Not the most fabulously flattering photo of Viscacha but quite an interesting one... As her foal coat is coming out Viscacha is clearly roan. Now Arrayan's breeder Numa said she would go roan based on her very first foal photos at hours old. Honestly? I didn't see it!! So Viejo you were right!Now that means that Arrayan had three foals this year and three are roan and I find that fascinating. Obviously its not a huge sample to base any predictions on but I have always wondered if Arrayan could be homozygous roan. It was always thought that homozygous roan horses were lethal in the embryonic state, i.e. they simply didn't exist but there are cases of Hancock Quarter Horse stallions that had 100 - 150 foals all of which were roan...
This is quite a good short article - Roan Genetics
Well Arrayan's sire, dam and all the siblings I've seen photos of are roan and his foals are all roan so far so as yet it could be a possibility. There is no test for Roan at this time so we will just have to wait and see how his next crop of foals turn out and in the meanwhile it will be interesting to what shade Viscacha ends up!
1 comment:
Fascinating article you linked to about roan genetics - I find horse color genetics fascinating.
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