Mealy and not Smoky?

[Stick]

Just trying to double-check my work here. Forest horses sometimes confuse me with some very weird shades of things, often with really dark and off-color bay/chestnuts and weird pangare. So, I'm just making sure that the light portions of this horse's brown coloration here is due to the underlying pangare (like his mother) and not something else.

I know that forest horses don't actually have the cream gene needed for smoky brown; I'm kind of using that as a stand-in for whatever other gene might make a horse's brown look different. I'm just trying to make sure I'm understanding and identifying this correctly, if that makes sense.

[AltNazarach]

Just trying to double-check my work here. Forest horses sometimes confuse me with some very weird shades of things, often with really dark and off-color bay/chestnuts and weird pangare. So, I'm just making sure that the light portions of this horse's brown coloration here is due to the underlying pangare (like his mother) and not something else.

I know that forest horses don't actually have the cream gene needed for smoky brown; I'm kind of using that as a stand-in for whatever other gene might make a horse's brown look different. I'm just trying to make sure I'm understanding and identifying this correctly, if that makes sense.

It's the easiest looking in the color progression over the years; the most indicative is the 1 year photo. They tend to have sooty and there it hasn't (at least normally) darkened the coat yet and pangare is kind of obvious. In brown it tends to lighten the dark body in weird brownish shades or smoke fumes - like it could be bay but with a whole-body coverage of smoky - like your example horse.
Smoky is visible in brown only in the 'red' hairs and affects the warm areas as a warmer cream/yellow color than the more sandy kind that mealy has and most times, with a bit of experience you can somewhat guess from the foal coat in its early stages if it will be brown or bay

on a sidenote, I do like buckskins, and forest seem to aquire (if not favour) cream genes really easily. So don't be too quick about smoky/mealy browns if the parentage might be ambiguous

[Stick]

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Oh, thank you! I didn't know how to explain what I was looking for, but this was exactly it.

So far I've only really managed to identify basic and slightly-sneaky browns, and then know that it's smoky when the lighter areas are yellowish instead of red. So, when I saw that the lighter areas weren't red, but couldn't be smoky either, I had to guess. Good to know that there is red, yellowish, and now also sandy to look for.

I still have to work on identifying brown in a foal. Also, that's interesting about cream! I didn't know that horses could actually favor a gene like that, or did you mean that it's just particularly vibrant in forest horses?

[AltNazarach]

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Oh, thank you! I didn't know how to explain what I was looking for, but this was exactly it.

So far I've only really managed to identify basic and slightly-sneaky browns, and then know that it's smoky when the lighter areas are yellowish instead of red. So, when I saw that the lighter areas weren't red, but couldn't be smoky either, I had to guess. Good to know that there is red, yellowish, and now also sandy to look for.

I still have to work on identifying brown in a foal. Also, that's interesting about cream! I didn't know that horses could actually favor a gene like that, or did you mean that it's just particularly vibrant in forest horses?

no problem, always happy to help anyone interested in learning the genetics for themselves ^o^ yeah, it helps learning the ropes with certain colors when a breed (originally) posseses only a handfull of colors/genes. Also, mealy can be really tricky in some cases and only a buckskin/palomino foal clears it up, it can cover smoky at times or enlarge the area, so it is a bit hard to figure out in case of both genes ^^'

it's astonishing what different kinds of bay/brown colors a foal can show when it is a different breed, forests are ( - or at least to me - seem) different from arabs and so on.

It isn't really proven anywhere, but in at least my lines the buckskins and smokys occured particularly often (like one smoky brown mare with only one cream and a solid sire kept getting a cream foal about every 2nd to 3rd foal). It may have easily been a coincidence but I thought to mention it in case it happens to be something you'd like to avoid or especially keep for your forests ) and I do like the smoky brown duns (with no mealy) so in my opinion cream+something is a nice shade in forests ^-^

[Stick]

no problem, always happy to help anyone interested in learning the genetics for themselves ^o^ yeah, it helps learning the ropes with certain colors when a breed (originally) posseses only a handfull of colors/genes. Also, mealy can be really tricky in some cases and only a buckskin/palomino foal clears it up, it can cover smoky at times or enlarge the area, so it is a bit hard to figure out in case of both genes ^^'

it's astonishing what different kinds of bay/brown colors a foal can show when it is a different breed, forests are ( - or at least to me - seem) different from arabs and so on.

It isn't really proven anywhere, but in at least my lines the buckskins and smokys occured particularly often (like one smoky brown mare with only one cream and a solid sire kept getting a cream foal about every 2nd to 3rd foal). It may have easily been a coincidence but I thought to mention it in case it happens to be something you'd like to avoid or especially keep for your forests ) and I do like the smoky brown duns (with no mealy) so in my opinion cream+something is a nice shade in forests ^-^

It is indeed crazy how the various breeds express certain genes differently from one another, so branching out into identifying foal colors has seemed so daunting to me, haha. Every time I start to take on a new AC breed, I'm shocked by how certain things present. Like dun for example... after being used to the bright, stripey duns of Przes and Tarpans, running into the cryptic duns of some other breeds was a big surprise.

Forests have been pretty fun so far, if only for their surprisingly dark colors and sooty variations. I imagine that single creams being thrown in there on top of it would make some really pretty results.