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ColorGoodStables · May 16, 2018 1:27 AM

I wanted to have a bit of a discussion about genetically incorrect names such as a blue taffy (brown roan?) And coyote dun (bay dun pangere?)

I've always found it interesting that people name certain phenotypes different things and thought it's be fun to talk about then and to match common phenotype names with hj examples. Names like over, chocolate/blue taffy, flame mane, ect

best friend · May 16, 2018 1:35 AM

Never heard any of these.

ColorGoodStables · May 16, 2018 1:38 AM

I hear them a lot in the art community. Any time I see odd names like that I always have to look them up. Typically it's just a color that isn't as easy to identify like a basic chestnut or bay.

Cheers · May 16, 2018 1:40 AM

I’ve heard of taffy before in reference to silver. It’s the only one I’m familiar with.

I love coloquialisms like “strawberry roan” for red roan. But some are just downright strange...

ColorGoodStables · May 16, 2018 1:44 AM

@cheers I've heard chocolate t affy used when talking about silvers. And agreed! A lot of people think that roan only comes in "strawberry" and "blue." I know that before I got into genetics I had no idea how color genetics worked. A "flame mane" is actually a black flaxen chestnut. It's interesting

Puissance · May 16, 2018 1:46 AM

The game does have a couple of holdovers like Blue Roan and Grullo (and that used to be Grulla for female, Grullo for males, nowadays they're all Grullo.). But as research progresses and testing becomes more available, many of the old color names have fallen out of favor.
I remember when Blue Roan meant a black with roan, Red roan was a bay roan, and Strawberry roan was a chestnut roan. We had silver dapple. And half the silver dapples were also chocolate palominos, which could be silver black or bay, flaxen liver, or actual chocolate pals. Skewbald and Piebald, Tovero, Barlink and Claybank. Nobody uses dunskin anymore. Or Mealy. I actually sort of miss Mealy.
Taffy was never in common use in my area.
And then there was the sorrel vs chestnut drama. Some insisted the difference was shade, some the color of mane and tail. One of my trainers would harrumph and say if it had a western saddle it was sorrel, english it was chestnut.
This thread right here is the first time I've ever seen the term 'flame mane'.

best friend · May 16, 2018 2:14 AM

I heard of strawberry roan growing up.

AshaWindsong · May 16, 2018 2:26 AM

I have heard strawberry roan and piebald before

Cheers · May 16, 2018 2:34 AM

I remember having to learn piebald and skewbald for Pony Club. I think it was bicolored vs tricolored? So black or red paint (Tobiano?) vs bay/buckskin? I honestly don’t remember though.

Puissance · May 16, 2018 2:39 AM

It was black pinto = piebald vs bay or buckskin pinto = skewbald, at least in my area.

Cheers · May 16, 2018 3:07 AM

That sounds right. This was 20 years ago, so it’s a little fuzzy!

kintara · May 16, 2018 3:31 AM

Taffy is usually silver, never heard of a blue taffy though! Because of silvers having the lighter manes and tails, sometimes it is used for anything with a light mane and tail

RipshinCreekFarm · May 16, 2018 3:32 AM

I remember apricot dun was used a lot once upon a time for a light red dun. Hackberry for a dark brown/black horse with mealy and bloodstone for a liver horse with a flaxen mane used to be common, but I only heard it used in my area, and I haven't heard anyone use those terms in years.

kintara · May 16, 2018 3:48 AM

I've heard of apricot dun before, piebald and skewbald are still very well used where I am, and Taffy!

DevilsParadise · May 16, 2018 4:09 AM

Up here any red horse is sorrel. Coyote dun is usually used in reference to the wild horses (usually bay dun from the pics I've seen). Piebald was any horse with a full white face. Medicine hat was white head and face with colored ears.

Haltanny · May 16, 2018 4:49 AM

The silver gene is generally referred to as taffy in Australia. I think blue taffy would be a particular shade of black silver?

Barlink is the name of a line of stock horses in which a "new" dilution was discovered. "Barlink factor" was eventually discovered to be Pearl when it was mapped.

I'd like to learn more about "mushroom" horses. Is it really a new gene? Or just misidentified colors? It look it up every now and then to see if I can find anything new.

HunterUnderSaddleGirl · May 16, 2018 4:58 AM

What’s seal brown? That’s the name my teacher uses, but I’ve always said dark bay. Only 80% sure were even talking about the same thing

Although my horse in real life is about as dark bay as you can get. (So double DP and sooty?) I don’t think I’ve seen a horse quite like her on here though. But there’s a mare at school who is just dark bay.... or is she... now I’ve been “thinking out loud”
Wonder if she’s brown....

Puissance · May 16, 2018 5:04 AM

When I was learning horse lingo, seal was a horse that looked black but had a faintly paler brownish muzzle. In-game, like a 'black liver' with pangare. Real life, I suspect they were super dark bay, brown, or livers, with a few lightly sunburned blacks thrown in for good measure.

HunterUnderSaddleGirl · May 16, 2018 5:11 AM

That kinda sounds like the closest to my mare. I only have one picture of her and you can’t really see it. Also wish I had a picture of the school horse. Maybe the school horse has 3 darkening genes and my horse (Lexi) has 4.

kintara · May 16, 2018 6:57 AM

I think Mushroom is real, although they haven't identified the gene yet, but it's unusual because it turns reds into a slate greyish colour, they look a little like silver blacks, except they are red based. Only been found in UK shetlands as far as I know. You seem to need a gene from both parents for it to express

Ammit · May 16, 2018 10:00 AM

We won't be changing away from blue roan and red roan as these are still in incredibly high use.

RenieRfarms · May 16, 2018 2:08 PM

strawberry roan, and flaxen. Thats what my horse gets called alot :p

ColorGoodStables · May 16, 2018 7:36 PM

@Haltanny @kintara I've heard of the mushrooms ponies! They are really cute. To me they look like silver grills but like you said, has something to do with a red base. It'll be interesting to see what causes it. I've never heard of the barlink horses but I'll look them up.

@HunterUnderSaddleGirl I believe seal/mule brown is typically a brown horse with pangere. Sooty bay doesn't usually have the darkness of brown. Maybe if they have dp and sooty they could.
I think @Puissance is correct. A lot of them are sooty dp bays, browns and livers as well as sunburnt black and maybe a few brown buckskins.

@RenieRFarms probably a flaxen red roan then? Sounds pretty. That's one of my favorite colors.
My cousin had a baby roan mare who grey out. A lot of people used to call her a "rose" grey. It was cool to see.

@Ammit I didn't expect it to be changed, that's be kinda silly to do. It's be like changing grullo to black dun. I'm just glad we don't call all of the doffernt "spotted" horses overo/tovero/skewbald/Piebald that'd rough :))

HunterUnderSaddleGirl · May 16, 2018 7:51 PM

@ColorGoodStables
Never heard of mule brown before? Is there like 5 different ways to say the same thing? lol. I think you're right though. I'll have to look into it more.

ConfluenceFarms · May 16, 2018 10:48 PM

We had a lot of Isabella, arguments about Sorrel vs Chesnut, and of course the ever popular "I'm gonna go ride the yella mare".

Puissance · May 16, 2018 10:58 PM

Isabella! I haven't heard that outside of dogs in ages. I forget it was used for horses for a while.
I used to ride with a girl who was ... um... 'sturdily built' One of her horses was a Belgian cross. Someone came in looking for her one day and the barn manager said "Go down that fenceline to the second gate, she's the big blond girl on the big blond horse." The same stable had a lesson pony who was named Black Pony. They'd given up.

levesel2 · May 17, 2018 1:51 AM

The one that gets me is chocolate palomino... they are either genetically Silver Black, liver chestnut with Flaxen, or Sooty Palomino...Chocolate isn’t a genetic color lol just a descriptive term. And yes I know silver black isn’t red based but chocolate palomino does get applied to them

Cheers · May 17, 2018 1:58 AM

I love that in game it’s sometimes difficult to tell the difference between chocolate Palomino and silver black (without the color test of course). They can look startlingly similar in game.

Ammit · May 17, 2018 9:34 AM

I love that the game has no special logic to make them look similar. I just manipulate the pigment the same way it is real life and it works out that way all on it's own.

HTRanch · May 17, 2018 3:32 PM

I was always taught that strawberry roan referred to chestnut based roans and that red roan referred to bay based roans. I have also heard "purple roan" in reference to sooty bay based roans. I've heard "zebra dun" for bay based duns which strikes me as funny because all duns can have pronounced barring on the legs...

As for the chesnut/sorrel debate, I've noticed it's slightly location based. When I lived in the southern United States I only ever heard or used sorrel, but now I live up north and have only ever heard chestnut.

HunterUnderSaddleGirl · May 17, 2018 3:53 PM

I think sorrel is a more rich color while chestnut is a more blah color. (At least that's what I do, never seen anyone else do it). But I think it's largely a location/discipline/breed based thing. Like my mare Cherrie. She was a very pretty sorrel. Very rich colored. Like a cherry. I called her Sorrel. She had a flaxen mane and tail as well.

HTRanch · May 17, 2018 4:01 PM

That's kinda funny HUSG because I'd always thought the exact opposite! I have two chestnuts, one cherry red, the other more like your basic bright chestnut on HJ2. Neither are flaxen and both have very dark tails so I would call both chestnut because I think of sorrels being flaxen and chestnuts having dark manes and tails.

That said, we used to have a grade haflinger who was pangere chestnut with a yellow-blonde mane and a nearly black tail... so neither sorrel nor chestnut by that definition. Would have loved to know what was going on there genetically.

PaintsStables · May 18, 2018 4:17 PM

I am really old. I also remember when Grulla/o were just called Mouse colored horses. I remember all the other controversies between Chestnut and Sorrel. My aunt had a double registered Palomino/Quarter Horse line. 'Legs Blanton' was her top stallion. He was from 'Lucky Blanton' lines. Now that was a very old AQHA line. He also can be traced back to 'Three Bars.' In the 'All Breed Query' most of the Thoroughbreds in there are registered as chestnut, and the Quarter Horses are called sorrel. But, all the chestnuts are dark colored, even as dark as liver chestnuts. The horses that are lighter are registered as sorrels. Her Palominos were Golden, Cream, and Chocolate.

The mare, 'Hood River Breeze', in my photo above, is a distant daughter of 'Barlink' Tuff Gold cropout. Her pedigree also goes back to Summer Breeze, as well as 'Top Deck' and 'Three Bars'. This thread brings back memories of very old names and color names. This is fun!

BlueValley · May 18, 2018 6:33 PM

When I purchased my bay roan filly, the lady I bought her from called her a "red roan with black mane and tail" on the bill of sale.

She's very clearly a bay, black points with a bright red body.

I did not know that some went in the order of blue, red and strawberry for black, bay and red roans; so I suppose I understand why she wrote it down the way she did.

I just thought she might not know how to identify the difference between bay and red roans, lol.

Windigo · May 18, 2018 8:08 PM

Im from the south, growing up we raised alot of quarter horses. I remember asking my dad what was the difference between chestnut and sorrel when I was little. His explanation: not much, chestnuts are darker with a darker tail and mane. Chestnut is usually used(in our area) on TBs, sorrel on QHs. We had a qh mare that was my main ride and her papers said chestnut. Only thing I can think is that because she was darker and her mane and tail, while still red were darker. I think every single other qh we had, if red, no matter the color, was registered sorrel. Both are right, just depends on where you're from I suppose.

Cheers · May 18, 2018 9:51 PM

I’m also from the south and grew up riding English (hunters/eventing/Pony Club). We called them chestnuts, most Western discipline riders seemed to call the exact same colored horse sorrel. Flaxen seemed more common in the Western circles than non flaxen, though lots of us rode QH or QH mixes in both disciplines, especially at the lower levels.

Cheers · May 18, 2018 9:53 PM

I should say that was back in what I desperately hope were “the bad old days” when riding anything remotely exotic in the hunter ring automatically dropped your placing by at least 2 places. Even too much chrome could get you knocked down, much less something like a Palomino or a paint! The horror!

pfrsue · May 19, 2018 1:39 AM

@Cheers, I grew up riding English in the mid-Atlantic area in those same "bad old days". Since my first horse was a rat-tailed snowflake Appaloosa, you can imagine how many stares we got at horse shows. I even had people ask me if I knew my horse's tail was missing! I wasn't familiar with the word sorrel though until I met a guy who trained western pleasure horses.

NorthernStars · May 19, 2018 7:06 AM

On the mushroom note, I'm pretty sure they have found the gene now as they have been researching it for a while now.
https://pag.confex.com/pag/xxvi/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/31505
It's also becoming a much more common colour as there are a lot of breeders now selectively breeding for it.
Here are some links to some mushroom Shetland.
http://www.halstockshetlands.co.uk/category/mushroom-ponies/
http://www.shadyacres.dk/Eng Waldo Billeder.html
http://www.shadyacres.dk/Eng Silver Sun Billeder.html
http://www.shadyacres.dk/Eng River Billeder.html
As for wrong colours the breed is terrible for it as the stud book is very set in their ways.

Ammit · May 19, 2018 9:51 AM

This is brand new! Thanks so much for sharing!

HTRanch · May 19, 2018 10:03 AM

Oooh exciting NorthernStars! To me mushroom looks very similar to silver, can someone who knows more please explain it to me?

NorthernStars · May 19, 2018 1:27 PM

@HTRanch mushroom is a recessive gene that works purely on chestnut base shetlands, they don't know how it is changing the colour though as it is such a unique gene, there are some people that think it acts on bays and blacks too as there are some Shetland ponies that are odd shades that have tested as just normal colours but that is just conjecture on their part so far.
I think it must be a relatively new mutation as I haven't seen it in Australia which have exported many ponies recently, though they may just get registered as silver there. And I've never seen any American Shetland ponies, miniature horses or fellabellas with it which have all got Shetland pony origins.
Also silver is not found in Shetland ponies in the UK, there are a couple of German lines that are registered in European countries as purebred but cannot be registered in the UK because the German stud book messed up when they stopped registering part breads and registered a few as purebred, but their lines to fully trace back to British ponies so they aren't allowed into the stud book, and that's the same that I've found with Australian silver Shetlands that their lines don't trace back.
It's a shame as I love the colour and my friend breeds some stunning silver ponies in Denmark but I show ponies so they need to be registered in this country.

Sorry for the long waffling post.

NorthernStars · May 19, 2018 1:39 PM

No problem Ammit, I might be cheeky when weekend wishes opens again and Adolf for it.

Lallyhop · May 19, 2018 2:36 PM

Yes! New genes are always cool :D

Ammit · May 19, 2018 2:46 PM

Paper makes me suspicious this might be a TYR mutation. TYRP1 is brown in many species but notably not horses.

BurntHillManor · May 19, 2018 4:04 PM

From what I remember about seal brown is they have the same coloration almost as a sea lion. That rich brown with usually a lot of chrome. Chrome I believe is just another word for silver, but I'm not quite sure. Basically it's any horse that has a natural shine to its coat.

I was reading on the white horse site that many of the white factors in Thoroughbreds are actually unique to the breed. It's so interesting to see stuff like that. I'm currently starting my fist Bio class and we get to go into genetics at the end of the semester. I'm really looking forward to it.

RobbinsRoost · May 20, 2018 2:15 AM

Painting model horses I use to have books on horse colors...I used mostly as reference, not so much for genetic information, but what I kinda remember is sorrel had lighter legs and chestnuts had darker or same as body colored legs. One book broke chestnuts into three groups with Spanish names. I don't remember how they are spelled....chestnut alazan, chestnut tostado, and chestnut ruano (hope they're close). Alazan was mane and tail that was lighter, tostado; darker and ruano; same.
Chrome refers to the white on the legs and face.

Puissance · May 20, 2018 2:54 AM

Chrome in my experience has always referred to flashy white markings. More often especially large 'regular' markings, white "trim", not so much about body white, but I've heard it used talking about pintos too.

JustaSaddletramp · May 20, 2018 5:25 AM

The way I understand it, a horse with lots of chrome is one with high whites and a full blaze or more, like this colt:

RedDee 2B A Knight 3G BL

And for what it's worth, in northeast Texas where I was when I had horses, 'sorrel' was a chestnut with a lighter mane and tail, though a dark palomino would do as a sorrel in a pinch. lol Any other chestnut was usually just called 'red' unless you were talking to the one big Arab breeder, then they were called 'expensive'. His stud was a son of Tammen and he made sure everyone knew it. :P

Roans were all red or blue, a lot of greys were sold as roans, and anything with white over the knee or hock or with a bald face was a Paint unless it was an appy. Duns were more popular than buckskins, though most didn't know the difference and their 'nice dun' was often really a buckskin or vice versa. One Quarter breeder in particular was bad about registering her buckskin and even some bay foals as duns, which led to lots of fun problems when DNA testing started. Her stock was usually awesome at cutting, reining, or working cowhorse classes, but I'm pretty sure she never owned even one dun. :))

HTRanch · May 20, 2018 5:50 AM

I used to ride an Appaloosa named Rose. When she came to the barn as a 2 year old she was registered solid black. We called her brown (she most likely had bronzing of some sort going on). When she was 4 the tiny white dots she had blossomed into classic snowflake spots, so we called her gray. Then she started to develop varnish roaning, so her new owner calls her snowflake... might as well name her "Chameleon" at this point poor dear!

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