Horse Color Genetics: Graying Out

Review: E=black, A=bay, G=gray, LP=leopard complex, Rn=roan

I know I've talked a little bit about gray in the past, but I thought I would bring it up again after some interesting Facebook genetics topics. Several people on that forum have asked whether their foal will gray out. If one parent is gray, then there is a 50/50 chance of graying out. The main question is: how do I know if my foal will go gray eventually?

When foals are first born, sometimes there is no way to tell. Here are a couple signs that they will gray out.

Some foals will have 'goggles'. This is a fairly certain way of knowing. The little guys below have goggles.

Some foals are born with little white flecks already in their coat; I don't know if I'll be able to find any good pictures of this.

I just learned that black foals who are born jet black usually gray out, while a black foal who will stay black is sort of a mousy grayish color. Compare the black foal above, who will gray out but is very black, to the sort of dingy color of the black below.

Foal coat colors are often misleading. When they are born, that super-soft coat will often shed out to be a different shade than what they were born with. One lady I knew had a bay tobiano filly that she had really wanted to be black. She shaved her after she was a few weeks old and was disappointed to learn that she wasn't actually black underneath, but a slightly darker shade of bay. I believe most foals shed out to be a richer color than they were born with, but remember! Pinto foal's coat patterns never change, even though the base color will a little.

Here is a stumper:

I knew a mare that looked like this once, and at the time, I had no clue. But now I know better.

The horse above WAS a paint (he still carries that gene), but the color is covered up by gray. You can still see the lines where the markings are. Some will develop flea-bites (the marking, not the actual thing) in the colored areas, like the horse below. 

I don't know why, but of all the grayed-out paints I've seen, all of them seem to have a bit of a bluish tint to the color areas. Especially in the first one.