Here's one from another thread on this board. She's stunning with loads of stripes
This brindle mini is owned by Brass Rings Minis. I'm sure it's more than coincidence that the brindles have smutty and roan. Very cool.
and here's one of the horse that has stripes that no one knows where they come from. Unlike the ones Riverdance described where the stripes can e removed this one's stripes don't shave off, they're on the skin. He's a bay with smutty and unknown stripes not a brindle not a dun.
The blue roan is the one I am talking about, her stripes are in the skin. I have some pictures of her in her winter coat and she looks totally black. Darkening up like a roan does, but in the summer or when clipped, her brindle markings show up. The bay, I am not so sure of. I have a smutty bay filly who also has strips like that, but I do not consider her a brindle, just a smutty bay. When you shave her down, the stripes are really hard to see, whereas the one from Florida and Marbles, the strips stand out like a sore thumb.
The smutty horses can have strips, bars, smudges, spots and patches of the smutty color. They really can look unusual, but they are not considered brindles, appaloosas or pintos.
So far, when Marbles had a thicker coat that was over 1" long, she still had all of her markings and her coat was of different textures and some of it curled. It will be interesting to see what it looks like this winter when she has tons of coat. Living up here in Minnesota, she will have quite the coat.
The brindle quarter horses maintain their coat brindle markings at all times. Granted, large horses are almost never shaved down as they shed out smooth. I am in the middle of a research project to find out more about the brindle coat and the dramatic contrast some of the horses have. In the Mini World the roan gene seems to play a part, though not with the one in New Zealand. In the large horse world, it seems to be the smutty gene.
