Breeding Time

It's already that time of year again! Time to plan for next year's foals.

I fortunately am not (and won't ever be) *there* when...everything happens (:P), but I do get to know who's being bred to who. Which to me is quite exciting, for I can think about foal color possibilities!

To Buster we'll be breeding all four of the mares: Tess, Flicka, Stylish, and Royale.

Tess is a tiny gray mare that carries the dun allele. She's either a bay dun or a black dun - I'm not sure which yet. Flicka is a tobiano-splash black silver dapple. Stylish is the mare I worked today; a chestnut tobiano-sabino, and Royale (the new mare!) is a Welsh-type palomino.

From Tess we could get a variety of colors. She's had black-based foals before; it's possible that she could have a bay-based foal, as well as a chestnut-based foal since she's going to Buster. The dun and cream alleles are also present.

There are almost endless possibilities with Flicka. The silver, cream, tobiano, splash, extension, and black alleles are all there. It'd be awesome if the foal was bay-based, because that would tell us that Buster is Aa for Agouti.

Stylish with Buster is pretty basic. They are both chestnut-based (ee), so it will have to either be a chestnut, palomino, chestnut sabino, chestnut tobiano, chestnut tovero, palomino sabino, palomino tobiano, or palomino tovero (if we are lucky).

And then there's Royale, the solid palomino! Her to Buster means 50% chance palomino, 25% chance chestnut, and 25% chance of a cremello foal.

Next year will be very busy foal-wise (four foals compared to the one we had this year). I'm excited. ^_^