This message is from: Karen Keith <kkke...@hotmail.com>
Additionally, the points on a bay horse are black, not brown. The agouti gene deals with the distribution of black, not brown, to the points (mane, tail, lower legs, tips of ears). Occasionally you will find a bay horse that has a very pale coat to the point where you might wonder if it's a bay or buckskin. Sometimes it's due to a sunburned coat, sometimes it's just a light shade of bay and sometimes it's a bit of both. But it's certainly not the norm. Shame on Jeopardy for not getting it right. The bay horse body color has a wide range of shades ranging from a horse that looks nearly black to the more common shades of red-browns and oranges and even an occasional tan. This is why, in my opinion, we have the different shades of brown dun in our Fjordies. Our brown duns are bays first, but the dun gene dilutes whatever shade of bay is present. Similarly, chestnut horses come in a wide range of shades and even point colors, and when the dun gene is present, you get a range of red dun shades as well. And just to stir things up on a related topic. My pet peeve is seeing references to the "rare red dun gene, or grey dun gene, or white dun gene, or yellow dun gene. There's is no such thing. The dun gene is the same gene in each case (well, the white dun and yellow dun have an additional and separate dilute in play as well). The dun gene is simply diluting the base color of the horse. Brown dun = bay+dun. Red dun = chestnut+dun. Grey dun =black+dun. White dun = bay+dun+creme. Yellow dun = chestnut+dun+creme. (The creme gene is a dilute which creates palominos and buckskins in "ordinary" breeds. Palomino = chestnut+creme. Buckskin = bay+creme. So technically our white duns are buckskin duns, and our yellow duns are palomino duns.) The Fjord colors other than brown dun are only rare because of human selection. Karen, No. VA Sent from my iPad On Mar 8, 2013, at 10:37 AM, "Kay Van Natta" <jadeb...@aol.com> wrote: > This message is from: Kay Van Natta <jadeb...@aol.com> > > > Dun or buckskin in my opinion too! Tan as a body color takes it out of > the bay family...also IMO. Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw FH_L Shirts: http://tinyurl.com/8yky94l
