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The past few days I've been having fun running a contest on who can be the best at looking at a foal, and their parents genetic test results and looking at seeing if we can figure out their color. I've worked out a few kinks in my grading, so thought I would write the rules down here, and leave a basic introduction here. For more in depth practice I find its easier just to participate in the competition, then read how the winner got the answer. (Although I haven't had anyone get them all 100% right yet).



Linked above (If I did it right) is a punnet square. Both parents are Aa Aa, so using a method like the box above, we can take the possible alleles (side for sire, top for dam) then record the possibilities in a list. When we look at the foal we can tell if it's black, or bay. If the horse is black, then there is only one possible combination aa. Which is only a 1/4th chance, but if we know that the foal is black by looking visually we have a fairly sure guess. If the horse is bay, then it could be AA Aa or aA. But now at least there is a 1 in 3 chance of getting it completely right instead of 1 in 4. But.... of course... it can't really be that simple....

Let's talk about red, and black based.





If a horse is ee then they can only be variations of red based (chestnut, palomino, liver chestnut, gold champagne etc. ) Regardless of whether they are Aa, AA or aA. So if they horse is red based then its back to a pure guessing game on those alleles.

If a horse is black based (Ee EE eE) then they can be brown, bay, black, wild bay, and the many, many other variations there of.

There's the basics (and please feel free to correct me on my mistakes), but there are many, many genes on this game and their unique rules of interaction, so the best way to learn is by practice! I'll list the basic rules of how I score, then I'll keep links here on whatever the newest competition is. As a bonus to practicing genes I try to sell the highest PTed most unique foal I have. I try really hard to pick foals that are at least 11.5PT, and a couple times I even managed to get a 12PT. I've also had a few generous donations.

Basically, for every missed allele, I take -1 points. Since a lot of players normally have are fairly close on their answers I decided to break it up even more, so order counts as well. So if the "correct" is Aa then aA, or AA+ are all minus 1. aA+, and AtA+ are both -2. I would err on the side of putting all genes down, even if they are recessive and don't show. If they are there on the horse, but you don't have it in your answer, then its minus two. If the horse is het. for it, and still show both recessive then its only -1. The first tiebreaker is white factor. The second tiebreaker is whomever posted first. Although for scoring I am only looking at the genetics, please do write down the word name of the color.

I'm going to go start up the next competition! http://hj2.huntandjump.com/forum/discussion/65609/genetic-contest-starting-sunday-night

Answers should look something like this.


EE aa CprlC dd gg FF SstySsty pp saSa WF: Extensive