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What color is this...mule?

I was browsing a website that had alot of mules for the mule/hinny page I'm working on and saw this fella I'm confused on his color since I didn't think that double dilutes could be passed since only half of the gene gets transferred, but maby I'm completely off. It did not list the color of his dam and sire. Any thoughts? this is the ranches website

Sara Thu, 03/12/2009 - 22:46

I wouldn't beat yourself up over it -- isn't it rare for the white patterns to express so loudly on a mule? It's not exactly the first thing that would come to mind. :)

Daylene Alford Thu, 03/12/2009 - 22:46

ya'll are just brutal on those smilies :lol:

Looks like a white pattern to me as well. I'm curious though as to what combination might cause this....

CMhorses Thu, 03/12/2009 - 22:52

Hm, from my research on mules, I would have to say possibly Appy and spotted combo. For a tobiano to have an expression like that, even with spotting would be extremely rare.

accphotography Thu, 03/12/2009 - 22:55

I've seen some pretty loud tobianos, but I don't know what would cause so much face white. There is dark pigment in the inner ear though.

CMhorses Thu, 03/12/2009 - 23:05

I had never seen a tobiano that was very loud that only had a tobi gene.
So I suspect at least the donkey spotting gene. The skewing that happens could make the facial white

rabbitsfizz Fri, 03/13/2009 - 06:06

Why would you not just think it was max Sabino???
That is what it would be in a horse, that is what this one looks like....why would it have to be max Tobiano??
Actually, I've never seen a Tobiano that is solid white, not ever!!

*sorry, I've just GOT to use this one, even if it is not appropriate*
:booty
*the devil made me do that*

Songcatcher Fri, 03/13/2009 - 06:56

[quote="rabbitsfizz"]Why would you not just think it was max Sabino???
That is what it would be in a horse, that is what this one looks like....why would it have to be max Tobiano??
Actually, I've never seen a Tobiano that is solid white, not ever!!

*[/quote]
First I'll admit that I have not studied donkeys at all, but do donkeys carry Sabino? Don't Max Sabinos have to be homozygous? Just wondering.

rabbitsfizz Fri, 03/13/2009 - 07:13

I am pretty sure that they do, and we max Sabino is H/Z but we have no way of knowing for sure.
If Donkeys do not in fact have Sabino, this would be one way of finding out!!

CMhorses Fri, 03/13/2009 - 13:33

The main reason I said tobiano and spotting is because the markings, on the foal pictures at least, are typical of the tobiano and spotting crosses.
If you look at this page http://www.stephensranch.com/studs.htm you can see that their spotted jacks had the foals that were nearly white, or completely white.
I've never seen a mule with the typical horse sabino markings, as even ones marked with general 'horse' tobiano are very very rare. Last I looked there were only 4 in the entire AMDS registry that were nearly perfectly marked tobiano.
Donkeys only have two known white patterns,spotting and roaning.There could be different genes that cause the nearly white donkeys and the solid with a blaze and socks donkeys, but it has not been tested yet.

Heres a picture of Juede,notice the skewing of the tobiano pattern.
[img]http://www.geocities.com/muleguru/juede…]

Edit: Heres another example of a mule out of a spotted jack and a tobiano mare.
[img]http://www.stephensranch.com/images/Hun…]

accphotography Fri, 03/13/2009 - 14:13

Well, it's hard to compare them to horses in any way IMO because there are so many differences in their complete genotype. We can say they have sabino, but whatever it appears to be sabino may be completely unrelated. It's just hard to know what's going on in there.

CMhorses Fri, 03/13/2009 - 15:00

That is what I was trying to say. Mules and hinnys do inerit the different colors and white patterns, but they are skewed and never really look like the horse or donkey version of the color.

peruvianpasogal Sat, 03/14/2009 - 20:20

The neighbors silver dilute pony jumped in with my white spotted jack and she had a white mule baby, cute as can be. I will try to get pics of her.

CMhorses Fri, 03/20/2009 - 06:24

Mammoths are really giant, like the size of a large horse or larger I think. Mammoths didn't have as diverse colors as the minis though, they were more of just base colors + roan or greying.
Ooooo I wish there were ivory mammoth donkeys....that would be so pretty.