Smokey brown & frosting

Yes, it's fairly common in Exmoor ponies go have a look at them. ;-) ....he's looking good BTW.

Thank you! I tried to get a body shot but he followed me when I backed away from him to take the picture lol. I'll go check them ponies 'em out.

One of these days you'll just have to test him for brown. LOL

lol I know. But for now I just believe all of you when you tell me he is. 8-) Easier and cheaper that way :lol:

There is no test for brown at this time. :smile: . Pet DNA offers a questionable test for seal brown which is may be genetically distinct from brown. Brown is hypothesized to be a result of sooty overpowering agouti, while seal brown is thought to be a homolog to A^t which causes the black and tan look in mice and dogs. It is a mutation of agouti that is basically broken.

I have never heard a horse referred to as smokey brown, always as sooty buckskin before. Is it called that in other areas? I think the light hair is a combination of a few factors. The first is that he is young and still probably has lots of baby hair still left in his mane. The second being the fact that he is a bay, and the agouti gene can turn off pigment production for all pigments so it often causes frosting in black manes and tails anyways. Combing the diluting effect of creme with the additional diluting effect of agouti can make pigment more prone to damage from sun. So any number of things could be going on here but I would think the biggest thing is just youth. Hope that helps!

Are you saying the seal brown test is genetically distinct from brown or it may be?

They have not said what the seal brown test is, they refuse to publish anything. :roll: But looking at other species and even just at how sooty itself works it seems logical that seal brown is genetically district from just a dark brown colored horse. It is in rats and mice anyways and it would explain A LOT.

Have you read through the seal brown thread Ammit?

http://forum.equine-color.info/viewtopi…" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Welcome to the forum BTW! Seeing you here reminded me to check my hajinc horses =)

Thank you, and yes man is that one a doozy.

There was much talk about sooty on that thread so I think I should clarify my post. It seems (by word of several researchers any ways) that sooty is of course not a gene but some sort of poly-genomic darkening trait, under the catch all of sooty. So what I am saying in a round about way is that brown seems to be a darkened sort of bay and that seal seems to be a homolog to black and tan found in other animals, so two genetically distinct processes going on.

I think there is two different sorts of dark bay too- the At seal analgous with black and tan and the dark sooty bay possibly analogous with melanism (Es or Ed in small animals such as rabbits) which is dominant to E. I think this is different again to the sooty seen in ee horses. (Rats don't have At unless some lab has them somewhere and hasn't told anyone! They don't have extension mutations either for some odd reason although there is a colour that might be Ed but might also just be a looky-like).

Really!? Now that I think about it I have never seen a black and tan rat only in mice. I have been doing mouse research (with the occasional rat look up since they have so many similar color characteristics). Rats have so many things going on it never occurred to me that A^t might be mice only. I saw your mention of melanism in the brown thread and actually looked it up and bookmarked a few articles about it for later reading. It is a trait I have not seen before since we do not talk about it in horses and I am really eager to learn more about it. It could be a viable solution.

Forgot to include a tail pic the other day...
[img]http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r147…]

And here's how it looked 2 months ago
[img]http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r147…]

[quote="Dogrose"]I think there is two different sorts of dark bay too- the At seal analgous with black and tan and the dark sooty bay possibly analogous with melanism (Es or Ed in small animals such as rabbits) which is dominant to E. I think this is different again to the sooty seen in ee horses. (Rats don't have At unless some lab has them somewhere and hasn't told anyone! They don't have extension mutations either for some odd reason although there is a colour that might be Ed but might also just be a looky-like).[/quote]

Hmm..... In my black coppers (chickens) there is a melanizing effect that's seperate (I think) from the found Ml (Melanizer) that turns my black breasted reds with a birchen base to solid black if I'm not careful, but some is required for show colors or they'll have too much red. It sounds very similar to sooty.... Not a perspective I'd related to before, but now I'm looking at it in a whole new light....

Well if that's the belief, then the belief must also be that the seal brown test is hogwash as everything that would have been considered "sooty" before is testing as seal brown. ;)

Aren't there sooty bays that have tested negative for At? I've not been following it all so have probably missed chunks.

I do not believe that data has been released or such a thing has ever been stated. All they said is that horses who appear to be seal brown are testing seal brown, so unless you have an exact chart of what they are considering seal it would be impossible to make that statement. We simply do not know what that test is showing.

[quote="Ammit"]I do not believe that data has been released or such a thing has ever been stated. All they said is that horses who appear to be seal brown are testing seal brown, so unless you have an exact chart of what they are considering seal it would be impossible to make that statement. We simply do not know what that test is showing.[/quote]

So true and as we have already found recently with the non looking Champagne horse posted, they are going to be exceptions to all these rules - we just don't know enough yet and nothing is set in concrete, there are too many horses in the world to test them all.

I'm saying that based on finding a good number of horses who I would have emphatically called sooty bay based and then finding out they tested positive for seal brown. These two are good examples:

(Owned by Leah Patton)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v12/6…" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

(Horse on the right, photo credit is I believe Dun Central Station, who posted it originally)
http://tdmequinedesign.com/tempweb/Indi…" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Here is something Dun Central Station put together of tested seal browns:
http://images.yuku.com/image/jpeg/17136…" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That last list i would have said all of them looked more seal then bay with sooty IMHO.

1, 2 and 8 to me look like they could have been bay, especially 8. Those don't throw me as much as the individual mares I posted though.

[quote="accphotography"](Owned by Leah Patton)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v12/6…" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

(Horse on the right, photo credit is I believe Dun Central Station, who posted it originally)
http://tdmequinedesign.com/tempweb/Indi…" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
[/quote]

Yeh I probably would have called those two sooty bay, especially the two mares pic. I would have expected the one on the left to be brown, not the one on the right! The last one you posted of the pictures all together, look more like browns though?

The mare on the left is the dam of the mare on the right... and the sire is tested smokey black (and the mare is tested agouti hetero). :mrgreen:

[quote="Ammit"]There is no test for brown at this time. :smile: . Pet DNA offers a questionable test for seal brown which is may be genetically distinct from brown. Brown is hypothesized to be a result of sooty overpowering agouti, while seal brown is thought to be a homolog to A^t which causes the black and tan look in mice and dogs. It is a mutation of agouti that is basically broken. [/quote]
So you're saying that you would classify Sooty Bay as Brown, and then the lighter point black horses as Seal Brown? I'm just a little confused, because I always considered sooty and bay two separate things. Because sooty is thought to be polygenic, so would it even be possible to test for that?...well I guess it would be if you knew what you were looking for. Now I think I confused my self more.

[quote="Dogrose"]Rats don't have At unless some lab has them somewhere and hasn't told anyone! [/quote]
If there were such a thing, that lab could probably fund a years worth of research if they sold them to rat fanciers :ymdaydream: There is quite the rat circle here in FL that I'm part of. And you'd be amazed at how much money some of us will pay to fly a rat in.

It's been close to a year since last I talked to any researcher about brown, and basically they were finding that Brown horses didn't have a defined color when compared to other colors. There were tested horses which appeared Bay and others that appeared Black. Now I don't know what percent of those horses were influenced by sooty or not, and I know some of them were dilutes.

I'm sure you guys have already seen this article, but just in case you haven't http://www.petdnaservicesaz.com/BrownPa…" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

ACC you know I still have not quite got my head around Brown, and I still find some of the testing questionable, but I have seen the "rules" applied to too many now to question Brown existing. The first mare in the pictures Danni reposted looks exactly like a Cob mare I used to own, and that I described as "Chocolate" as she quite obviously failed to fit in a definite box (this is back when the Dinosaurs ruled, so no testing) the second mare looks to be typical Brown, by your definition, ie Dark Bay + obvious nose muff. Both these mares have tested At?
However, you cannot say (well, you can but I think you will be proven wrong!) that [i]all[/i] Sooty Bays are Brown....and what about Sooty Buckskins?
Some (Minis now, sorry, I see most testing in Minis) Sooty Buckskins have tested At (so what are they a Brownskin? Seriously, we need a new term, here) but some have tested negative for Brown, so they are genuine Sooty Buckskins.
So, thus, there [i]must[/i] surely, be Sooty Bays??

I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to see these "sooty buckskins" that tested positive for At and ESPECIALLY love to see the sooty buckskin that tested negative!! Even one example of a sooty buckskin who tested negative for At would make my week!!

You're asking me a question I can't answer. I am completely and totally confused about sooty at this point. I do NOT think that everything that seems darker than it should be is sooty though. I think some just have a dark base, I think some are actually brown based, and I think some are likely sooty. But to be honest, that sooty looking buckskin mare that tested 'Ata' totally threw me for a loop and had me questioning everything I had previously believed about sooty.

However... I can see a possible (maybe?) difference between these two (the first brown based, the second bay based):

http://tdmequinedesign.com/tempweb/Indi…" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://tdmequinedesign.com/tempweb/Sain…" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Oh and brownskin is used sometimes along with brown buckskin, but it seems the most common term for a brown base with cream is smokey brown.

I've gotta get new pics of Whiskey for y'all. He's getting lighter and lighter on his shoulders/barrel...I rubbed him today and discovered that he is shedding off what's left of the dark hair, not fading.

As far as terminology goes, I always think of him as a smokey brown and that's what I call him on forums, but around here no one knows what a brown is lol, not even my vet knew, so to the folks here down south I call him a brown buckskin. They grasp that term much easier.

Took new pics today. Please ignore the horrible clipper marks on the left side of his neck lol...it was worse, I touched it up a little to blend them as well as I could.
[img]http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r147…]
[img]http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r147…]
[img]http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r147…]
[img]http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r147…]
[img]http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r147…]
[img]http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r147…]
[img]http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r147…]

He looks sooooo brown based.

I see seal brown as the more 'all over' brownish look with more of a chocolate/yellowish tone and a pangare like effect. Sooty bay on the other hand I see more in the red bays with distinct points but a dappled/sootyish look to the coat. Most of the tested 'At' horses I have seen (including the posted ones) seem to stick by that. I would find it hard to accept that sooty can cause chocolate palis and 'black' chestnuts not affect bay as all sooty bays are brown. Has anyone tested for At in dark chestnuts? any chance it could have an affect on the shade of other colours?

I am also still waiting for published papers on At though, is looking persuasive with pictures ect but I can't bring myself to back the concept fully without seeing a published paper.

[quote="rabbitsfizz"]
Some (Minis now, sorry, I see most testing in Minis) Sooty Buckskins have tested At (so what are they a Brownskin? Seriously, we need a new term, here) but some have tested negative for Brown, so they are genuine Sooty Buckskins.
So, thus, there [i]must[/i] surely, be Sooty Bays??[/quote]

Well, I'm convinced that Bubba's a sooty bay. He's too bay to be brown but has "black highlights" that 'drip' down from his top.

Diane