Duns actually don’t usually have the leg barring, though I DO think certain breeds have it much more frequently than others - Spanish Mustangs and Kiger Mustangs being 2 of them 
I also believe certain lines have the leg/wither/face barring/masking more often than the general dun horse population. I think it was stated before that there’s a theory that the barring/masking factor is another set of genetics, so may or may not be present with Dun. I fully believe that - I’ve seen way more duns with only a dorsal stripe than those with the full set of markings.
I honestly would question a “dun” without at least some other primitive markings than a dorsal stripe as being a true dun and not a countershaded horse. Dun is a dilution gene which is why you see the “mask” and darker legs. Dun dilute the body but generally leaves the head and legs. I could see that there would be more than one gene at work which could explain some of that but I’ve seen horses called “duns” before that were simply bays with dorsals. That is much more common IMO.
Spanish Mustangs being a primitive breed do seem to have a lot of the older genes showing up. It is not unheard of for a SM dun to not have leg barring but I’ve never seen one without at least the mask/darker legs when white markings did not cover up the legs. Kigers have some SM’s (mainly Sulphur herd individuals) mixed in there to bring in more dun color so they inherited those markings from the same gene pool that the original SM’s came from.
I’ve seen plenty of tested (along with having 1+ dun parents) duns with out the barring/masking
fyi, the dorsal stripe has nothing to do with a horse being a dun or not, people often confuse this. Both my mares (my bay Hanoverian and sooty buckskin Connemara) have dorsal stripes. The Connemara has a dorsal stripe along with a lot of dark and light shading (and changes colors with the seasons).
The only marking that is a definite dun characteristic are the other primitive markings (leg barring, etc) . But not all duns have them.
Well, all duns MUST have a dorsal stripe, with, as you said, the other markings being optional.
Most countershading looks different from a dun dorsal stripe, but then again, some can be pretty convincing LOL
As well, while it’s typical to have the dun dorsal be very sharply defined and run tail to wither, on more than a few it fades as it gets to the withers.
In QH’s and Paints (along with breeds that the QH crosses with or shares founding bloodlines with) duns usually do have at least some of the “primitive markings” in addition to the dorsal stripe. These include things like horizontal ear bars, a light tip on the ear, face masking, spider webbing (easier seen in foals sometimes), shoulder bars or “capes” (sometimes with secondary patches of shading higher on the neck under the mane), leg bars and sometimes secondary dorsal stripes…all in addition to the diluted body coloring. I find it interesting that the body dilution in duns is “flatter” in color that the dilution caused by the cream dilute gene…I don’t know any other way to describe it. It lacks (in many cases) the metallic component that the cream often gives (not to the extent of the champagne which is REALLY metallic in many cases). For instance red duns often to me have a “cream of tomato soup made with milk” body color. The dorsal in duns is sometimes difficult to discern from a countershaded one, especially in foals but there are some hints that it is a dun stripe (besides having to have a dun parent)…it is usually from the base of the mane, all the way down the back, into and sometimes completely through the tail…it is usually sharp edged while countershading is often (not always) blurred along the edges and may not be complete between the base of the mane/withers and the tail (often fails to connect just behind the withers). In a dun there is usually hair on the top of the tail head on either side of the dorsal stripe that is the same color as the body hair but is obviously tail hair. Duns usually have “guard hair” or “frosting” long the sides of the mane that is lighter…sometimes nearly white and other times nearly matching the body color…Fjords show this more strongly than any other breed I’m aware of. There is sometimes a ventral stripe as well as the dorsal although not many and a lot of owners never look. The leg bars are usually a darker color of the body area they are on…ie…in a dun (black plus agouti plus dun) they will be black on the area where the agouti would make black legs and may be dark brown to dark reddish brown on the upper leg where the agouti would leave the bay body color showing…on a red dun they may be nearly black on the lower part of the barred areas and just darker tomato soup colored (made without the milk) on the upper leg area.
Some of these show up as countershading but some are almost always existant in duns only…for instance, I’ve never seen countershaded ear bars and tips or ventral stripes or secondary stripes on the back. Several of my foals this year have dorsal stripes but they are blurred along the edges and don’t make it completely from withers into the tail. Three of the six have shoulder patches and two of them have secondary neck patches. None have ear bars or ear tips, none have facial masking and none have leg bars (that I can see…one is tobiano with leg white…the other two are solids without any leg bars noted). In all cases I know it is countershading as neither parent is dun.
How come you know that I have that one??? And here is her pedigree:
http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/funny+girl+gf
I know also were She comes from - ätsch.
I was about to buy callimaus. Thats why
My blood bay Gauguin de Lully mare has a very prominent dorsal stripe with shoulder shading and defined zebra stripes on her front legs. She also has a lovely metallic sheen in the summer. She has no QH or other bloodlines that have “other” color genes and she is definitely bay not dun.
I have seen quite a few bays with dorsal stripes, and my father had a QH mare who was sired by a son of Easy Jet and out of a daughter of Clabber Bar with a dorsal stripe. That mare passed the dorsal stripe on to all her bay foals, grand-foals, and great-grand foals. She even passed it to a sorrel daughter which caused a lot of debate at the time about whether the filly was dun, but had a bay dam and a sorrel sire.
So I don’t think it’s uncommon to have a bay with dorsal stripe, no matter what the breed. But it doesn’t make it a dun!
[QUOTE=aurum;5652458]
How come you know that I have that one??? And here is her pedigree:
http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/funny+girl+gf[/QUOTE]
What a tease! Pictures?
Ride - those additional markings are probably from sooty, which can Dona great job of mimicking dun wither barring, leg barring, even face masking.
California Vaquero Horses (Spanish type Sulphurs) come dominantly in the dun color. The reason being is that the Spaniards that bred them in California back in the 19th century believed that this color made the best work horses and were the most noble (thousands of these pure Spanish horses were stolen by Ute Chief Wakara and remnants of them were found high up in the Needles Mountain Range only 40 miles away from the Old Spanish Trail which was the trail that their ancestors were herded down. They were genetically proven to be old Iberian horses and have a genetic mutation that isn’t seen in any other breed due to their isolation). The CVH comes in zebra dun (bay dun), grulla (black dun), red dun, claybank, bay, black, and chestnut. They don’t come in any other colors.
Being the case with them, it is easy to find horses with extreme dun factor. Here is a stallion name Dragon’s Sulphur Breath (Cortez x Cisco). You can see his intense bi coloration due to the dun factor gene. His mane and tail look like someone dumped a bucket of bleach over it! lol
http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff208/barbhorses/Sulphur%20horses/dragonhind2.jpg
Here is a CVH grulla colt in a winter coat. Even still, you can see a clear dorsal stripe. Being that you say that your mare’s dorsal fades away in the winter with her coat, I would say that she is likely displaying counter shading and doesn’t have a true dorsal stripe.
http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff208/barbhorses/Sulphur%20horses/Riscadohead.jpg
I agree with coloredcowhorse on the “flatness” in color of a true dun. While they do shine and occasionally get dapples, they never get the sort of metallic sheen you get with a cream dilute. I also have seen “primitive markings” on non duns. It’s not common but it happens. Another trait I’ve never not seen in a true dun is black or darker eartips.
This is one of my stallions who is both a dun and a cream so he’s kind of interesting for that reason. He does have strong primitive markings, guard hairs on the mane and tail, leg barring, shoulder and neck barring, a mask and even cobwebbing on his forehead in certain seasons.
http://www.rbefarm.com/page4/page5/page5.html
This baby is just a “dun” without other modifying genes. If you look closely, you can see leg barring on him.
http://www.rbefarm.com/page4/page17/page17.html
JB…my understanding was that the dun factor testing was looking at a group of genes and was not exactly a true test yet. I may be dated on that info and am curious if there is now a true dun factor DNA test out there.
DDB, no, afaik it’s still the dun factor test, not the gene itself. That’s why when you send in hairs they want pedigree and/or pictures of the parents as well.
I’ve got a friend who has a mare that just HAS to be dun, just has to be, but she tests negative for the factor. Unknown pedigree, so no pictures of parents, unfortunately. Her pictures and her test results were such a shock to UC-Davis folks that her case ended up on the genetics head’s desk for verification, and repeated tests still came back negative. That mare is one he wants to test again, IIRC, if/when they ever do come up with the actual gene to test for.
Yes sorry, I should have qualified that I meant a dorsal stripe does not mean it is a dun, so it is irrelevant as a definite marker that the horse IS dun.
So a dun has a dorsal stripe, but not all horses with a dorsal stripe are dun.
People constantly say my pony is dun because of the dorsal stripe (she is buckskin) and people have thought maybe my bay mare was dun because of the dorsal stripe. She is clearly a bay.
[QUOTE=fernie fox;5651754]
Johaniter swb. Was a very nice colour but I think they called it Golden bay.
Wish I could find a pic. of him.[/QUOTE]
Here’s a pic I found for you
http://www.swanaoffice.org/Images/Stallions/Johanniter01.jpg
LetItBe
[QUOTE=JB;5651782]
Duns actually don’t usually have the leg barring, though I DO think certain breeds have it much more frequently than others - Spanish Mustangs and Kiger Mustangs being 2 of them I also believe certain lines have the leg/wither/face barring/masking more often than the general dun horse population. I think it was stated before that there’s a theory that the barring/masking factor is another set of genetics, so may or may not be present with Dun. I fully believe that - I’ve seen way more duns with only a dorsal stripe than those with the full set of markings.[/QUOTE]
I have a dun Irish Draught filly this year who has the dorsal stripe and all of the additional barring on her ears, withers, and legs, as well as the darker head (and I assume legs when she sheds out). She looks to also carry the sooty factor present in her damline.
Of course IDs descend from Spanish stock so the dun is not surprising (though I’ve always thought it was interesting that we don’t see true dun in the Connemaras).
My filly is going grey unfortunately, as most dun IDs do. Wondering if we will one day find that the grey and dun genes are situated close together and get passed on together like black and tobiano.
[QUOTE=Waterwitch;5653975]
Of course IDs descend from Spanish stock so the dun is not surprising (though I’ve always thought it was interesting that we don’t see true dun in the Connemaras).
My filly is going grey unfortunately, as most dun IDs do. Wondering if we will one day find that the grey and dun genes are situated close together and get passed on together like black and tobiano.[/QUOTE]
Since the dun in the QH and related breeds is likely from Spanish stock as well and there doesn’t appear to be a correlation between dun and gray there I would doubt it. Both dun and gray are dominant modifiers but dun appears to possibly have multiple genes involved. And then throw in countershading which doesn’t appear to be dun related but more like the camo that the young of some species have (thinking spots on lion cubs and on fawns) as it most often disappears in the adult coat. OR countershading might possibly be “dun” related but not expresses or minimally expressed in the adult coat…maybe there is some specific gene that makes these markings permanent in the adult coat but ephemeral in the foal coat? And there is certainly variability in the expression of dun markings plus the diluted body color (to be dun by way of AQHA a horse has to have a dorsal, a diluted body color and I think at least one other “primitive marking”…will have to check my rule book). Both dun and gray can be homozygous but don’t show the increase in expression when HZ like cream dilute does or most of the white marking patterns do. I know a lot of foundation breeders who focus on dun factored horses and they specifically avoid having a gray in the breeding program.
Will take some as soon as I can.
