Quote:
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Originally Posted by Sightseek
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"So where does the confusion between grey and roan in the TB breed come from? From the American Jockey Club. Here is their definition of the two colors:
"Gray: The majority of the coat of the horse is a mixture of black and white hairs. The mane, tail and legs may be either black or gray, unless white markings are present.
Roan: The majority of the coat of the horse is a mixture of red and white hairs or brown and white hairs. The mane, tail and legs may be black, chestnut or roan, unless white markings are present."
What that means in a nutshell is that the JC terms black-based greys to be greys and bay- or chestnut-based greys to be roans. It's a matter of semantics, technically, but it's confusing to those familiar with color genetics. Most people understand there is a definite genetic and physical difference between grey and roan. The JC is happy just to lump them together despite the fact that true roan is not found in the breed.
*The Catch A Bird Exception: The only exception to the statement that there are no true, dark-headed roan TBs has cropped up very recently. In 1982, a very unusually marked Thoroughbred was born in Australia named Catch A Bird. He looks like a bay horse with white brindling, the opposite of the dark lines seen on "normal" brindles. Stranger still, as a stallion, Catch A Bird has produced four offspring that appear to be true, dark-headed roans, indicating that Catch A Bird carries a one-time genetic mutation that has produced roan. As far as I know, none of the 4 "roan" foals, Odd Colours (1992 mare), Slip Catch (1993 mare), Goldhill Park (1994 horse), and Red Noble (1996 gelding), have been tested to see if they carry the roan gene, but they certainly exhibit the typical roan phenotype. Please note that these four horses appear to be the only true roan TBs in existence. All other horses registered as roan or grey/roan worldwide are actually greys."