Absolutely... love seeing the input from others too. Hairicane, it is nice to see snowcaps that did not roan out. Both parents on that mare are Appy? And really interesting pattern on King....
Ok, so if a varnish roan is sired by a leopard, and is bred to another roan who is out of a leopard, you are telling me that it can never produce a leopard? I guess I am having difficulty understanding that as the genetics ARE there- you cant just erase what is in horses background. When we had the full sized horses, our stallion had a blanket with peacock spots to his withers. His sire was also a blanketed stallion. His dam a leopard. He was bred to a mare that was a roan with spots over her hips and the resulting foal was a leopard. Neither parent was a leopard, so how would that gene be passed on then- it was in the background. Perhaps I am just not understanding what you mean.
This is where it gets complicated.
The leopard pattern gene has a variety of expressed "patterns", so it doesn't always "look" leopard. In your case above, the stallion with the blanket with spots to his withers actually was carrying the leopard gene, even though he didn't "look" like a leopard. Remember unless a horse is homozygous for a gene (has two copies), the foal has a 50/50 chance of inheriting that gene. So if the parent of your varnish roan was a leopard but only had one copy(not homozygous) of the leopard gene, the foal might not inherit it, but still inherit the LP gene and so you get an appy roan.
Here is the link to the diagram of how varied the leopard gene can appear physically on a horse, while genetically they carry the gene for leopard, and below that is a description from The Appaloosa Horse Project website.
http://www.appaloosaproject.info/images/photoalbum/4/PATNImage.jpg
<<<3. PATN-1: The “Leopard Family” Gene Study
White patterning in Appaloosas appears to be a polygenic (many gene) trait. If this is indeed the case, an Appaloosa will display some amount of white Appaloosa-type patterning at birth if it has inherited both LP and one or more of the genes that help to produce Appaloosa-type patterning. We have given the generic name “PATN” (for “pattern”) to these genes. Phenotype-based evidence suggests there are a variety of these, with varying amounts of effect. Some seem to produce large amounts of patterning, while others produce minor amounts.
The Appaloosa Project is working to identify the gene responsible for very high levels of expression found in “leopard lines”. These are families of horses that have very high white pattern levels, and include leopard and near-leopard as well as fewspot and near-fewspot horses. This gene’s proposed name is PATN-1 (see above image for proposed continuum of expression). The study involves analysis of DNA collected from large half-sibling families produced by fewspot stallions, bred to non-Appaloosa mares.>>>>
Aren't appy genetics so simple, LOL! Whenever I start to try and explain what I understand, I realize it's so darn complicated, I'm not sure I fully understand what I thought I did!!