HGG Community Forums

Sweet, that will answer half the next 40 questions!
edit:
Well, 39, anyways.
None of the examples shown under the bay gene (ASIP) have that spotting, while examples of the Leopard (TRPM1) shows one horse with it.

That's called "dappling"? It's very pretty. Is there a gene that controls it at all? I didn't see one (yet) in the pages in the link you gave me but I've only wandered through several.

The + is wild bay, which is the most dominant of the 4 alleles of the bay gene.
All of the bay genes require a dominant extension E in order to be expressed. if the horse is ee, it will be red (chestnut) based and the bay genes have no effect on its color.
One copy of wild bay will always be expressed no matter what the other allele is. It restricts the black points to the lower leg around the fetlock:

Oct5 ExPrefHomSty 7
The next allele in order of dominance is regular bay, which shows as A in the gene test. With one copy of this allele and any other except +, the black will extend to above the knee and hock:

May10 ExPro 2
Next is brown, t in the gene test. All of the bay alleles act by restricting the black to the points (taking black off of more or less of the body). Brown is the weakest of them and is different when heterozygous with a than when homozygous. Heterozygous brown t/a removes very little black from the body and always results in the color name being "brown":

Feb29 TBN 2
Homozygous brown is lighter, and requires at least one sooty gene to class as "brown"
Nov30 9753492 Without sooty a homozygous brown looks like a regular bay with only a slight darkening along the upper barrel, and so has "bay" as its color name.

8428526
The last allele is black a in the gene test. It is completely recessive to all of the others and produces a solid black horse when homozygous:
Mar17 ExPerf 8

Dapples show up on quite a few colours, silver and chinchilla show them well, and darker pigment contrasts caused by DP, S+ on bays and buckskins can show up dapples beautifully too

Classic Champagnes sometimes have dark dapples, which is really cool.
The last two have other dilution genes as well as the champagne.


Dusky Shadow


112919 Ch Sps 4


Express


10865640

@Silverstar S+ doesn't show up on plain Blacks, the lighter colouring on this one is from the ND1:


2gB 8765142

To further elaborate on wild bay (not expecting you to read all this now, but if you're interested bookmark it on the forum or your browser):

Wild bay looks very different depending on sooty and Dp. And unlike on any other color, those two alleles (Ssty & Dp) don't have the same effect, or even a cumulative effect. Basically E A+ is just an oddball of a base color. It also looks very different with cream.

No sooty OR Dp: very light, similar to SS classic bay but with very low points.

MG Papa Dont Preach LO

Het sooty, no Dp: sometimes looks like SS, sometimes a little more orange-y, like this guy.

UBW Rad2TheMax Au20

Hom sooty, no Dp: very dark chocolate bay!

Call Me Ms LO

As far as I can tell, any horse with one or two copies of Dp, no matter what's at sooty, can be a bright cherry red, like the Cherry Drop rank special. But it seems more common with either hom Dp or het Dp/hom sooty. The others seem to tend towards more orange than red.

het Dp, no sooty: usually pretty light & orange

Lord Byron LO

het Dp, het sooty: this one's pretty bright!

Panacea Touch

het Dp, hom sooty: tends to look like hom Dp.

2 Ace Of Hearts LO

hom Dp- sometimes a bright orange, but usually true cherry red. (If it's not as red as you like, try rerolling.)

Tabasco 2 Blue

Bonus, just because it's kind of an odd color.
No Dp: hom sooty buckskin (E/? A+/? Cr/C):

1 Felix Felicis S

I really appreciate the pictures, I wouldn't have a clue what you meant otherwise. I really appreciate your time and effort to sort me out.