I’m a lover of grey horses (but the @*$# melanomas).
Back when I was grooming sbs there were very, very few greys. Now, there are quite a good number of greys and it seems, and less chestnuts.
I’ve been meaning to research where the greys are coming from (and where the chestnuts went).
Anyone? SK?
I don’t pretend to know the slightest thing about STBs but I drove past Winbak farm which is a huge breeding farm here in MD and all the horses looked exactly the same! There were horses on each side of the road for literally miles and they were all bay with little variation. Take that for what it’s worth.
A lot of the greys go back to Laag. As far as there being fewer chestnuts, that could be somewhat explained by genetics. Chestnut coat color is caused by having two recessive genes. If you breed two chestnuts together, you’ll always get another chestnut. If you breed your chestnut to a bay, then depending on the genetics of the bay you may have either no chance of getting a chestnut or a 50% chance. With so many bays out there, this could be what is happening. Now keep in mind, that recessive chestnut gene can be carried, hidden, in a bay horse. Sometimes you breed two bays and get a chestnut surprise.
AI
Just a thought, but for quite a number of years now, the Standardbred industry has allowed AI covers along with live covers. As a whole, it has improved the breed - faster times, etc. Along with time improvement, I have to wonder if other alterations to the breed (color?) are taking place.
Dr. Patrick Cunningham from U. of Dublin has done extensive studies on both TB and SB genetics. Some of his thoughts are available on line and make very worthwhile genetic reading.
Hallie 
There are a lot of greys now, and most of them actually go back to Smog and Storm, a pair of very fast brothers in the 70s. The shift to more greys began in the late 70s and early 80s when their offspring started hitting the ground, then came Laag who isn’t closely related to the above mentioned.
What I have noticed more is the disappearance of roans - there used to be a lot of them (compared to greys) and now there are very few, have seen exactly one locally in the last 15 years.
Chestnuts are about the same here, those numbers are more localised than greys and there never were a lot of them, except for the Grattan line and where the Grattans were popular, the base mare population still carries enough of that genetic base to regularly produce chestnuts - you have to go west to see them though,
One word of warning about Laag - the melanomas are passed down with frightening regularity and not just to the greys. There is a reason there are very few Laag broodmares - life expectancy is short: 15-18 years tops and people have been avoiding them for a good while now. Laag himself was put down at 18 because he was full of melanomas, inside, and I lost Mr Fussy (a bay grandson) to the same thing at 16.
Thanks all!
Yes, they do, Laurie, for the most part. Not the worst thing, though, right? I’ve started to follow QH racing and it seems there are tons of chestnut QHs. Most people don’t say chestnut is their favorite color (chestnut lovers don’t get mad, I said most). I wonder if that will shift, as per Furlong’s very nice color genetics explanation. (most everything changes, as a general, though)
Hali: Brilliant. AH HA (big AH HA), with AI - you pick the best match and can ship it. Yes, huge improvements in speed over the past X years. Jockey Club, take note ;). Trainer magazine had a great article recently about how far sbs have come in the past X years.
Oh darn, SK, so sorry about Mr. Fussy. Hugs. I didn’t know that about the Laags. Now, do they grey quite early? Do they melanoma crazy early, too, (you know, the ones that have lumps at two years of age)?
They need to find a good medication, or something, for those @&*% melanomas.
There are also lots more grey trotters. Now, where are they coming from? (Ror those who don’t follow sbs - Laag, Smog, Storm are pacers.)
SK, back when, I used to take care of a grey pacer, MacMaster. I believe he had raced in Canada for a bit. Do you remember him, by chance?
Thanks, sonoma. Mr Fussy, being bay, didn’t show anything but lost a ton of weight fast and was gone the morning I was going to call the vet to have him put down; it’s been 15 months now.
The Laags do grey very early, and exhibit early as well; we had, long ago, put together that the genetics of this are bad, and you are really hard pressed to find any Laag in the game now - they went fast. Unfortunately, the few remaining still transmit that damned genetic problem. I’m going to try to get a look at my friend’s Laag bred 4yo this summer, IF i can get close enough to him as he is pretty loopy
I don’t know about Mac Master. Did he race in Western Canada, or down east? I can’t really recall the name and my memory goes back pretty far.
[QUOTE=sonomacounty;6215323]
Thanks all!
Yes, they do, Laurie, for the most part. Not the worst thing, though, right? I’ve started to follow QH racing and it seems there are tons of chestnut QHs. Most people don’t say chestnut is their favorite color (chestnut lovers don’t get mad, I said most). I wonder if that will shift, as per Furlong’s very nice color genetics explanation. (most everything changes, as a general, though)
Hali: Brilliant. AH HA (big AH HA), with AI - you pick the best match and can ship it. Yes, huge improvements in speed over the past X years. Jockey Club, take note ;). Trainer magazine had a great article recently about how far sbs have come in the past X years.
Oh darn, SK, so sorry about Mr. Fussy. Hugs. I didn’t know that about the Laags. Now, do they grey quite early? Do they melanoma crazy early, too, (you know, the ones that have lumps at two years of age)?
They need to find a good medication, or something, for those @&*% melanomas.
There are also lots more grey trotters. Now, where are they coming from? (Ror those who don’t follow sbs - Laag, Smog, Storm are pacers.)
SK, back when, I used to take care of a grey pacer, MacMaster. I believe he had raced in Canada for a bit. Do you remember him, by chance?[/QUOTE]
I didn’t mean to imply that it was a bad thing, just that they all looked alike. Certainly no evidence of a shift in colors on that farm! They were all wearing neck ID tags and I was thinking that without those they would be impossible to tell apart.
<I didn’t mean to imply that it was a bad thing, just that they all looked alike.>
Oh, I wasn’t thinking that you meant anything bad. You are really just stating fact.
My grey STB is by Laag - he’s 13 now. This is the first I’d heard that the Laag’s have terrible melanoma problems. Uh-oh. I live in the epicenter of STB breeding country on the East Coast. The farms around my house are filled with bays and a few browns. The majority of them don’t have much in the way of white facial or leg markings. A star or snip, perhaps, but a blaze is very rare. I don’t see many greys or chestnuts. The STBs do sometimes have this dark liver chestnut color that is quite attractive. It’s sort of like a bay coat without any black points.
lolalola - It may not happen to your guy. If he shows nothing now, he may be fine. Please, remember, this is generalities, not certainties as is anything else related to breeding.
One colour we do have in Standardbreds, and I have never seen in other breeds, is a dark chestnut so dark it is truly black. The only way to tell these are chestnuts or sure is to stand them in sunlight and the hair around the fetlocks has a golden glow to it.
Colors are a little regional, IME. Here in PA we have an influx (relatively speaking) of chestnut trotters. We also see a few more chestnut pacers, with a couple sires standing in the state that will throw regular reds.
As far as roans: There were quite a lot in the Illinois area due to Broadway Express (born 1982) in the ‘90s. That’s on the pacing side. There are verrrry few roan trotters around; Hanover Shoe Farms used to have a mare named Northern Princess who was roan and whose daughters produced legitimate roans, but that was years ago. Hanover has a few grey trotting mares now that are so through their Storm Cloud heritage. We have one such guy in our trainers’ stable now and he is actually a really nice rosey grey.
I never heard that all Laags died young. ALL greys will get melanoma. It is not a question of if but when. Some horses can deal with grey horse melanoma and some cannot, it depends on where they form. If they form on the skin or inside the body cavity without impinging on any organs they can live with them quite well. If they block an orifice on the outside (anus, etc) and can’t be removed or wrap around or block organs on the inside the horse will probably show signs of colic but it normally deemed unsalvageable when they open him up and see nothing but melanoma tumors.
Grey horse melanoma is not cancer, these tumors result from melanin being transported from the hair follice and deposited elsewhere in the body. Over time they can grow quite large. I am sure all horses can get regular (sun based) Melanoma but it isn’t common.
But a bay will never die from grey horse melanoma but can certainly die from any of the many other forms of cancer horses may get. It is unlikely it had anything to do with his sire though unless HE perhaps actually died from an inheritable (non grey melanoma) cancer.
All it takes for colors to die out is to be dominant and to not have any horses deemed worth breeding!
<Here in PA we have an influx (relatively speaking) of chestnut trotters.>
The #%@ melanin should just shed into the blood stream, be filtered out by the kidneys and be excreted in urine, instead of making these #%@ tumors.
The red trotters we’re seeing now are coming from what is a recessive gene, I guess (I don’t really know much about actual coat genetics). SJ’s Photo (a bay) threw a fair amount of chestnuts, and that’s continued through his sons (SJ’s Caviar and Classic Photo, here in PA, both bays). Before him there was Lindy Lane and American Winner throwing the odd chestnut (both bays as well). AW is still around but sires way less foals these days. Striking Sahbra and Mr Lavec north of the border will throw the odd chestnut as well.
Re: Red pacers. There were many more “back in the day” in large part bc of this guy: http://b4breeding.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/shadow-wave-for-web.jpg
There was also a horse that I cannot find a photo of named Dapper Baron who was a chestnut, bald-faced, blue-eyed, purportedly deaf sire who threw some loud standardbreds. I remember a local mare sired by him who just threw blue-eyes, white-stocking-ed, white-faced, occasional belly-spotted pacers every year; chestnut and bay alike.
Back to the greys/Laag: Yes, Almahurst had him, and then Boxwood Farm. He died relatively early but I think it was perhaps of Lyme’s Disease. He also was not a particularly pleasant horse to be around. I’ve heard his foals were a bit the same way; just kind of tough. We don’t have pacers anymore (not since the mid '90s) so I really don’t know anything more about them.
Dapper Barron was bay. And he had that “Look at me 'cause I’m SOMEBODY” presence about him. He had a strikingly white smile shape of white that was under his throat—kind of like is common on the throat of “tuxccedo” (spell?) marked cats. He also had 4 white stockings, bald face, and blue eyes. As to deaf—he would respond to a picering whistle but very little else, so, yes almost compleatly deaf. He was born and raised appx 12 miles from me and I often saw him when he was in training. Many of his foals inherated the socks and bald faces/blues eyes.
Thanks DF…
I’ve only seen b/w photos of Dapper Baron; I assumed he was chestnut.
My son of Laag is very handsome - I call him my Standalusian. However, he’s sort of goofy. I’ve had TBs all of my life but thought I needed something a little quieter as 50 approached - but he’s more high strung than any of my TBs. I still love him. He’s very friendly and people-oriented.
My grey grandson of Laag is now 11 and I have seen no sign of the melanomas but he does have PSSM that I have researched comes through that line as well. Jet is very happy in his retirement being a low level hunter for a 12 year old.
My SO (long time STB racer) thinks a lot of the greys come courtesy of Admirals Galley, the sire of Admirals Express. http://www.standardbredcanada.ca/news/3-4-10/admirals-express-retired-good.html
There are a couple of greys racing here, though I’m not sure how they are bred, since I haven’t caught their names to check in the results. There were a few roans over the last couple of years, and we had one for a short while (he just wasn’t up to the speeds here), that all went back to the Broadway lines.
Chestnuts, there are some, but most of them are trotters, though there are few nice pacers that are red (with mega manes too!) racing right now. My QH mare with chrome sure is the odd horse out at the track. LOL
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