-LP grullo. Whereas the filly is a grullo and definitely more of the sepia color which is much lighter than the non-sooty grullos.

@Salvistar and Abbey Road, I'm encouraged that you both agree that LP appears to be the gene that is correlated to this chocolate-tinting.

I will keep investigating and post other horses here as I go along. Thanks for joining the discussion everyone! :)

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