Okay, it’s Friday and I’ve got Spruce Meadows live streaming as I’m working. 
The Encana Cup is on now, and I swear, every time I look up at the screen, there is a grey horse jumping. Seems like over half have been greys. Is it just this class, or has anyone else noticed many more grey horses lately? (They are lovely, though!)
When I was watching on Wednesday I noticed a ton of grey horses. I thought maybe it was on repeat or fritzing out and replaying the same round (only able to glance over in between writing reports)… but then a bay eventually came in. Spruce Meadows has greys for days!
There are a lot of grey jumpers because a lot of them are “C” lines who could jump the moon. A pedigree query shows that, and if you put one grey to another coloured horse, there is a 50-50 chance of a grey. That becomes almost 100% if there are two grey parents. So, basically, success begets success.
Similarly, dressage breeders seek a homogyzous dark horse, and they are being bred to produce a lot of that colour.
My milk white horse showed up on the dressage scene because she was unusual.
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On a different note, I’ve noticed that this year’s group of contenders for the Extreme Mustang Makeover in Fort Worth has an awful lot of greys (there’s actually an auction process so the trainers can have some selectivity of which horses in the available candidate pool they take on). I think it might have something to do with last year’s high auction horse ($26k) being a grey, but not sure.
Which “C” lines? I know a few but curious which ones are best known…
I’ve noticed a lot of greys in the Big Eq lately also. I think GHM even commented on it during the Maclay last year!
C line holsteiners are dominating
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The Holsteiner line has grey through the two C lines. Corporal was the one in the 60s that started it (and then Capitano/Capitol/etc). Cor de la Bryere’s line also has it at this point, and I think that started more when the Corporal line was bred into the CdlB line which carried the grey over. There’s also a pretty strong grey front in the G line Hanoverians - Grey Top (goes back to Graf Grannus/Grannus; and Calypso II/CdlB) is grey and has a pretty top notch jumping pedigree any way you slice it. You’ll see a lot of his offspring being marketed as jumpers in the auctions, and many of them are grey. I think at this point he has at least one approved son who I think is also grey but I’m not sure which one it is.
Regardless, I assume that explains the preponderance of greys at the moment - some really notable sires that happen to be grey.
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^^^^^ this.
And if any of the popular gray stallions are homozygous… it’s going to create a really high number of gray offspring
A large percentage of popular Irish sires are grey too.
Thanks! I have a grey Holsteiner (Cassini I) so he is part of that tribe. I’m just learning about all the lines - good info!
