Equine Color Conspiracy Theory!

(Bay Roan)

Okay, so it's not a conspiracy theory but I do wonder what some people are thinking when they fill out the registration papers of their foal. Or the info in a sales ad....

(I say this is a bay roan but have listed her as "questionable")

If it is one thing I've learned through years of horsey window shopping and through my obsessive compulsive need to research pedigrees and bloodlines (like they are my own person crossword puzzles) it is that one should never assume that the registered color of a horse is accurate.

(Questionable)

Determining the true color of a foal can be confusing at the best of times and so very often horses are registered inaccurately.

(Bay Roan)

I understand that. I also understand that some horses are really difficult to classify...

(TRUE blue roan)

I've mentioned before how often I see horses that are listed for sale as some color that they are not.... Blue Roans, grullas or Blacks that are really gray, Palominos that are sorrel with (barely) flaxen mane and tail, buckskins that are dun, duns that are buckskins and duns/buckskins that are simply bay. Not to mention the black or brown (dark bay) issue....or bay roan/blue roan! I don't mean to come across as a know it all...sometimes I cant determine what color a horse is or have mistaken one for another, especially when it comes to paints.

But in my mind some should be simple. And yet are still mistaken.

(Gray)

And then there is the registration end of things.... I imagine that with the number of horses that AQHA has to process in a year they can hardly take a hard look at every paper that comes across their desk...but I do wonder how it is that people get away with registering a horse as buckskin out of two sorrel parents. I've seen it. Far more often than you might think.

For some there is a simple explanation- a sooty buckskin that was registered as a bay goes on to produce a palomino foal... that kind of thing.

(Bay Roan)

Whenever I research the pedigree of a horse I like to go back three generations to make sure the colors match up to the real color of a horse.

(Bay Roan)

Just this evening I found a nice black looking mare for sale. Upon further research I discovered that her dam is actually a perlino (there was a picture to prove it.) and as such this mare MUST be a smokey black (must care the creme gene). Imagine someones shock had they bought that mare and bred her to a stud with a creme gene (palomino or buckskin) and unknowingly produced a cremello/perlino!

When AQHA or APHA processed her papers, did they not see that one of her parents was a perlino and therefore it would be pertinant information to have her registered as.... BUT WAIT!! AQHA does not classify a horse specifically as smokey black (black horse with the creme gene), nor a dunalino (horse with dun and creme gene)... You'd think that noting the cream gene on a horses papers would be fairly important... but apparently not!

Now it's sure a good thing that those AQHA papers determine if a horse is chestnut or sorrel (genetically the same) or bay or brown (also the same). *note the sarcasm*

(Gray)

The color issuereally isnt important in the long run! A good horse is a good horse, no matter what the color! And dispite the old wise tales the color of a horse says little about it's health.

But the truth is that the color of a horse can effect it's value.

And so I wonder at the motive behind the results of a little experiment I ran this evening...

I entered a dreamhorse search for a:

3 year old or over, BLUE ROAN AQHA or APHA horse.

This yielded 151 results.

The first page of the results showed 30 horses.

Of those 30 horses:

Only 10 appear to be TRUE BLUE roans. A true blue roan is a black horse with a roan gene. The do not have brown noses or a rose hue to their body. They have black legs and black faces.

10 appear to be BAY roans. A bay roan is a bay horse with a roan gene. These horses have black legs, a brown hue to their body and usually dark heads with brown noses.

4 appear to be GRAY. A blue roan does not have roaning on his face, especially not between the eyes (excluding a star or blaze.)

6 appear questionable...the pictures do not show enough to tell one way or the other but I highly suspect that they are not true Blue Roans.

(Gray)

All of the pictures in this post are from the first 30 of my search results.

More on this coming up next!