Similar question about chrome…mare is out of a solid bay mare by a bay stallion with 4 high whites and blaze. She is bay with a roan hind sock and a big star…being bred to a black stallion with a white blaze and 4 white socks. I’d love a white leg or two and an interesting face marking. I’ll be thrilled with healthy, just purely for fun/conversation…
“Chrome” comes from 1 or more of the several overo/pinto patterns out there - sabino, splash, frame, dominant white.
It has the added fun factor of tending to be suppressed by black-based colors, and allowed more expression on red-based colors. When you see a black (based) horse with lots of white, you stand a better chance of having offspring have white because the odds are the black-based horse has “more” in terms of white-producing genetics to overcome the tendency for black to suppress its expression.
Too add to that, some horses are very good at suppressing white markings. Sometimes a prepotent stallion can overcome that in a mare, sometimes not.
Who’s the stallion in this case? Have you seen many of his foals? If he has a lot of foals with markings, out of relatively unmarked mares, then the odds are well in your favor of getting the same.
[QUOTE=gotrocks;6173516]
Similar question about chrome…mare is out of a solid bay mare by a bay stallion with 4 high whites and blaze. She is bay with a roan hind sock and a big star…being bred to a black stallion with a white blaze and 4 white socks. I’d love a white leg or two and an interesting face marking. I’ll be thrilled with healthy, just purely for fun/conversation…[/QUOTE]
White markings can be extremely difficult to predict BUT since the stallion is black with 4 whites, you have a pretty good chance of getting some of that. Black tends to “mask” white markings more than chestnut does, so a black horse with lots of white usually has pretty strong genes for passing it on. I have bred 2 mares that had just a small star and got 2 very interesting face markings. On the other hand, my chestnut mare that has 4 socks, a large blaze (that goes around one nostril and down to her lip) gave me a baby with a star, snip, and no white on her legs (daddy is known as a bit of a bling killer, though- despite the fact that he has a sock and stripe)
Oops, posting at the same time…so, what JB said!
LOL, and what you said!
Chances of white markings are very good…
But not a guarantee. Ask all the draft breeders of Shires and Clydes lol. Just because you breed 2 horses with white legs for generations, doesn’t mean you won’t end up with the dreaded foal with only 2 or 3 white legs. (I don’t know why it matters, but it seems in those breeds… it really really matters and the price you can get for the foals drops DRASTICALLY when they don’t have 4 whites)
For what it’s worth, UC Davis does DNA color gene testing. Cost was $40. I now know that from my 4 black mares, one will never produce a chestnut no matter who I breed her to.
