An unusually attractive example of a splashed white.
©-Ragnar Eiriksson
Icelandic: (the body colour)-skjóttur, slettuskjóttur.
Description: The horse has a bodycolour with big white spots, usually with socks, a white belly and flanks, and a white face (bald face), and blue eyes. The back is usually not with spots. A very rare colour. To recognize the difference between splash white and tobiano, you can think of splash white like someone had taken a white horse and poured colored paint over it. And splash white horses always have bald faces, also minimal splash whites.
Chestnut splashed white with flaxen mane.
And it's a stallion too, on summer holiday.
Hörgull from Steðja.
©-LUKKA
A different view of the same stallion
©-LUKKA
Being in shape can make a lot of difference, here is Hörgull in top form.
©-Guðrún Guðmundsdóttir
A splashed white foal
Often the overo gene only reveals itself in the horse by such a big white bald face and few other markings.
Blue eyes come with the splashed white color.
This is a mimimal splash white, with no other white spots on his body.
©-Ragnar Eiriksson
A splashed white with flaxen mane.
Veira from Dýrfinnustöðum.
©-LUKKA
More pictures of the same mare
It seems common that horses that are heterozygous overos (that is, only having the overo gene from one parent, and thus not showing the overo markings) have a blaze and blue eyes. Breeding such horses to each other should make it more propable to get an overo offspring than breeding other horses together. It is not a guarantee though for the overo gene, some horses have blazes and blue eyes without having the overo gene.
©-LUKKA
A particularly enchanting mare I met one day
©-LUKKA
More pictures of the same mare
Some genetics:
The splashed white colour is on the Spl-locus. A resessive gene, spl, turns spots on the body into pigment-less areas, that is, white. All horse-colours can become splashed white. All tobiano foals have a tobiano parent.
The color in different languages:
Germany: Klecksschecke.
Swedish: Bukskäck
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