Mealy foals

[Totina]

When breeding Forest Horses I have come across the gene for mealy/pangaré and though I have seen that the gene is recessive to non-mealy there is a mysterious trait in foal coats that I have not managed to figure out yet.

I know that all foals (except for those with black coats) have a little "mealy/pangaré" as newborn until they get around 1 year old. But some of the foals I have bred seem to have more of this than others and it doesn't seem like it has anything to do with the foals having either one or two copies of the gene.

Looking in the gallery of this horse, for example:
ℬℳ Grizzled Sensation


He is mealy and as a foal he had a lot of mealy/pangaré.

First I thought it had something to do with being mealy brown but then I have this horse, which is not mealy but brown, and she also had more mealy/pangaré than normal as a foal:
ℬℳ April Rain


She is probably carrying one copy of the gene but I have seen the same extreme mealy/pangaré in foals of other colours as well so it is not just something about one or two copies of the gene with brown coat.

This horse, for example, is mealy as an adult but did not have extra mealy as a foal:
ℬℳ Shining Brass


And this mare is confirmed to be carrying the gene (looking at her offsprings with mealy) but she doesn't look mealy and was not extra mealy as a foal:
ℬℳ Crimson Ivy


Is it another gene that causes extra mealy/pangaré in foals or does anyone know what is causing this inconsistency with mealy foals?

[KayaineII]

Unfortunately, I have no idea what causes it, but I have also noticed this trend. A lot of my horses are born with it, but they do not carry it into adulthood. I don't know if it's related, but for whatever reason, the colts that are born this way seem to varnish more slowly with app coloring, but that could just be coincidence.

[Argent II]

The first two horses are just browns. There are two or so different ways the game renders brown coats. The sires of that mare's foals were all pangare. Either pangare is dominant, in which case the mare's genes for it are irrelevant, or it is recessive, in which case she would have one copy and it wouldn't show.

[Totina]

According to the results I have had with breeding and experimenting with pangaré before I have found that two mealy/pangaré horses always give a foal with the same mealy pattern. Breeding a mealy horse with a horse from a breed that do not carry any pangaré genes (like arabians or NABs) has never resulted in a mealy foal, which would be evidence for a recessive gene.
I have also found out that mealy/pangaré does not show any pattern on black coats and on brown horses it makes the brown areas more yellow/cream rather than the redish brown that all non-mealy and non-cream brown horses have.
The only thing I haven't figured out about mealy/pangaré yet is the foal version of it.

[Devolare]

I've been trying to figure out this mealy stuff myself within the last few days, which I admit I know absolutely nothing about. I haven't had much experience with it either and only recently started messing around with Forest Horses that seem to carry it.

The conclusion I've come to is that I'm confused.

I took this boy (who I'm guessing is a mealy, altho someone should correct me if I'm wrong cause I'm still having trouble with this):



and bred him to this girl (who looks like a regular brown NAB, as far as I can tell).



Now they had these two. One who appears to be Mealy and one who doesn't.





Which would mean that either the NABs have the potential to carry the recessive gene for it, that it's dominant, both, or that I have no idea what mealy looks like (which is highly likely).

So if anyone could clear this up for me, that'd be a great help. x'D

[Totina]

I wish someone who actually knows how the mealy gene works in the game would give an answer to this mystery. But I have also been experimenting with this mealy stuff and I have found that a turkmene/forest horse cross gave a mealy foal:




I am breeding two mealy forest horses to each other and so far I've got mealy foals 100% of the time. Though I have found two variants of mealy in the horses I have bred. One that is slightly mealy around the muzzle and legs (like the seal brown markings) and one that is stretching further up on the horse's body like this one:




Both her parents are mealy (but not as mealy as her) and I have started to wonder if that is because she might have two copies of the mealy gene. One gene gives slightly mealy markings and two give a lot of mealy. I need to do more experiments to confirm this theory.
If I get a mealy foal out of two horses that do not look mealy at all, as I think I have had before when I experimented with mealy during the beta, this theory would be disproven.

About the extra mealy in foals I think it must be a completely separate gene and not connected to adult horses' mealy markings at all, since I have had extra mealy foals that turned out to not be mealy when they grew up.

[Arctictea]

I too have gotten some extra mealy foals, such as this lady



Which came as a suprise, since none of her parents are mealy, and she is mainly from arabian bloodlines (OK, some appaloosa in her too). None of her parents were that mealy as foals either - so "foal mealy" could be recessive.
Of course, today she is no longer mealy.

Perhaps mealy functions a bit like gray/appaloosa - there is a "switch gene", and several "pattern modification genes"? Perhaps the "pattern genes" are always visible on foals, no matter if they have the "switch gene" to turn mealyness on or not? That could explain for super mealy foals that then turn out to be non-mealy, and if this is the case, then these foals could/should give very large mealyness if bred with horses who have mealy.
Has someone gotten a supermealy foal that grew up to a different pattern of mealy?

If someone is interested, I can breed my non-mealy-as-adult-but-super-mealy-as-foal lady to stallions of varying mealyness and document their foals.

[Totina]

I don't know if it is a switch gene since I have had quite a few horses that were not extra mealy as foals and turned out to be mealy as adults. This stallion (before the varnish roan appeared) showed quite a lot of mealy as an adult but none as a foal:




The extra mealy in foals is most likely recessive then, since her parents did not have it themselves. My experiments have pointed in that direction but I haven't yet managed to get a clear example of it.

[Arctictea]

What I meant was that if foals who looks like this:



Grow up to this:



And foals who look like this:



Grow up to this:



Then it looks like the area of the pattern is visible on the foal. That is, if half the foal is mealy, then it might be half of the horse that is mealy when it has grown up (assuming it will be mealy at all).

But it is just a theory.

[Totina]

Yes, now I understand what you mean. It could be possible but it seems strange that this stallion would be extra mealy as a foal but not as an adult:




But since mealy is not visible on black coats at all (either as foal or adult) perhaps the adult coat of seal brown is an exception to bay and chestnut.