Why do you think this mare has white or lack of pigment around her eyes?
I like her a lot, too. I think her canter will be pretty nice with some work. (No, I’m not the lucky person who is her pending adopter. Just trying to learn.) Thanks!
http://www.horseadoption.com/horseprofiles/besty/
I love New Vocations!
Someone I know has a WB gelding with a similar loss of pigmentation. She said in her horse’s case it was vitiligo and that basically they don’t know what caused it.
I was thinking vitiligo also. Just make sure she has fly mask in hot summer sun.
One of my horses developed a white spot, not loss of pigmentation, by one eye for no reason according to her former owner.
You can tattoo around her eye.
She looks like a nice horse.
Isn’t there a mineral/vitamin deficiency that causes white hair around the eyes? Seems like there was a thread on it a while ago, but can’t remember the missing component in the diet.
If horse was much younger, foal, yearling wearing those marks, I would say she had Appaloosa breeding and was going to grey out on you later. I have seen that be common in some lines of App horses. And yeah, they usually were the MOST spectacularly colored ones. I believe there is photos of a Fresian/App cross foal, gorgeous spotted color, wearing the “spectacles” young, who ended up pretty much snow white as a mature stallion. Had some black spots on his skin, but no black in the hair coat. I think he still a stallion, available for breeding. Looked well handled, but such a change from his foal photos!
I know a horse who lost the pigment around the eyes like that from a topical uveitis medication (not sure what med though). This happened on a few occasions. The first times the color eventually returned. This last time the loss of pigment seems to be staying much longer or possibly permanent.
A copper/zinc deficiency can do this to a horse. Sometimes they just develop leukotricia for no reason, but the first thing I would do with this mare would be to put her on Cu/Zn and see what happens.
I have a horse, dark bay, with the idiopathic virtiglio around his eyes and that in the winter extends down to his muzzle and shrinks in the summer. I have tried every thing anyone has suggested or I have read about and nothing changes. At one point we thought it was lack of sunlight during the winter but he is out all day in the winter. He does give him a lot of distinction in a sea of bay and brown horses!
you can sometimes see this as the after effect of an infection
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