Silver bay / Chestnut + varnish?

[Arctictea]

Hi, I have a mare I would like some opinions on.

From the beginning she kind of looked like a silver bay:




But then she... varnished? She does not have any spots, but one of her parents are leopard blanket so I suppose it's possible.
And now she could be a chestnut.




(apart from being pregnant she has also put up an well-trained shine, just to make things difficult).

Her parents don't give much help. Mother is chestnut with chestnut-based lineage.
Father has a lot of tricky dilutions, but I think he might be a Silver Amber Cream (+ leopard blanket). If so, both silver bay and chestnut is reasonable.

So what is my lady? Silver bay or chestnut? Varnish or just... glossy in a weird way?

Link

[nyraeia]

So, your foal was definitely born bay and there's no changing that. She's obviously also varnishing. Now she looks chestnut in colour. This means, there's some Appaloosa bronzing going on (which can make black based coats look chestnut). If you look closely, her legs are still a bit darker than her body.

Varnish Roan means she has the "master switch" gene for Appaloosa patterns. Because she has no patterns, I'm fairly sure she's Lplp (dam is homozygous lp if I'm looking at the correct horse) but also patn1patn1 and patn2patn2 (= no Leopard pattern).
So she has the switch but nothing it could have switched on.

Lp = switch for Appaloosa colouring, causes Varnish Roan
Patn1, Patn2 = causing the patterns per se

Edit: Oh, and I'm fairly sure she's also Silver because varnishing is not obvious at birth. So I vote "Silver Bay with Varnish Roan".

Edit 2: Yes, sire is indeed Silver Amber Cream (+ Tiger Eye and blanket).

See people, this is why it's necessary to take gallery pictures from foal age to adult age to take accurate guesses.

[Arctictea]

Awesome! Thanks for the explanation of the leopard gene

[nyraeia]

Glad to help :)