Greys

[charliedales]

Hi all
am eternally dreaming of breeding from susie lol, who has so far had one black colt and one black filly. is it possible to narrow down to particular colour and/or odds of getting filly/colt? This would be second to safe and responsible breeding of course!
Nicolax

[cadeby]

The only way to even attempt to breed for a specific colour is to know the genetic make-up of the sire and dam's coat colour. Several UK labs can test for this. They need a sample of mane/tail follicles and the test is priced around £17.50.

If you specifically want to breed for a grey, at least one of the parents must be grey. If you use a homozygous grey stallion (GG) you are guaranteed a grey foal. If the stallion is only heterozygous for grey (Gg) you only have a 50% chance of a grey foal, and you might even get a bay foal from a black mare if the stallion carries an agouti gene (A).

An example of this is with two of Nipna's foals born this year, both to Dartdale Grey Bobbie II a grey stallion. Nipna Herb Robert (Herb) is grey whilst his half brother Nipna Huckleberry (Trevor) is bay. Both are out of black mares.

However, if your mare is heterozygous grey (Gg) and you mate her to a heterozygous grey stallion (Gg) you will have a 75% chance of getting a grey foal.

Hope that helps

If you are adamant you want a grey it would be worthwhile speaking to Jo Ashby because she would know which of the current grey stallions have only produced grey stock and are therefore likely to be homozygous for grey.

Regarding sex, statistically it should be a straight 50:50 chance of a colt or filly but some stallions seem to throw more of one particular sex. For example Lowhouses Black Magic owned by Nipna throws predominantly fillies. My boy Thornville Pride keeps giving me colts There are also differences in the motility of male versus female sperm and longevity of the sperm so timing of covering can theoretically make a difference (although this has never worked for me!).

Good luck if you do decide to put your mare in-foal. As you say yourself, a happy, healthy foal, true-to-type is more important than colour anyway

[charliedales]

Thank you for that brilliant reply, makes complete sense of it for me ;D