Tobiano Patterns - Information and open discussion

[redster]

Hey there! Don't know if this gal is helpful to anything or not, but I'll link her here just in case.

Her dam's line carries small socks, but her sire should be from before the To gene was released. So, maybe she's a fluke or error of some kind, but she could also make looking at the "spillover" theory of white markings a little more complicated.

Tonic

[Baranduin Brewster]

I have seen on a few horses, Turks in particular when crossed with NAB and bred to pure (4 gens). They will mostly come out with just socks and the occasional facial markings, and a few will sport just a tiny sliver of pinto markings on their back.

Not sure if its relevant, but thought I'd put it out there...see if anyone has seen similar things.

[Tjigra]

Patterns migrate
So far I'd noticed that the white expands or contracts, but stays more on less on the same place of the horse (like if you breed two horses with socks, the foal will have socks or stockings, but no other markings). Now I bred my pre-tobiano era mare to an AC Tarpan with a star. The resulting baby has just a small white on one coronet.
Eddie C

[Silverine]

Patterns migrate
So far I'd noticed that the white expands or contracts, but stays more on less on the same place of the horse (like if you breed two horses with socks, the foal will have socks or stockings, but no other markings). Now I bred my pre-tobiano era mare to an AC Tarpan with a star. The resulting baby has just a small white on one coronet.
Eddie C

I've found this as well with the minimal tobiano expressions. However so far my experiments with the larger patterns have not shown the same migration. They instead seem to follow more of the 'overflowing cup' model of the leopard patterns. This could just be the horses I'm working with, or just coincidental with the outcomes I've gotten, but I wanted to mention it.

[Silverine]

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Beware! Really long post! If you quote it, please don't quote the whole thing.

Current experiment results:

I've been continuing breeding my tobianos and wanted to share the breeding results with everyone.

First, a familiar face. My Gold Dun Tobiano mare has had two new foals from different stallions. Here she is, just for reference:



I bred her to a Smoky Cream Tobiano NAB stallion that I picked up from the AC. Again she gave me a foal (this one a Classic Cream Tobiano) with a pattern that looks like a mix of hers and the sire's.







I then bred her with a bay AC-descended (both parents were AC horses) Belgian displaying tobiano markings. This pairing gave me an Amber Champagne Tobiano foal with less white than either parent. I'm waiting for a future foal from this pair before I try to hypothesize about what this means.








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Now for a 'new' face. I've actually had this mare for a while, but hadn't posted about her on this thread yet. She is a Smoky Black Tobiano AC NAB. She's had quite a few foals and I will try to go through all of them. Here she is:



The first stallion I bred her with was a very pretty Gypsy Vanner with quite a bit of white. I was hoping to combine his large amount of white with her facial marking. The foal had a much larger white patch than his mother but lacked the facial white.







I then bred her to a mixed NAB stallion that had quite a bit of face white, again hoping for face coverage. The foal this time was Brown Dun Tobiano that did have facial white, but simply an exact copy of his mother's.







Another cross hoping for more face white. Another copy of the mother.







Another face-white attempt, an accidental Abyssinian, and some slight success.







And her most recent foal - a cross with an AC Arabian to see what sort of white I would get. I ended up with a solid foal. She is currently re-bred to the same stallion to see if she can throw white with him, or if all of their foals will be solid.








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Another new face, yet again an AC NAB.




I first bred her with the Gypsy stallion from above and ended up with a cute Brown Dun Tobiano.




Her second foal was also a Brown Dun Tobiano, from the same mixed NAB with face white posted above. This little one had a nice little bit of nose cover.




For her next foal I paired her with a paint stallion with a very nice, very large patch of white. The foal came out with a nice mixture of the two patterns.







And finally I crossed her with an AC Prze just to see what would happen. They popped out a solid foal. I've rebred her to the same stallion to see if she continues to throw solid with this stud.








And that's it for now. I'll post more results later.

(*For the record, any solid AC studs used in this were studs adopted after tobiano genes were added to HWO.)

[BlackOak2]

It does seem like the markings versus the To patterns are two separate things. Although it does also seem like the To patterns can cover anywhere the markings cover, but perhaps the markings are restricted to legs and face?

By the way, I have noticed that marked belgian's produce offspring that aren't all too willing to spread the white. But I have no proof of this.

[Silverine]

It does seem like the markings versus the To patterns are two separate things. Although it does also seem like the To patterns can cover anywhere the markings cover, but perhaps the markings are restricted to legs and face?

By the way, I have noticed that marked belgian's produce offspring that aren't all too willing to spread the white. But I have no proof of this.

My gold dun girl just had a baby by the same stallion that has more white than her sire (if only by a single sock). Still nothing super impressive, but shows progress at least. I'm going to see what happens when I breed the filly to her brother when she's older.

[Nazarach]

My ArabxNAB mare (I'm pretty sure no To-carriers are in her parentage) and a fairly covered To NAB got me this filly with a sock a lot higher than the sire but lacking all other white areas. So To can migrate in one 'area' (if the legs are part of the white areas) and enlarges only it?

the dam


the sire


their foal

[Avrina]

My ArabxNAB mare (I'm pretty sure no To-carriers are in her parentage) and a fairly covered To NAB got me this filly with a sock a lot higher than the sire but lacking all other white areas. So To can migrate in one 'area' (if the legs are part of the white areas) and enlarges only it?

the dam


the sire


their foal

Unfortunately I don't have much time to go into extreme detail along with examples since I have to leave for work in about 20 minutes, but I'll give some quick explanations and when I get back from work I'll give a more in depth finding of what I've found along with examples.

If you breed that resulting foal to another Tobiano marked horse you will have a chance of getting a foal with larger white patterns. You can even do this with a pair of horses that only have the stockings. By having the stockings that means they now carry the To gene and that they can have a chance of producing a paint colored foal. Breeding that foal back to a solid colored horse will not produce a painted horse in almost all cases. (I have yet to see it happen personally, but anything could possibly happen.)

However if you get a foal with paint markings, it will mostly be what I call static or semi permanent markings. These are markings that occur in non natural Tobiano horses and generally will continue on down their lines. So far the more random patterning of white areas only occurs in AC NABs and Shetlands and will continue to occur in them so long as you never interbreed a non To carrier (I messed up my first batch of NABs doing this)

These static patterns can be mixed which gives some illusion of random white patterning, but it will never be quite like the true random white patterns of AC horses.

Still a bit of a long explanation and there is more I can go over with examples, but I gotta go!

[BlackOak2]

It does seem like the markings versus the To patterns are two separate things. Although it does also seem like the To patterns can cover anywhere the markings cover, but perhaps the markings are restricted to legs and face?

By the way, I have noticed that marked belgian's produce offspring that aren't all too willing to spread the white. But I have no proof of this.

My gold dun girl just had a baby by the same stallion that has more white than her sire (if only by a single sock). Still nothing super impressive, but shows progress at least. I'm going to see what happens when I breed the filly to her brother when she's older.

It would certainly be interesting if the markings and patterns were controlled by two separate gene sets. That way, even though they're still linked to the To gene, we'd have 'real' markings. I'm happy we have paints, but I'm not fond of the fact that socks can turn into full-sized body splashes.