Wild Bay

Wild bay has a similar phenotype to that of a normal bay, and it's allele (symbolized by A⁺) is found in the Agouti gene.

It is widely believed that the A⁺ allele is dominant to the other alleles (bay, black, and seal bay) in the Agouti gene. However, this has not been scientifically verified, and there have been reports of wild bay horses being produced by two bays. Another idea theorized by some is that the wild bay allele is part of a completely separate gene, not Agouti.

Regardless, it's pretty easy to pick out a wild bay from a normal bay. No, they don't all look mean, wild, and nasty. Instead, the black points on the legs only come up to the pastern (horse equivalent of an ankle) instead of the knee.

Here is a picture of a wild bay Arabian, and below that is a picture of a normal bay Mustang. Spot the difference?

Wild bay Arabian, image by Ealdgyth.

Normal bay American Mustang.

Barn Cats

If you have a barn with any form of leather, hay, or grain, you'll probably have mice. No, I do not hold anything against them personally. It's just that in a barn environment, they'll cause a lot of damage.

Mice also provide a lot of good eating and an excuse to have a cat or two, depending on how many mice there are.

Here are some of the barn cats we have at the stables. Tiggy ( the big orange one) and his mother Miss Kitty (the small gray one) rule the lower barn, while Thomas (chocolate pointed) and Spooky (grey and white) have power in the upper barn. :)

Tiggy!

Miss Kitty, Tiggy's tiny mother.

Spooky! (:

He has really pretty, almost harvest-moon colored eyes.

This is Thomas. I'm pretty sure he's a Snowshoe Siamese.

Annnd, he loves attention. :)

Spirit

Other than Nolia, Spirit is usually the only other horse that comes up to me (sometimes) to munch on yummy grass. Here are some pictures of her. :)

Also, Spirit is a Saddlebred! She shows a lot of characteristics for the breed; such as a long, straight head, flattish croup, long torso, and high-set tail.

Spirit has pretty eyes and a long, thin stripe that makes her look even taller.

In my opinion, she has quite nice conformation. :)

Yikes. If she would let me mess with her mane, I might be able to get the dreadlocks under control. But even then...

Being a buckskin, she doesn't have a broad dorsal stripe (or any at all, for this horse), and she also has some slight silvering in her mane and tail.

Again, you can see her nice conformation.

Dominant White vs Sabino White

Other than a double-cream dilutes and grays, there are also two other patterns/mutations that have the potential to make a horse white colored. These alleles are dominant white and sabino white.

(Also, when I say "sabino", I am referring to the SB1 form of sabino.)

Sabino white is pretty basic - it's an almost-white horse that is homozygous for the sabino pattern.

Dominant white, on the other hand...well, there are eleven twenty different mutations found for it, and each mutation has a slightly different white pattern. As with the sabino nomenclature, each different mutation for DW is labeled with the number following (DW 1, DW 2, and so on).

The differences between how these two alleles look? Don't ask me. I still get it wrong.

What I can tell you, though, is that testing has been done on the DW allele and most horses with this dominant allele are at least 50% white.

Now, I haven't seen either a sabino white or dominant white horse face-to-face before, but I have a feeling the latter are less common since the DW allele's homozygous form is known as embryonic lethal and the foal is aborted before birth.

SB1 x SB1 = 50% heterozygous SB1, 25% homozygous (sabino white) SB1, 25% non-SB1
DW x DW = 50% heterozygous DW, 25% homozygous (lethal) DW, 25% non-DW
DW x non-DW = 50% heterozygous DW, 50% non-DW

Sabino white horse, image by Arsdelicatas on Wikimedia Commons.

Dominant white horse, image by Haase B, Brooks SA, Schlumbaum A, Azor PJ, Bailey E, et al.

Dominant white horse, image by Haase B, Brooks SA, Schlumbaum A, Azor PJ, Bailey E, et al.

Also, the Thorougbred farm Valley View Acres has quite a few pictures of their DW horses, and AnimalGenetic's article about the allele has information about the different genotypes linked to each mutation.

New Foal: Pawnee

Yay, Deceivious' foal is here!

We hadn't known the mare's actual due date as we had bought her already bred, and she had been pasture bred (no knowing when she actually took). Because of that, MiniOwner and I had to remember to check her and be watching her for signs of a soon birth.

Friday morning, MiniOwner told me that the birth would be soon. Usually because horses "don't know" the rules about showing signs of a soon labor, they won't follow them. Of course, similar thing this time - Deceivious had to break that rule by following the rules for normal signs of a close labor - bagging up (a ton; her udder looked similar to that of a milk cow :P), not eating much, lengthening of the vulva, relaxed croup/dock of tail area, shifting weight on the hind legs, and yawning.

Both Friday and Saturday night, I was able to do a foal watch at the stables. My younger sis and I did it with MiniOwner, and HorseyFriend also joined us on Saturday night. The plan? Sleeping in the lounge and checking on the mare every two hours (10, 12, 2, 4, 6, and 8).

As you can probably tell, the mare did not foal out Friday night. Or Saturday night. It was Sunday morning, probably about 15 minutes before 4 AM. Around eleven the previous night, Deceivious had been yawning and the foal had been visibly moving around a lot. A little past that, MiniOwner checked on the mare and noticed that when the mare urinated, the liquid was coming out in such a way as to imply coming up and over the foal.

All of us stayed up another hour or so (no progress on the foaling yet) and then hit the sack. MiniOwner checked at 2 AM, but nothing new. At four, MiniOwner said HorseyFriend and I could go check on the mare, and to call her cell phone if the mare gave birth yet.

HorseyFriend looked through the front left window, didn't see anything, I checked through the right window, and there's a foal on the ground. Yay! :D

After that, it was a mixture of stuff. Calling MiniOwner, watching her dry the foal, give the mare some medicine, put some medication on the foal's navel, give the foal some enema to aid digestion, and taking a lot of pictures.

Anyway, if you read all that, congrats! Here are pictures. :) The first is before labor, the next ones are taken 45 minutes or so after the birth, and the outside ones were taken when the foal was about seven hours old.

A couple hours before labor.

The foal laying on the ground (and the afterbirth).

Drying the foal.

Standing up. :) 

Aha! She finally found it. 

Oh hi. :D 

Running with mommy!

What you doing? 

And let's RUN back to mommy!

She is so adorable. :)

You can kinda see the dam's blue eye in this shot.

And, nice clean trailer to return to. :)

Anatomy: Horns

No, I'm not talking about cattle here. Horses do really have horns! They are just...not the normal type of horns. :)

The type of horns that horses do have are technically "frontal skull bosses". Or you can just call them horns. Either way.

Certain horse breeds (and also individual horses) have more prominent horns than others. Nolia, for example, has larger horns than Spirit (the buckskin).

Here are pictures of where and what a horn is. :)

Foals - Satin

Satin was a mini filly born last year on either June 24, or a couple days following that. She is Angel's half-sister, as they had the same dam (Babe, a silver bay tobiano). Her sire was Pepper, the buckskin sabino stud that we lost last year.

Combining all the alleles that Satin's parents carried, she could have (not did) inherited the cream, tobiano, sabino, and silver alleles. Being as both her parents were bay-based (buckskin and silver bay), it isn't a surprise that Satin herself is a bay. It is a surprise, though, that she didn't inherit either the tobiano or sabino allele. Ah well.

We won't be selling her because she's a Pepper baby. Next year we'll start showing her, and once she's done with that she'll be added to the breeding stock. :)

Here are some pictures of her a couple days after she was born. :)

Images by Theresa Hautala, used with permission.

Oh yeah. Aren't I cute.

Mhm. She really must have been thinking that she's queen of the muck pile. :P

Awww. :)

A slightly better shot of her conformation.

Splash - A Frame Overo

Splash is a Pintabian (Paint x Arab) mare that is absolutely stunning. She is a middle-aged horse that is ridden English and is very, very sweet and gentle. The one thing that makes her not the perfect horse? She is in heat. All. The. Time. :P Well, of course except when the vet comes to see why she's in heat all the time.

Anyway, she's a chestnut frame overo. The characteristics for frame overo include a heavily-marked face, at least one solid leg, a solid mane and tail, no white crossing the topline, and lacy, horizontally-orinted patches. Basically, they're wild colored horses. Also, it isn't uncommon for them to have blue eyes. :)

However, there is a risk to this gorgeous mutation as far as breeding. And because the frame allele is hypostatic to a couple other alleles (such as tobiano), it can be even trickier to safely breed horses of this color.

Here is Splash after a schooling show I went to earlier this year. :)

Nom nom nom. Don't we all love hay? 

Pretty blue eye. 

Here ya go - the feminine version of Hidalgo. :)

Finished Clipping on Angel

Last Saturday, MiniOwner and I finished clipping up on Angel after what we started on Friday! I just did the easy stuff - getting the majority of the hair length off using the variable clippers again. MiniOwner was the one to use the finishing clippers to get the hair even shorter, as well as get more technical about stuff.

The result? This. :)

(Also, I did get some pictures with MiniOwner's real camera, but don't have those yet. I'll upload them when I can.)

Standing in the cross ties while being clipped. The hair-length difference from the draft versus finishing clippers is pretty noticeable.

Giving Angel a break between the clipping and a quick bath.

Clipping on Angel

Today I was able to do a couple things for the first time ever!

First, MiniOwner showed me how to do a bridle path on Buster (he's one of the best to learn on for stuff like this!), and then I finished up most of it. A bridle path is a clipped section of mane that's closest to the head. Usually for a Western-style horse, the length of the bridle path is the length of the horse's ear. For English and driving horses, it's about the length of the ear and a half (so ear x 1.5).

Anyway, it was really easy. I didn't do the hard parts (right next to the forelock and right next to the longer mane), but it was good that I learned. :)

That (where the front section of mane is clipped) is a bridle path.

The second thing I learned was how to body clip! Even though this is my second year of being around the stables, I had never done it (mainly because it is somewhat complex and Angel used to throw a HUGE fit about being clipped).

I was using the variable clippers, which can be set for different speeds. They were pretty heavy and big, but it actually was pretty easy! At first when MiniOwner was showing me how to do it, we had to cover Angel's eye on that side to keep her from freaking out. After a while, though, I just did my thing and she was really good about it. :)

The main thing when clipping is to clip with the hair, and try to keep it streamlined. Luckily for me, I was just performing the draft for the final clipping (which I won't be doing). I did a pretty good job for my first time on her barrel and hindquarters, but her flanks were tricky.

Also, no, I'm not done clipping her. It's just that I only had 40 or so minutes this morning and I didn't have time to finish. Tomorrow morning, though, the plan is to finish clipping her. :)

Anyway, here are the pictures. :)

The un-clipped side.

Her side. At least when she's outside, the streaks aren't quite so noticeable! 

Isn't the difference in coloring (for both the brown and the countershading dorsal stripe) interesting? :)

This is where I could've been a bit more careful!

Toy Toy after MiniOwner's clipping :)

She is so cute. :)

Updates Won't Be Daily No More

After thinking about it, I've realized that whoever actually reads this does not need to be bombarded by a post every 24 hours. Ergo, I move to publish a post every two days unless something major is happening.

Any objections? I doubt it, but if you strongly object to this movement, please say so in the comments. Thanks!

Also, this blog is almost to 2.5k views. Yayness!

Nolia

Early last week I was able to go in the field with the little camera and get pictures of horses and horse whorls. I think how I'll do this is write up some separate posts for each horse, and then also update the whorl post (or make a whole new one) when I have more time. Sound good? (:

So, this is Nolia's post. Here are some pictures of her. :)

Got an itch!

Oh hi. If I walk up to you, while you pet me?

Nom nom nom.

Pretty girl. :)

This is the view I have after she comes up to me. :P This tells me she wants me to pet and scratch on her. 

Brushed out mane :D

Even though she's a Saddlebred, she does have feathers!

Nolia's eye

What she looks like from the ground up.

So I had just wanted to see how well she would show me her teeth. For the first time, she did really good at not trying to eat me! And for a horse, she has really clean and healthy teeth. :)