Burrr- nina
What is the significance of the white hair growing on your beautiful baby Zuri?
Zuri's going to be gray when she grows up, just like her daddy! If I was all into the whole show deal, she would have had a neck and head clip at about 4 weeks old, and full body clip by 2 months......and busted my back side keeping a blanket on her when the temps got down to 60 or lower, PITA!
The Neck/head/face whatever, clip gives you a good idea of the color you baby is going to be and gets them used to electric clippers. It's the ever changing pony when they have hair that starts out one color at the roots and ends up another at the ends. Zubaz was the same color as Zuri when he was little, but by the time he was 4, he had turned into a beautiful dapple gray. At almost 24, he's been what you call a flea bitten gray for about 10 years, almost white base color with little red flecks or freckles. He quite possibly will go all white or I should say silver by the end of his life. My mare Sheba started off life the same way, and at the time of her death, she was silver with no freckles *she was almost 30 years old*.
It's one of those things in horses when they is a dominant gray gene in the pedigree. Zubaz has dominate gray, while Kissy has dominant bay, both colors had a 50/50 shot.
Lippizan and Percheron draft horses are almost always born black or dark, dark gray and go white (lippizan) or dapple gray/ freckled to silver.
Zuri looks like a fuzzy dust bunny right now, if I was in a warmer climate, I *might* clip her partially, just for experience for her and fun for me, but I'm already blanketing Evie's mustang every night. It's really weird, Star (the mustang) just doesn't get in that thick winter coat. Could be cause she's black, and her body REALLY sucks up every bit of warmth in the day, but at night she'll get chilled if it goes below freezing.
I had a black Arab, named Zurinka, who never had a problem with winter coats, she was pretty fuzzy and I could warm up my cold nose in her neck if I was riding her in the snow.
And to answer another question way up the thread about blankets: There's a lot of reason to blanket a horse:
For show
To keep them clean
Flies
Warmth
Rain
Burnishing (sun fade)
There are really 2 types of "blankets", one is truly a blanket, the other is a sheet. Both can be water proof, blanket for winter, warmth, snow, and showing in winter, sheet for flies, UV bleaching of hair, rain, and keeping them clean.
The deal is, if you start blanketing in Fall, expect to blanket until late spring. They won't get their entire winter coat in and they'll need that extra layer to stay warm on cold nights. That's usually being out there twice a day taking them on and off, unless the weather is bad the whole day. Unfortunately, it usually doesn't coincide with regular feeding times, so you end up making 2 extra trips out to the stalls or pens every day.
I'm so over that kind of thing.....but you never know.
cguru:
