Plume? (and flaxen?)

[BlackOak2]

For me, as long as there's no bug, I'm good with the mystery remaining a mystery for us to play with.

Very, Very Interesting.

[Totina]

Eventually I want to try to recreate that dark chestnut with the red flaxen mane and tail. If I remember correctly the red variety of flaxen was "lost" pretty quickly when trying to breed one of those horses I won from the competition so it is probably a recessive variety within the flaxen gene.

[Midway90067]

While I was waiting for some horses to age, I did play around with it, so I wanted to just catalogue some of my observations here to look back on. I am trying to only record things that I am seeing consistently, but I will also add in and random things if they pop up.


Just bought a couple of flaxen Belgian mares. Interestingly, I again had a non flaxen pop out. I've got all these guys on my freezer this time though, so I want to play around with the colt that appears non-flaxen.

Brood (Flaxen Belgian, AC mare)



Foal 1 (flaxen)



Foal 2 (Non- Flaxen)





Something that I have noticed is that the degree of flaxen in these foals being produced seems way higher than it is with the horses I breed with the recessive flaxen gene. (I do know what flaxen is known to have a lot of variation, this is just a consistent difference I am noticing)
Examples:

"True" Flaxen out of flaxen war lander stud (Caliber):



"true" flaxen foal #2, out of caliber. Higher expression as a foal:



"True" flaxen foal (Flaxen arab AC stud). High expression as an adult, low expression as a foal:




"flaxen" foal from Enigma:


"Flaxen" foal #2 from Enigma, Nice expression






I also bred Enigma to a non-chestnut AC mares, just to see what affect this gave. (I also bred his dam to some non-chestnuts, which yielded silver bays for the most part)


This is one filly out of a black Belgian mare. just a standard bay, nothing super special that I can see:



This is filly #2 out of the black Belgian mare. This filly is a silver bay.







Another observation that I have made is that, in comparison with the "true" flaxens, these flaxens do not have the lighter coloring on the lower legs, (though feathering does grow in flaxen)
Examples:

"True" Flaxen Arab Colt (flaxen AC stud):




"Flaxen" Foal out of Enigma:





Some of the more interesting horses that I bred (in my opinion) were out of some przewalski AC mares



Foal #2:



The is out of a przewalski mare, which I think maybe shows some minor plume. This filly appears to me to be a silver.



This is another foal out of another Plume przewalksi mare (I think, though I suck at identifying plume).


Foal #2 (love how this color turned out)





Among these observations, I previously mentioned that these "flaxen foals" from Enigma are far less affected by age then "true" flaxens tend to be. For the most part, "true" flaxens tend to darken a decent amount the older they get, some almost completely loosing the flaxen look. This "false" flaxen tends to maintain a bright and crisp color.
Also as I mentioned, the "false" flaxens tend to be less affected by sooty. Rather than darkening the mane/tail color, it almost seems to give it a grey hue instead.

[Midway90067]

Eventually I want to try to recreate that dark chestnut with the red flaxen mane and tail. If I remember correctly the red variety of flaxen was "lost" pretty quickly when trying to breed one of those horses I won from the competition so it is probably a recessive variety within the flaxen gene.

Those coats were gorgeous! I hope they can be recreated

[BlackOak2]

I heard the same thing, Totina. Nobody had much luck at pulling that color forward. At least, nobody said they succeeded and I've never seen any resembling them. They may be out there, but stashed away, perhaps.

What I've been wondering for a long time, is what AC breed offered those flushed flaxen ankles. And I think you, Midway90067, have finally solved at least a part of that equation for me. Arabs, very obviously. Not all flaxen horses will have flushed ankles, but when I was doing some work with flaxen, it seems I bred out the blank legs. -_- Arabians are quite prolific throughout a large collection of our made-breeds. Which means that perhaps, blank flaxen-flushed legs may be quite a rare gene. Hmm...

[Arctictea]

Years ago I got something that looked like white-pale flaxens from my AC Turkmenes who: a) did not look like flaxen themselves and b) are not supposed to carry flaxen.
They got them when bred to non-Turkmenes who did display the white-pale mane/tail (that is looked flaxen).
(So if you bred Turkmene x Turkmene = no white mane/tail.
If you bred Turkmene x white mane/tail = white mane/tail)
All AC Turkmenes that I tested got these pale-maned foals eventually. Every single one.

Today when I was cleaning out my pastures I found some fun foals from this project:

Sire (AC Turkmene, red mane)

Dam (AC North African Barb, white mane)

Their foal (white mane!)

I took the foal above (white mane) and bred to
Sire 2 (AC Turkmene, red mane)

Gen 2 Foal (white mane again!)


So either
1) Most or many AC Turkmenes are recessive for this white mane/tail
(however they never have the pale mane/tail visibly in the AC)
or
2) The inheritance for the pale mane/tail is dominant
(but flaxen is recessive, so then this is something else)

Also I'm noting that my horses lack the pale coloring on their legs. It is only in mane/tail.

[Arctictea]

Digging further through my pastures, I found one horse that definitely has to be flaxen.
Mix of AC Shetland x AC Arabian (both parents typical flaxens)

Look at the legs! So flaxen!

I had bred her with the first Turkmene stallion above (his name is King btw), and they got this foal:
Slightly paler mane/tail

I had bred this Slightly pale mare to three AC Turkmene stallions, all dark-ish chestnut. She got three foals, all with pale mane/tail.
Stallion 1

Foal 1

Stallion 2

Foal 2

Stallion 3

Foal 3


So these "dominant pale mane/tail" horses are connected to actual flaxens. As in you can get them from actual flaxens. By breeding with AC Turkmenes.
They do loose their pale legs in the process though.

I'm not sure I know what an flaxen horse is anymore. Maybe flaxen is incomplete dominant? As in, two genes = pale legs and full flaxen, one gene = pale mane/tail only.

But that does not fit either. I had a lot of fails. Several pastures worth of fails (all thrown out now unfortunately).
ff x FF = Ff all of the times, so if just Ff was enough to show pale mane/tail I would have had 0 fails.
So maybe there is an gene that "supports" flaxen and lets Ff display on mane/tail?

[Arctictea]

Sorry, these are the last foals I show, I promise!

I took one of my pale mane/tail stallions and bred him to three different mares.
All three mares were full sisters: AC Black Dun Turkmene x AC Red Dun Forest Horse
Neither AC Forest horses nor AC Turkmenes are "supposed" to carry flaxen according to this thread.

Sire: bred from AC Turkmenes and one (1) flaxen AC NAB

Dam 1

Foal 1

Dam 2

Foal 2

Dam 3

Foal 3

I thought these were fun because the mares were so DARK due to their Forest Horse ancestry. And their foals were clearly pale in mane/tail.

I think my next step will be to breed the pale mane/tail horses together and see if I can get flaxen legs.

[Rose90067]

oo thanks for all the work on this! For some reason, I still cannot shake the feeling that it is connected to the silver gene somehow. I know this does not show up on chestnut, but when I got the first couple weird flaxen in my line, it all started with the introduction of a silver NAB mare. My line previous to this should not have carried any recessive flaxen, but of course that can be hard to identify. At least for my line, these horses have all been capable of producing silver foals, as far as I have tested. It defiantly acts like a dominant trait. If you want to breed to any of my weird flaxen, just lemme know I can put one up for stud!
For a little while I thought it maybe could have been some really strong plume, but being as that is recessive I doubt it.


With all that being said, I almost wonder if it has a connection to the NABS? for my line it started with a NAB mare, and your line also had a NAB. So perhaps they have some sort of gene there? I do know that, at least IRL, flaxen is not the best understood gene out there. They know its recessive, but they speculate several underlying genes that affect expression and etc. This does not really help with this particular situation though, since that does not explain the dominant behavior of whatever this particular gene is.

I keep meaning to look into whether or not the cream gene (Or any other forms of dilution genes) can be isolated to the mane/tail by certain genetics (I have not every heard about or seen this though)

[Midway90067]

I am pretty convinced this weird flaxen trait comes from the NABS. I pulled this NAB stallion off of the AC



He is visibly flaxen, as you can see in his picture. This is nothing to strange in itself.


BUT I bred him to this NON-flaxen Forest mare


As far as I know, Forest horses are not carriers of the recessive flaxen gene. This means that whatever the NAB is carrying must be different than the normal recessive flaxen trait.


Those two horses produced this filly, whom is flaxen. I have mentioned this before, but these horses typically turn out incredibly flaxen looking as foals. Where as with the typical flaxen (ex. Arabians), they tend to be slightly harder to identify as foals.




All of the horses that I have seen with this particular phenomenon have come from a NAB horse at some point! I am not to sure what it is, but it does seem to be specific to NABS. I am not to sure if this is the same situation with the flaxen seen with Shetlands, as I have not yet tested that out yet. But Arabians have the flaxen gene that acts as predicted and is recessive.

I was almost wondering if it could be a form of chocolate palomino. But considering that I never get normal palominos when breeding to chestnuts, and the very distinctly Red look of these coats, I doubt it.

Anyways... I bred the filly above to this stallion (arab x forest)


The Arabian AC sire of this horse was not VISIBLY flaxen (though he was chestnut). But that does not say anything about him having that gene, being as its recessive so could be hidden.
This colt is bay, meaning flaxen won't be visible on him regardless of copies. He was also not expected to be flaxen in any way shape or form anyways (Where it's possible, I am just trying to break down the mechanics behind what could be happening for my own sake of trying to figure this out, lol)

They produced this foal


Who appears to be silver. Other that the NAB flaxen chestnut, I can't explain where this silver would have otherwise been introduced (it is a very short and isolated line, and can be very quickly traced back to its AC foundations in case anyone is curious and is wanting to deep-dive). This makes me feel like this strange flaxen gene is in some way linked to the silver gene. I am not saying that it IS the silver gene alone (since that is not known to affect reds) BUT I do think it may have some sort of relationship? In the previous case where I had this, I also got multiple silver horses when breeding the flaxen chestnut to bays. So the silver gene is very clearly present in both of these lines. Whether it is actually linked or just coincidental is my question.

Additionally, here is the sister of the flaxen mare (out of the flaxen NAB AC stallion). She also appears to be flaxen. Her mane has a different undertone to it though. Their full brother did not turn out flaxen (this does not indicate that it is a gender linked trait though, as I have had this color pop up on colts as well. This is just a small sample, and no colts were born with the flaxen color by chance)



In real life, flaxen chestnut is actually only speculated to be a recessive gene. Its not KNOWN to be a recessive gene. There are some other theories, such as it being a gene that has multiple different determining genes that also need to be present. But even with that being said, the Arabians version of flaxen acts in a distinctively recessive way, where as this other color from the NABS does not. This indicates to me that these two colors are somehow distinctive from one another. Throughout some of the other posts, I have also mentioned some of the visible distinctions I have seen.