[QUOTE=Serigraph;5212559]
I don’t know anything about Holsteiner color breeding, but my new horse is Holsteiner and light chestnut/buckskin with flaxen mane and tail. He sire and dam were black and dark bay.[/QUOTE]
interesting discussion, and one which raises surprisingly strong feelings in holstein.
there are chestnuts but it would be fair to say there is a general - if not universal - prejudice against them. prime culprits in the gene pool include calido and also more recently quidam. from memory calido’s mother was chestnut but that didn’t seem to hurt him!
i certainly have never seen any buckskins, dunns nor palamino’s when there and could easily imagine that if its already tough on the chestnuts, it could get much harder again on those colours.
serigraph, do you know where your horse’s colour comes from? if not, throw out the pedigree i suspect we would be able to locate where it has come from in his pedigree.
there are other interesting theories held by the old farmers in holstein, such as acorado being the only one of over a dozen full siblings with his colour and also being the only one to succeed to the extent that he did. also with capitol breeding there is a belief around a genetic connection with the grey colouring he often passes down associated with athletic ability.
it gets poo-poo’d by geneticists and sometimes on here, but only by those who have never produced as successfully for the top of the sport as some of those same old farmers in holstein!
