Talk:Palomino

Tossed the laundry list
Threw out the "laundry list" of famous Palominos. Once these start, they grow exponentially and create edit wars over what is "famous." By the time you have little Susie wondering why her pony Goldie isn't on the list, it's a mess.

If the horse is famous enough to warrant a wikipedia article, then if the named animal isn't mentioned in the text, then create a category:Famous Palominos and put it there. Which is what I am about to do. Montanabw (talk) 17:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Accuracy
This article feels like it was written by the PHBA. Does anyone have any objections to restructuring the article? I'd like to take all the PHBA stuff, particularly as regards what palominos look like, out and replace it with more accurate information that discusses better ways of identifying palominos, and the range of shades. The PHBA would have its own section. Countercanter (talk) 15:01, 23 March 2008 (UTC)


 * LOL! I did the cleanup and rewrite of something even worse!  I DO think that more genetics info should be added and you are the one to do so, but I wouldn't toss what's there, yet.  Let's add first, then, as needed, rewrite and/or subtract.   Go ahead and add a new genetics section, keep the rest of what's there for now, and then maybe while you do your part, I can edit the "popular version," based on what else gets added.  I don't really want to create a separate new article on the PHBA, would prefer to just note the groups in passing.   While you are at it, maybe take a peek at cream gene and consider how much of the genetics stuff should go there first.   (And there was a creme/cream debate, the article was changed from creme gene to cream gene as a result of prior consensus, just FYI...and when it was changed, I was the one who had to go and fix all the wikilinks... ;-P  )


 * The registry standards are a legitimate section to the article in terms of NPOV issues because these folks DO exist and are major players. (Even if true-breeding palominos are a genetic impossibility) What I have run into in other articles (notably Pinto horse) is that the color breed registry folks get really really upset when you try to explain that a color does not make a breed.  And here, we probably have to explain that while palomino color is genetically determined, there are organizations with broader definitions, particularly when, as in the case of one of the two competing Palomino registries in the USA, they don't require a horse to be a genetic palomino! (Such as that Chestnut with flaxen Arab stud that got approved...sigh, don't get me started...!).


 * And no, I don't own a palomino. But I used to. (smile)  Montanabw (talk) 00:58, 24 March 2008 (UTC)  Follow up and now do again.   Montanabw (talk) 00:47, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

New pics on Commons
I've been "shopping" around in Flickr, and came up with a couple of pictures I would like to see here. Pitke (talk) 18:50, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

OK. First horse is a cutie and a sooty palomino. yes. Second horse is almost definitely a dun, not a palomino. Note the location of the white guard hairs, just like a fjord, only not so many as a Fjord. Third and fourth photos are of the same foal. The newborn photo sort of looks apricot, seesm to lighten up when a couple weeks old, probably carries champagne dilution -- if the owner/photographer says "pink-skinned palomino," then I vote for a gold champagne, actually. The whole "some palominos have pink skin and light eyes at birth" especially when the coat lightens but the eyes darken is a CLASSIC definition of a champagne. So, I like photo #1, though not as the lead, the rest are probably not palominos, at least we cannot be sufficiently certain to use them. Montanabw (talk) 22:34, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The foal has very dark eyes to be a champagne, don't you think? The 2 week photo shows something I could identify as dark blue though. Coat lightening from an apricot shade and eyes darkening might be a classic champagne trait, but it also happens in Finnhorse, which in no way can have champagne. I left out some specifications on purpose (out of fear of simply translating the text practically), but Viitanen mentions the apricot shade at birth as a characteristic in Finnhorses, Estonian Horses, Islandic Horses and what she calls "rural" ponies (landrace ponies maybe?). This foal here is born of a QH mare of course, but I was feeling this should be mentioned as an addition to the explanations further below on this talk page.


 * As for the weird-maned horse there, its full body shot shows something that might well be a "dun leg" (the left foreleg), but no other clear dun characteristics. There could be a thin, faint dorsal stripe... This is the only other picture I know to exist of the same horse.


 * That a sooting pattern would leave the topline practically alone and smudge the belly and the legs sounds unlikely, of course. A non-soot smudgy pattern could also be a possibility. This little Welsh sect. A seems to be similarly coloured, and this palomino Finnhorse mare exhibits a bafflingly dark, bottom-heavy shade in her winter photo while having clear colour in her summer one. The horse under discussion could (and I'm not claming she is) be having a darker phase, or "recovering" from such. It also could be young - This gelding, while clearly a palomino, shows extreme colour changes in his youth. Even "the" palomino Finnhorse stallion Ukkosen poika shows some bottom-heavy dark patterning in certain pictures from certain times, and has indisputably grey mane. Pitke (talk) 14:23, 5 December 2009 (UTC)


 * MBW, we have talked about chestnuts and palominos being born with pink skin and light eyes before. I am sufficiently certain that that foal is palomino to use those pictures. Countercanter (talk) 16:51, 5 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Overall, I guess I hesitate to use an ambiguous image when we have unambiguous ones. Whatever that second horse is, it's not cream dilution making that mane so dark.  I'd love to see a pedigree with colors photos of the parents.  The European horse breeds with the gray in their manes can be a puzzlement; to me they do look dun, but they might be sooty -- I'll grant that sooty isn't all the way figured out, nor is silver dapple. And we haven't even started on Rabicano, which can also create those light guard hairs in the mane and tail (there are a number or Bay Arabians that almost have gray-looking manes and tails due to what we call "Rabicano"), I don't even know if Rabicano genetics have been studied at all.  But CC did convince me about the light guard hairs on dun horses being a characteristic, I originally thought their manes were all dark, except for the Fjords, and she beat me over the head until I concluded otherwise (It took a photo of Hollywood Dun It to convince me, but I AM convinced!  LOL!) When it gets weird is when multiple genes all get mixed together.  :-P    Montanabw (talk) 06:12, 6 December 2009 (UTC)


 * The series of photos at sukuposti do have some fascinating things going on. I'd swear you had silver dapple on that one horse were it not for the summer shot.  Absolutely weird.  But as for the QH foal "bear," he looks so chestnut in the interior photos, though I agree that the eyes look dark in some of them. As for the rest, I guess CC and I still have to agree to disagree a little longer on the pink-skinned palomino thing (grin).  I still say there has to be a little something other than cream going on there.  And I have to say I absolutely have never seen a pink-skin, blue-eyed CHESTNUT foal in my life unless it had a blue eye due to a white blaze over the top of it or something, which is unrelated to dilution genes.  (but I admit, few of the chestnut foals I have seen are newborns under one week, and most are primarily Arabians, and so no cream or champagne dilution is possible...).  Montanabw (talk) 06:12, 6 December 2009 (UTC)


 * My experience with palominos and buckskins is, I admit, is also mostly confined to Quarter Horses and half- Arabians, but the foals I have seen are, if anything, lighter at birth and darken with age, not the other way around, and their eyes are dark.  Thanks to CC (grin)  I've been engaging in OR by periodically staring at my palomino 1/2 Arab/Half-warmblood for the whole five months I've owned her, trying to decide if her skin and eyes are at all lighter than those of my dark bays.  She does have brownish-gray hooves, lighter than the black hooves of the bays.  But absent some sort of light meter or something, I cannot honestly say her muzzle and eyes are lighter.  She has visible sootiness on her hindquarters, face and legs, including gaskins and forearms, but none in her very white mane and tail (I should know, I washed her tail a zillion times to get the poop stains out of it when I got her home!).  See Not her most flattering photo.  I have a baby photo of her, and it's online here -- second row, first image, the one labeled "unknown" -- I got the photo with her stuff when I bought her!  LOL!)  She's much darker now as an adult, though almost that light in the winter, shedding off very dark gold in the summer.  But the very cream-colored Quarter Horse mare we once owned also had very dark skin.  And I mentioned threw a half-Arab foal from a chestnut stallion that was even lighter cream than her dam.  But still dark skin, dark eyes.  Ah well, no answers there.  [[User:Montanabw| Montanabw](talk) 06:12, 6 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't know if this occurs in any other breeds but the Finnhorse (logically the much-influenced Estonian Horse could also have it), but silvery grey and greyish mane and tail hair is known to occur in chestnuts and palominos without apparent link to silver dapple or sooty factors. It might be a separate factor altogether, and probably is, since genetics is a funny thing like that. It'd be thrilling if it were a whole new allele for the E locus, with the effect of only allowing for partial forming of black pigment no matter what... Or something. Ah, to be a researcher, and create sources for Wikipedia articles...


 * I'm starting to believe there is a lot of differences between our POVs simply because I, living in Finland, have been surrounded with Finnhorses, Icelandics and ponies (and a number of bay warmbloods), and you live in the USA where thinner-maned breeds (warmbloods) are highly prevalent, and many colours practically found nowhere else are possibilities. On this side of the Puddle, we can have an apricot-coloured, rosy-skinned, blue-eyed foals and see him grow into gleaming golden, white-haired adult, and never have any doubts that he would be a champagne after all :)


 * "Bear" the colt really does look reddish in the first indoors picture (1 day), but we also have to take into account the fact they are indoor photos taken where the lighting is unnatural in best case, and might be reflected from — well, whatever. As for pink-skinned, blue-eyed chestnut foals... just take this little fellow and add minimum expression splashed white :> Or good old apparently-unique-mutation-blue eyes. Also, Viitanen aknowledges your experience and includes a sentence where she claims that in warm-blooded breeds, in most cases, a palomino foal will be born darker than its adult shade. Pitke (talk) 10:53, 6 December 2009 (UTC) <- not sure at all how late it was but please forget this sentence, I WILL need to check it at a better time and definitely NOT sleep-deprived. Pitke (talk) 22:34, 6 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Hm. Well, "warmbloods" in the USA usually means a sport horse, by the way, i.e. the European Hanoverians, Oldenburgers, Trakhners, etc... just so you know.  While technically a "warmblood" could be any breed that originated from a hot blood-cold blood cross, we don't use it that way these days (though we did 30 years ago, go figure).  And I confess I have never seen a Finnhorse!  However, a bunch of Fjords used to live just down the road from me (all bay duns (er "brown duns") and all taller than 15 hands, also, which is interesting, but I digress), plus there are a bunch of Icelandics around, though I don't know the owner particularly well and haven't paid a lot of attention to them (I think the local herd is a remnant of a bunch once owned by the late Liz Claiborne who had her hobby ranch around here and raised them.)  Plus, Shetland ponies are as plentiful as lice, so we have plenty of fuzzy-coated critters around...and chestnuts abound, both in the Arabian and the Quarter Horse, in fact, I think I saw some statistic that there are more chestnut Quarter Horses (called "Sorrels" by the AQHA)  than bays.   Montanabw (talk)


 * But as to color, what laboratories in Europe do DNA color testing and how many people take advantage of it? Has anyone done genetic studies on these Scandanavian breeds?  I know we have a silver dapple test, a pearl test, and a champagne test,  but there is no test yet for the "sooty (gene)" which may be polygenic (CC wrote the article on sooty, check with her on the details).  Nor is there one for flaxen.  And most Palomino foals I have seen are LIGHTER than their adult shade (they often get close to their "baby color" with a winter coat, though, then shed out darker again in the spring...).  To me, that little chestnut foal doesn't look particularly pink-skinned, at least not to the "cremello" level.  Look at his lips, they are dark.  But good folks can differ on what constitutes "light" skin.   Montanabw (talk) 21:25, 6 December 2009 (UTC)


 * About the foal darker/lighter than as adult thing above (s'd over now)- I believe I was veeery tired when I wrote it. I will have to check what Viitanen really said. Pardon my general blundering around :X Pitke (talk) 22:34, 6 December 2009 (UTC)


 * "Warm-blood" here can mean either A), anything that is not pony or draft or "universal type", or B), the light and sporty breeds that are neither hot-bloods or "half-blooded" (breeds originating from draft/hotblood crosses). Pitke (talk) 22:34, 6 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm all but good to say anything about the whole Europe, but I know Finn Horse have been tested for the cream factor, and the silver dapple factor to verify "silver chestnuts". This Finnish lab offers the colour tests for the grey and frame factors. This lab in the UK offers tests for tobiano, the E and A loci, frame, sabino, silver dapple, cream, grey, champagne and pearl. This lab in France also does colour tests, but I cannot find the info about what tests they do. The Finnish Icelandic horse association where I found the links to these pages also lists some labs in the USA so imagine there are only a few labs in Europe that do colour tests for horses. As to how many people do test their horses... At least in Finland it seems that only people interested in colourful horses test their animals. Among the Finnhorse breeders, this would be mainly those who breed Riding or Small type Finnhorses, as understandably enough, the sulky folks don't care about the colour. Anything else than chestnut is rare in the Finnhorse, so people are eager to keep a close track about possible obscure silver bays, all the silver-carrier chestnuts, and anything that might be an obscure cream dilute. Among the Icelandic horse folks, the colours are loved but also thought about as given, and there are whole families of smoky blacks that have probably been mis-identified. "The Commons smoky black Icelandic" comes one of those families. Among any other breeds, possibly excluding the small but colour-loving fanbase of western riding and stock horses, I would believe that horses are tested for colour only when they look odd or when a crop-out black is born or something like that. About any other countries, I could not say... I have two educated guesses though; Sweden has a western boom going on and stock horses are loved to pieces. I imagine they are routinely colour-tested if there's any reason to believe anything out-of-ordinary. In Iceland, they seem to be somewhat more serious about if a horse is a sun-bleaching blach versus smoky black versus seal brown versus whatever. They are serious about having the best Icelandics ever, and are frantically trying to preserve almost disappeared genes such as roan. I imagine they employ colour tests more frequently. Icelandic smoky blacks tend to be devilishly tricky to identify... Pitke (talk) 22:34, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) In the USA, there is no "universal type," though if you went by raw numbers, if there was one, it would be a Quarter Horse! LOL! Good to know the European labs have all the tests ("Frame factor" we call the "Overo Lethal White," test, by the way -- I suspect this won't change until the Paint horse association admits that it's linked to frame, which they are loathe to do.)  This is all kind of a Brave New World, isn't it??? (though with horses and colors, mostly in a good way). Montanabw (talk) 00:46, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I kind of understand why the PtHA isn't too keen to link it to frame - what I've learnt during the past two weeks, frame can be devilishly minimum in the expression and easily camouflage beneath other patterns. But it's still kind of dumb. Even a relatively not-so-scientific approach to the matter, the distribution of a frame stallion's offspring out of frame mares, should be obvious. Pitke (talk) 08:54, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Luckily there is a DNA test for it now. That helps.  Montanabw (talk) 00:45, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Edits
Hi Pitke, your recent round of edits precisely illustrates my point. You described the characteristics of a golden champagne as palomino. Bummer, but that's why we have champagne gene. The book that is your reference may have been published in 2007, but it is already outdated and inaccurate, Which is not fun for you, but there you have it. Some of this new stuff was initially hard for me to swallow too. But science is, well, science. Montanabw (talk) 00:13, 5 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I'll gladly edit it to any length if I can get fresher stuff to cite. This is the best I could find; I tired to search the web but everything was either about the location of the cream allele or the Palomino registries and their horses. Nice for discussing the genetics of the cream factor of course, but the only documentation I could find that actually described the palomino colour more than just "yellow with white hair and mane" was from the 50s. And included the B gene ("chocolate") theory.


 * Viitanen does cover the champagne colours in her book as well, and mentions numerous differences and similarities between the two dilutions.


 * However, my bottom line is that the articles of Wikipedia can never be perfectly up-to-date unless the people doing research begin to update everything according to their peer reviewed findings. What was up-to-date in 2007 is not as outdated than the other sources I could access, and the other options were to either write without citing anything (bad), or not to have nothing at all (quite bad). Pitke (talk) 13:14, 5 December 2009 (UTC)


 * That's why we have Countercanter. Thank god for people with access to a University database of peer-reviewed articles!   Montanabw (talk) 06:12, 6 December 2009 (UTC)


 * That, and my beguiling nature. Countercanter (talk) 14:00, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * You're nicer than me; you put up with me, after all. That's always a plus!  (I had a former boss call me about a friend who applied for a job I once had.  My reference was, "well, they shared an office with ME for two years."  The friend was hired on the spot!)

Color breed issue
I like the additions Pitke made to the color breed registry section. I edited a bit to tighten them up. I found the requirements rather illogical, but oh well. We didn't write them. Tried to phrase them as simply as possible. Thanks for finding the info! I don't think we can really spin these off, though, at least yet. (Am open to debate on the issue, however)  What is frustrating here is that, unlike Pinto horse and Pinto Horse Association of America, which did get successfully split;  take away the color breed section, what remains is so sparse as to be suitable to be merged into the cream gene article, just as we did with cremello and perlino. However, we really cannot merge this article due to the very same color breed registries (there is also the American creme and white horse registry, but it is largely defunct, but I suppose it is a model too...) I know this article really bugs Countercanter, and I kind of see why, but the way I see WP:NOR I also don't really think we can do any more than to just have a hybrid color-and-registry piece given the immense popularity of the palomino registry -- they have shows, national competition, everything. Ah, phooey. Thoughts all??? Montanabw (talk) 00:35, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * A side note on the confusing breed rules of the PHBA: I always thought this means the PHBA will accept the few non-spotted "untypical" appies and extreme minimum (or simply non-spotted) paints and pintos if they are palomino. I'd imagine non-spotted foals are not that rare when combining two heterozygote paints/pintos. Please excuse my dates and similar details, I'm not confident with them and tend to forget the way the date is written in the USA style. I also try to remember the USA spelling, but as I've written more than 10 years the UK way, it sometimes just slips the wrong way. Pitke (talk) 08:46, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

(outdent). Probably true that the minimally expressed animals can count, as both the App and Paint registries do record non-patterned "breeding stock" animals. As for dates, just put in the word for the month instead of the number and we can sort out the rest. I can cope with "8 December 2009." But "colour" is "color" -- the rest we can probably just do cleanup. Montanabw (talk) 00:45, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Caption is a bit much...
''A typical palomino (front). The horse in the background looks like a liver chestnut with a flaxen mane and tail, but coloring could possibly be due to the silver dapple gene. Some color registries may accept both shades as "palomino".''

On this image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Silz_cheval1.jpg (about half way down the article).

Maybe this should just be A typical palomino (front).SeanJA (talk) 01:59, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
 * The caveat is there because some people think the back horse is also a palomino due to the light-colored mane.  Montanabw (talk) 18:23, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

A quick call to Beverley ought to clear that up. 76.236.121.35 (talk) 20:29, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

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