Sires and Their Grey Yearlings

[skydy]

I posted these on a Dressage thread as somewhat of a derail, and thought it would be an interesting topic here.

These observations come solely from watching the yearling sales.

It’s interesting to me, that many (not all) of Tapit’s grey yearlings look like this:

While many of the late Arrogate’s grey yearlings looked like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5xlBjoYXnw

Any time I see that almost white, grey yearling I can bet it’s a Tapit and most often I win.

There may be (or it could be my faulty memory) a stallion currently at stud who seems to get a lot of steel grey yearlings, but I can’t think of his name. Anyone?

[AllSport]

I don’t pay that much attention but I feel like that does seem to be the case. I rode a Tapit mare once and she blew me away!! She was kind of a hidden secret among the WB’s at the barn, no one paid attention to her because she was brood mare…and a TB. After that I saw one of her brothers for sale but I couldn’t get there fast enough. He sold in 3 days.

[Jealoushe]

Frac Daddy

[Jealoushe]

Saw this the other day.

[skydy]

I don’t think I’ve seen many of his get.

[skydy]

I’ve read that as well. Very interesting especially regarding melanoma.

It’s nice that Tapit is still going at 24 years old.

[Aussie_2020]

The color pattern on the WB foal is weird. Would be interesting to see pix every month from birth up to about 3 years old.

[skydy]

I thought he was just shedding his foal coat.

[Xanthoria]

I have read that homozygous gray horses go gray faster than heterozygous gray horses, are more likely to develop melanomas, and are less likely to become fleabitten with age. - is that right? How does that relate to the G3/G2 genotype?

[Texarkana]

@Xanthoria

I have read that homozygous gray horses go gray faster than heterozygous gray horses, are more likely to develop melanomas, and are less likely to become fleabitten with age. - is that right? How does that relate to the G3/G2 genotype?

It explains that right in the images she shared.

Homozygous G2/G2 is slower than homozygous G3/G3. Homozygous G3/G3 is at an increased risk of melanoma compared to the normal risk. The codominance situation of G2/G3 will gray faster than just G2/G2 and also has an above average risk of melanoma.

In summary, heterozygous or homozygous, having the G3 gene is less preferable to the G2 gene it seems.

[Xanthoria]

@Texarkana

It explains that right in the images she shared.

Sorry I didn’t see the words homozygous or heterozygous in the image, which is why I asked

[Aussie_2020]

A friend bought a paint quarterhorse, white with dark gray markings. I had asked if he would turn white but the seller said oh no, he’s a paint this is his coloring. Well that was ten years ago, today you wouldn’t know he had been any other color than white. Why is this? Did the breeder lie or did this particular horse have a weird color gene?

(When wet you can see some skin color difference)

[trubandloki]

@Aussie_2020

Did the breeder lie

Or maybe the breeder was just clueless about these things.

[Jealoushe]

My grey was basically black until 5 and then dark dappled until about 9, but she already has a tiny melanoma. She still has a dark mane and tail.

[Willesdon]

All TBs that are grey will have “Alcock’s Arabian” in their ancestry (foaled about 1700, died about 1733). The sire line is now extinct but continues through female descendants. Another significant early stallion was Place’s White Turk (imported from Aleppo in 1657) - but Mr Place was the Stud Groom and the horse actually belonged to Oliver Cromwell (who was a notable horseman). After the restoration of the monarchy, a grey race horse was deemed to be a wee bit disloyal to the new king so the colour became very unfashionable but this line also continued down the female side. By the 19th century, in Britain, a horse that greyed out was considered to be prematurely aging so grey was actively selected out of the national herd. The grey TB returned in the early 20th century through the French horse “Roi Herode”, who was a better stallion than racehorse. Most noticably, he was the sire of “The Tetrarch”, aka “The Spotted Wonder”, one of the century’s greatest 2 year olds (injury prevented further racing) and a significant influence in the breed. The Tetrach’s descendents include Nasrullah, Bold Ruler, Secretariat, Seattle Slew, A.P. Indy. And is in the background of Tapit, too.

[Simkie]

@Jealoushe

My grey was basically black until 5 and then dark dappled until about 9, but she already has a tiny melanoma. She still has a dark mane and tail.

My grey mare was like this, too. She was even originally registered as a dark bay/brown horse and had to have her papers changed when she began to grey. She was darker than the Arrogate yearling when I purchased her at two.

She developed a significant amount of melanoma and was euthanized at 13 when it started growing in her eyeballs. We had tried Oncept a few years earlier with little change. She was still dappled, with a dark mane and tail. Darker than the Tapit yearling.

So it doesn’t seem to always hold that slow greying = little melanoma. She was heterozygous grey, but wasn’t tested for these variants.

[libgrrl]

We had a pony in our barn like this as well. He is all white now, although you can see the spots when he is wet too (different colored skin.)

[Jealoushe]

I’m sorry, that’s heartbreaking.

[Simkie]

Thank you, it really did suck. I wish I’d been aware of this work in fast/slow greying and melanoma risk…she may have been interesting to the people doing that work? Didn’t start seeing anything about it until this year. Glad they’re making progress on understanding melanoma, but it does seem there’s more to learn.

[skydy]

Arrogate got this Tetrarch spotted filly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MkbNBR_6ro&t=5s

Pedigree https://www.fasigtipton.com/catalogs/2020/0909/564.pdf