CMHorses mule color question...

Sabino

I believe sabino has not been found to be inherited by mules or hinnys,but I'm not really sure because horse patterns look different in mules/hinnys. To me this just looks like the donkey spotting gene going haywire.
I found another mule thats similar to this one. This one is out of a solid mare and a spotted jack.
[img]http://www.stephensranch.com/images/Dan…]

The one I posted is out of a solid mare who could not possibly carry anything but sabino (and she doesn't even show that she carries that) and what I THOUGHT was a solid jack. You tell me:
[img]http://www.horsegroomingsupplies.com/pi…]

That jack is really hard to judge because hes also roan, but it looks like he has a blaze on his face and possibly some leg white, and that would be donkey spotting in its minimal form.

I do not see leg white or face white or even Roan, for that matter...I see a normally coloured Donkey that is perhaps paler than usual...remeber they all have that Pangare effect??

He just looks like a light red roan to me, he just is not red enough to be sorrel or red dun even. Plus the mule foal even looks like donkey roan.
Something I didn't think about before is the mule foal could be frosted/varnish donkey roan + pangare and not spotted. Frosted and varnish donkey roan isn't very well documented so its hard to judge, also roan could hide white markings in the jack.

Interesting.

I wish donkey colors were better studied. Also remember that roan in donkeys roans the entire coat, including the head and points. I'm pretty sure that the 'frosted' pattern is another type of roan and is unrelated to spotting. I'm off to do a little research about varnish and frosted in relation to roan and spotting.
Edit: Heres a quote from Sponenberg's book
[quote]Roan is very confusing genetically. It is probably dominant in black based colors, although it appears to be recessive in red
based colors. The relationship between roan, frosted, and frosty is not obvious, and has not been well documented. Some of
the difficulty may be in correctly assessing the color of all of these animals. Frosted is probably dominant, and its relationship
to roan is confusing. When any of these roan patterns is combined with spotting the result can be white foals. The white
donkeys, in turn, can produce spots, roans, solids, and whites.[/quote]
I bet that white mule that popped up a while ago was from a roan pattern and spotting.
Donkeys are soooo confusing, and even worse, most people don't correctly identify their color so that makes it even harder to tell what its real color is and then how roan and everything else effect it.

Don't forget, there's something that happens between donky and horse matings that can totally wonkify the resulting foal's pattern...you should see some of the appaloosa x donkey progeny!

Diane

Yea, I was keeping that in mind. Generally certain pattern matings produce similar mules/hinnys; like tobiano mules having usually just high leg white. I just never looked into roaning that much and now that I am I can see how that could effect a mule, and I think that is whats going on with this little guy; frosted roaning gone nuts. And that jack is what I would call frosted roan; too much white to just be pangare and too roaned to be donkey spotting.

Just wanted to let you know, I have now provided the sum total of my entire donkey/mule/hinney colour genetic knowledge in that previous post... :laugh1 :laugh1 :laugh1

Diane

:rofl :laugh1