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Topic: To Gray or Not To Gray (Read 3581 times)
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helloagain
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I had a chestnut filly from a gray (Schonfeld) stallion-gray TB mare. She started getting a few flecks of gray in her coat at about 6 or 7 months of age. After that first winter when she shed out, there was no doubt that she was a gray. Now at almost 4 she is the most beautiful rose gray.
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Joy
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The dam's side means nothing since gray is dominant. If she isn't gray, she didn't get it and can't pass it on. That leaves only a 50% chance of gray--unless the stallion is heterozygous for gray, in which case you have a 100% chance. 
What I've seen is that usually the first indication is around the eyes, and that can appear as early as the first few days. It really depends on the horse. Some gray much faster than others.
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Karen P.
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I had a chestnut filly out of a black mare by a grey stallion (Stiletto) and she did not have the tell tale rings around her eyes and has stayed chestnut. His foals seem to grey early if they are going to and now at 4 I think I have a true red-head on my hands. Although is more liver than true red, with a darker mane and tail.
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Jennifer
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If you get a chestnut baby, look at the skin at the eye lids where the eye lashes are. If the skin is sort of a chestnut color, the baby will not gray. This only works for chestnuts.
Many people first see gray hairs around the eyes.
I agree that if mom was not gray, there's no graying gene to pass on to the foal from her. The graying gene is not a color like bay or chestnut. It will cause any base color (like bay or chestnut) to turn gray whenever it is present. Its like a light switch that's either on or off...and if a graying gene is present it is on. A parent horse can be heterzygous (one graying gene and one non-graying gene) or homozygous (two graying genes). In either case this parent horse will be a gray.
Wheter or not your foal will be gray will depend on whether your foal's father was hetero- or homozygous for gray. The chances of gray would be 50% and 100%, respectively.
Some registries record colors like "chestnut (may turn gray)".
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Jennifer
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Yup! Easy to do...I cheated and looked it up!
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Ironhorse Farm
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Gray is dominant so if a parent is gray, you have a 50/50 chance of gray (unless homoz). If dam is not gray, any gray will not come from her. Look for goggles around the eye at birth. Racoon eyes they call it but it may be very minimal. If the lashes are gray, you have a gray.
Attached is a gray. Out of my gray mare by Tron.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Jennifer
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I knew Tron! Another of those "small world" items. I boarded at Moonraker for many years before I moved to Maryland about 5 years ago.
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fuzzy
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The stallion has probably bred a few gray mares, which would account for the 70% grey in the babies. Statistically, the more babies there are, the closer to 50% he should be with non-grey mares.
Also, neither of my grays had "coon eyes" until they shed the baby fluff. Both showed graying in a matter of weeks in the base of the mane hairs.
The foal I've got coming has a 50% chance of being gray (statistically), but since I want a chestnut filly (again), my mare is probably cooking another gray colt. She's that way! 
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Karen P.
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Congrats! Sounds like a gray to me. Do you have pictures? I bet you need a nap though..
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Karen P.
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He's adorable and looks like a future gray to me! Hope thats what you want. I have one in my herd and frankly find her a bit hard to keep clean  His momma looks like she likes her new role. Congrats!
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Lucky Mistake
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I did want a gray. Not that color has anything to do with athleticism, but this colt's sire happens to be a dead ringer for my favorite school horse at the stable where I first started with riding lessons as a kid. I didn't pick the stallion because he looked like that one, of course, but I sure noticed it, and I was kind of hoping the foal would take after his dad for that reason.
That old school horse, Renar, was one of those unsung heroes around the horse world. Wouldn't have ever been on the A circuit or in the Olympics, but he was special. He took training kids as his mission in life, and he especially liked me. He was my first experience in "chemistry," when a horse and rider just click. The first horse I ever cantered on, the first horse I ever jumped on. The first horse I ever fell off, and he stopped and came back to make sure I was okay. I won my first blue ribbon on him at a small hunter-jumper schooling show, and I'll never forget that day. I had had surgery on my shoulder the day before to excise a malignant tumor that went deeply into the muscle, right on the back where the arm ties into the torso, and I had more stitches than I could count. It hurt to breathe, even. Like any horse crazy kid, I wanted to ride anyway. I had to mount from the wrong side, with my mom and my trainer boosting me up, because I couldn't pick up that left arm to grab the saddle. It was bad enough from the right. Renar stood like a rock for this whole couple of minute procedure. Once up, I stayed in the saddle for three hours, through all my classes, because I was afraid if I got off, I'd never make it back up. I could barely use the reins, although boy was I sitting up straight. But the horse was wonderful. All I had to do that day was to think something, and he did it. He knew. We won an over fences class, second in another, and won on the flat. It was one of my favorite riding days to remember, not because of my first blue, but because of his generosity and the incredible link between us that day. "Perfect harmony," the judge wrote on her card. Yes. As a gift, from him.
I dreamed for years of looking up that horse and buying him, just to give him a happy retirement. When I had enough extra, I did track him down through two subsequent owners. He had died of colic about six months prior. He did, at least, have a good last few years of retirement. But ever since him, I have had a particular fondness for grays, especially ones who look like he did.
But he was hard to groom, I'll admit.
Maybe Toccata will look like Renar. The sire is the nearest identical horse I have ever seen.
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"Then we began to ride. My soul smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll freshening and fluttering in the wind." Robert Browning
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Karen P.
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That is such a great story! There are so many "good soldier" horses that take horse crazy kids and teach them the ropes. God Bless them all. Good for you too that you perservered that day at the show, you must have been sore for days. But, like all kids the ribbons took some of the pain away!
Good luck with your young man. I have to say raising a foal has been the most gratifying to my horse experiences so far.
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