Tobiano Patterns - Information and open discussion

[Bitapetrone]

I've been working on establishing stockings and facial markings into my herd. Thus far, I've been able to consistently get stockings (Usually on the two front and right hind). Because I am trying to integrate the white into my competition horses, I've had to pass on some fancy markings. I've managed to get a few like him though with the four white stockings and stripe. His foals all either feature a star, stripe, snip or nothing on the face and display 2-4 stockings when bred to mares who also have stockings. On mares who do not, I've seen 0-3 (always appearing first on the front two legs):




Currently I'm experimenting with this interesting facial marking and have been able to replicate it consistently with inbreeding. The goal is to eventually add this facial marking to the four white stockings if possible:

[Avrina]

Ok where to begin...

*I will say that my experience only pertains to Tobiano Paint expressions and not things like socks, stripes, snips etc.*

I've spent a bit of time playing with Tobiano horses, either breeding pure NABs or adding Tobiano markings into my paint line that I previously had, and now my Pintabian line. I have more experience with the larger white patterns (paints) over the small stuff like socks and facial markings.

If there is one thing I can say, it's that getting paint markings to not only appear, but stay in a bloodline without vanishing is a pain. It's not like the LP gene which just about sticks to any bloodline you accidentally add it to.

As far as To being controlled by two separate gene sets, that seems likely. Otherwise we would have To marked AC Turkmenes popping out painted foals at random.

When you first breed a paint colored horse to a solid colored horse, it will almost never result instantly into a foal with paint markings. I could only see that happening if the solid colored horse has a large history of painted ancestors, but let's just say the solid colored parent only has solid colored ancestors. The resulting foal will either have no white markings at all, in which case you'll need to try again and re-breed, or it will be a To carrier and will have some variation of these leg patterns with at least one leg always having a full stocking:








Since the foal is the result of a recent breeding to a paint colored horse, I like to think of those marking as being 'active' To carrier markings. This means that if I were to breed again to either a full paint horse or to another horse that carries those markings and was a recent foal to SolidxPaint breeding, that there is a chance that the resulting foal will come out with paint markings. However, it is still possible to carry those markings down for many many generations without ever having a paint marked foal appear. Enough generations down the line and breeding two horses with those markings won't even result in a painted foal. I consider those horses to be 'inactive' carriers.

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Alright, now say that you bred the horse with stockings once again to paint or active To carrier horse with the stockings and got a painted foal. These markings aren't like the ones that come with AC NABs and Shetlands. You will often see them reoccur throughout your line and will come to recognize them. Some examples that yes I have names for lol:

The male baby diaper



The lumps



The maw



The divide



There are more out there and with enough time seeing these markings, you can begin to notice them on other horses outside of your line. These markings can mix together assuming you breed to another horse that has one of these static markings that your line doesn't carry. For example:

The maw + The lumps



If you can get enough of these static patterns to stick to your line, you can even wind up with fancier combinations such as:

The wyvern



As such things go though, the higher the COI the more likely you are to be stuck with one pattern that barely varies or won't merge with the other static patterns. I have yet to be able to work with lower COI horses that aren't natural tobianos to begin with so I can't fully say how well their patterns could vary. The breeds that I work with and add tobiano to aren't the most popular, so lowering COI is frustrating and near impossible for me currently.

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I will add one final note here, since this post is already quite lengthy. Not every horse with white stockings is actually directly related to a natural tobiano. This is somewhat of a repeat of what I said before, but this is just a slightly different situation.




This mare was the last in my sooty dapple line to carry stockings like these. Her ancestors weren't bred to any NABs, just Turkmenes and one Grade horse of which I checked his pedigree around 10 generations back and had no painted horses. There is some NAB mixes in there, but no visible paint markings otherwise. Sometimes these markings happen on their own, but I honestly wouldn't worry about them causing paints to appear in your line.

To finish this up... if you are breeding only natural Tobianos the patterns will be more random and varied as will their facial white markings. Breeding non natural Tobianos will have more static patterns that can merge or slightly vary yet remain very recognizable. The higher the COI the more likely you will be stuck with the same white patterns.

[BlackOak2]

....

That's very interesting.
I have to add that I've had the diaper pattern myself, and called it exactly the same! Mine comes down from a singular Belgian with markings but no patterns. This is the most recent pop-up from him.




I have begun to notice that there appears to be two separate stocking types, those that go straight across, like those on my colt above, and those that do not, like on your retired mare:

...

It makes me wonder if there is indeed two different types of genes for markings and patterns, as in Bitapetrone's post, I wonder if you've had experience favoring one versus the other?

For a few generations, I only got marked foals, not patterned, until the diaper pattern popped up suddenly.

Perhaps I'm just grasping at wishful thinking. I do want them to be separate, at least in some form, that way markings can be utilized without fear of them turning into suddenly a painted horse.

[Bitapetrone]

I've been smashing critters together with the stocking type on the stallion I linked previously, and have ONLY gotten that type--whether it be on one or four legs. No stray markings have popped up anywhere else, excluding the face, which I haven't quite figured out yet. Or rather, I have no theories.

[Avrina]

I believe a lot of it has to do with COI. Bitapetrone's horses have a similar COI to what my Arabians had right before I began attempting to lower it. My Arabians used to carry the two white stockings in the front and half of them sported appaloosa blanket patterns. By 130ish % I had bred out all stockings and blanket patterns yet kept constantly producing solid colored varnish. In the time those Arabians had stockings they never produced paint markings either and they had acquired those stockings from my paints and NABs that I was crossing them with to get longer faces. All of which were paint colored or had the stockings.

When I started lowering the COI of my Arabians I had foals coming out with very large appaloosa markings that covered more than half the body. All outside studs I've used so far have no recent LP genes and the studs in the past that I had used never showed patterns this large.

So I'm curious to if lowering COI or keeping COI low increases the chances of patterns showing and just how much can show. Which is why I'm currently trying to work on a second line of Pintabians on this account to test this. I've seen a line of Mustang crosses that has more varied paint markings as well as some that only pop up on AC horses too, though they seem fairly static themselves, but not nearly as static as that baby diaper pattern. My entire line of NABs of my main account sported that pattern and after I stopped that line I swore to re-home every foal that comes up with that exact pattern. Not re-living those days no thank you haha


Oh and as a quick edit. I just looked at the pedigree of that Arabian cross with the diaper pattern and I have got to say that that is quite a surprise. o.o There have been no stockings or any markings until that one stud that has the same pattern and that was a few gens back too. That's why I never say anything is completely impossible, just rather very unlikely to happen because cases like that show up here and there.

[Silverine]

I just wanted to mention a phenomenon with the Leopard complex that may be occurring with To as well. Even though a lot of the Lp followed the "over-flowing cup" model, you did have to have the genes to activate a "section" of white for white to show up there. It could be very similar with To - we have the on-off switch, the genes that determine how much white, and then the genes that activate certain areas. And, as noticed in the leopards, it's possible that genes for some areas/markings are recessive and you must have two copies for it to show.

So, in the case of BlackOak's horses that had marks for gens but no patches it's possible that that patch is recessive and that the horses carried a single copy of it but the copies hadn't doubled-up until that one horse. Or that they hadn't gathered enough white activation genes to trigger the patch. (Kind of like neck-white on the black-based Lps.)

For Bita's horses, it's possible that they only have 'activation' genes for legs and face. It will be interesting to see if you start getting other patches when working with that different face pattern.

It's also possible there are different sections for activation, much like with Lp. Legs, head, neck, shoulders, barrel, and hips seem like common sections, with some overlap between.

[Knitting]

I just wanted to mention a phenomenon with the Leopard complex that may be occurring with To as well. Even though a lot of the Lp followed the "over-flowing cup" model, you did have to have the genes to activate a "section" of white for white to show up there. It could be very similar with To - we have the on-off switch, the genes that determine how much white, and then the genes that activate certain areas. And, as noticed in the leopards, it's possible that genes for some areas/markings are recessive and you must have two copies for it to show.

So, in the case of BlackOak's horses that had marks for gens but no patches it's possible that that patch is recessive and that the horses carried a single copy of it but the copies hadn't doubled-up until that one horse. Or that they hadn't gathered enough white activation genes to trigger the patch. (Kind of like neck-white on the black-based Lps.)

For Bita's horses, it's possible that they only have 'activation' genes for legs and face. It will be interesting to see if you start getting other patches when working with that different face pattern.

It's also possible there are different sections for activation, much like with Lp. Legs, head, neck, shoulders, barrel, and hips seem like common sections, with some overlap between.

I've been breeding for face and leg markings only and this definitely rings true! My whole farm is currently devoted to this project so I have at least 6 or 7 generations to look through.

I started with Shetlands, Turks and NABs crossing them all together until achieving grade horses. Then bred those grades to (solid coloured, pre To gene) Welsh Mountain Ponies, only keeping foals with any white patterns. Then began breeding foals together favouring only leg and face markings. I'm now quite a few generations down the line and whilst I do get the occasional tobiano marking, I get around 95% leg and face markings...

What Silverine has suggested certainly rings true for my breeding program, in that the recessive genes for certain proper tobiano pattern are only showing up infrequently when I cross two horses who share the hidden genes.

[Knitting]

If anyone would like a really quick example, this guy below is an example of what usually happens.



This lady is an example of the occasional time the pattern totally skips a generation and then reappears.

[Silverine]

So I bred my first Roberto filly (the buckskin dun with small sock and star) to one of my more loudly-marked studs, and they popped out a rather loud baby. She is certainly much louder than her mother, though overall she seems to have a small bit less white than her sire. She does have her mother's teeny-tiny front sock.

I'm going to breed Roberto's filly to my champagne Belgian cross and see what happens with that.

Roberto daughter:



Loud stud:



Baby:

[Silverine]

So it seems that 'static patterns' can appear in NABs as well. Check out that matching upper-neck edges on these foals (notice the little line that indicates the separation of the top and bottom half of the necks - they are identical above but have variations below):












All five of these foals have the same AC NAB sire. Two are from AC NAB mares, the other three are from various second- or later-generation mares from my lines. All have COI below 10%.

I found a similar phenomenon when experimenting with leopard patterns. So I don't really think the issue is that non-NABs have static and NABs/Shetlands have random, as there really is no way to code "random" white with how the server generates the images. I think it much more likely that we simply haven't figured out which pattern patches are linked to NABs/Shetlands yet - perhaps there are many more of them than in other breeds, making it more difficult, etc.