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| Hot Topic of the Month - What Colour is My Horse? |
The question and answer featured in our hot topic of the month is always one of our most commonly asked, practical questions.
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Question:
I raise Appaloosas, and one of the most challenging aspects of this is trying to figure out the basecoat color of a foal when I go to register it. Many of the foals we raise are leopards and fewspots with very little base coat showing, so it can be terribly confusing. Since I don’t want to DNA test for coat colour with every horse I produce, are there some guidelines you can give me for getting the base colour right when I register them? As an example, I’ve attached a picture of one of my “mystery foals” that I can’t figure out – is this fewspot black or bay?
Fig. 1: Fewspot foal in late summer, after shedding of foal coat.
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Answer
Except in rare instances where literally no pigmented areas can be seen on the horse you are looking at, you can usually apply a coat colour identification method based on visual clues and a basic knowledge of coat colour genetics. Just keep in mind that identification of coat colour by this method is not as reliable as DNA testing – from time to time you will run up against cases where you will need to do this.
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Created on 02/09/2007 02:01 PM by adm1n
Updated on 02/21/2009 05:37 PM by PetraDavidson
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