breeding theories

[Jazette]

No clue

I have breed a gray mare to a chestnut and ended up with a dark bay. Breed the same gray mare to a son on Cozzene (Running Stag - gray) and ended up with a dark bay with about 100 white hairs on her nose. Maybe it is the gender ... both foals were fillies.

Personally, I love a Hyperion mare!

[Jazette]

I blew this ...

I wanted to post a reply to "haarsay theories". Technology! lol

[journeyman]

The grey mare carries a recessive bay gene. When you bred her to a chestnut horse, the bay gene combined with the chestnut gene to produce another bay.

When your grey mare was bred to Running Stag and produced a bay foal, that means that Running Stag carries either a recessive bay or chestnut gene.

Just remember-grey is dominant over all the other colors. Bay is dominant over Chestnut. Finally, any chestnut horse carries only chestnut genes

[xfactor fan]

Mostly right.

There are two sets of basic color genes, three if you count Gray.

Base coat Red, or Black, Red is recessive to black

Agouti (Bay) This only works on Black horses, and works by pushing the black color to the edges of the horse--mane, tail and legs. Agouti has no effect at all on a red based horse, but they carry the gene.

Gray trumps all the basic colors and progressively burns out the color producing cells--they super produce for a while, then stop producing any color at all giving the appearance of a gray or white horse.

[griff]

xfactor fan

My experience is gray has black skin while white has pink skin; i.e., they are not the same.

griff