Yes. Not sure what “up to 5 years later” means, but full body flea bites can happen while still fairly young, or not until older.
I have a grey and white pinto. I got him when he was about 10-12 years old. He was totally white on his body and mane with a light grey streak in his tail. He is now about 24. He has gotten some flea bitten spots over the years but not a lot. His flea bites are only only the grey spots (dark skin) not the white (pink skin) parts of his body.
Yes, absolutely. I have one that did just that
I also have a gray, now 12, who is still lightly dappled (with no sign of becoming flea bitten.)
So far, I have watched 5-6 horses go through the graying process and it’s amazing how individual it is.
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As the UK horse herd has different genetics to that of the US, it can be misleading to make generalised statements. So I will.
White foals are exceptionally rare. They produce white horses. The overwhelming majority of grey horses are born dark and lighten with age. That is why they are called grey rather than white.
The majority of grey horses gain whiter coats as they age. They frequently become a solid milk white over time but do sometimes retain slightly darker points and/or manes and tails. Those lovely dark grey dapples rarely stay, sadly. Fleabitten grey - small flecks of colour within the white coat - is a fairly unusual shade of grey and it is not the automatic colour of an aging horse.
The Victorian horse world apparently had some odd belief that a horse going grey was aging prematurely and so they actively selected against grey TBs in racing. This is why the majority today are bay or chesnut even though there were plenty of greys in the foundation stock.
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Color genetics are color genetics. We’re not taking about white foals. The US has lots of white foals as well, in the TB, STB, WB worlds, as the White mutations like to appear fairly regularly, relatively speaking.
Gray horses are born their underlying color, whether that’s black, bay, brown, cremello, champage, palomino, dun, etc
ALL gray horses get whiter coats as they age.
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Well I’m in the UK and Willesdon’s post has confused me! Maybe you could explain further Willesdon?
I like Arabs and there is plenty of Grey in that breed. My own grey Arab and her grey sire are both chestnut with one copy of grey. He greyed out slowly and was a lovely dapple grey for years. She never dappled and greyed out so fast that she was completely white furred by two years of age and fleabitten by three. She just gets more chestnut fleabites as the years go by now.
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S/he said gray has largely been bred out of TBs - s/he isn’t entirely wrong 
Arabians do have a pretty large gray population.
When I bought my (now flea bitten) grey at 3, she was black with some bay on her face and white socks/star. She stayed quite dark until she was about 8, then every time she shed out a coat, the new one came in lighter. She still had quite a lot of dapples at 11. Her face started to go flea bitten first (where the bay was) and it looked a lot like freckles. Then she sprouted a few on her neck that did not change for years.
While she was still dark, she developed four white spots at the base of her tail that made it look like she had eyes on her rump. They stick around for a few years. I joked that she needed eyes there when we were showing, but once we switched to fox hunting, she could let them close.
Now, at 17, she is flea bitten heavily on her neck and shoulders, white on her flanks and body, and has dark points at knee and gaskin. I feel like the majority of the flea bites came in this past winter/spring…I could not see her during our 3 month lockdown in NY and when I finally could it was like WOW, when did THAT happen?
I board at a welsh pony farm and have seen many babies go grey much faster than Quincy did–but grey is very common in the American Welsh stock and many had either two grey parents or grey on both sides in some form or another. Some of them seem to just blow a dark coat all at once and some dapple first.
My icon is her at about 6.
Sorry JB I should have made it clear that it was the first statement that I was unsure about.
As the UK horse herd has different genetics to that of the US, it can be misleading to make generalised statements. So I will.
Grays have made a huge comeback in the TB breed (in the U.S) over the last decade. Unbridleds Song was one of the sires to get it started, and now with sires like Tapit, The Factor, Creative Cause, Cairo Prince and Macho Uno covering large books of mares there are hundreds of new gray TB foals every year.
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I just purchased a grey Morgan filly (grey is pretty rare in Morgans). She is very dark at the moment but I’m guessing as she lightens will end up flea bitten like her dam. Genetically she is Grey: N/G, Red Factor Agouti: E/e; a/a [ATTACH=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“full”,“data-attachmentid”:10706494}[/ATTACH]
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