Sneaky Dun?

[stickers]

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Ha... SOMEday I'll pick an "easy" project, but apparently this is not that day.

Trying to pick up this pain-in-the-butt project after about a year of letting it sit? Crazy indeed. This is why we look for fellow unhinged siblings-in-arms to help out with these projects, I suppose!

Thank you again for your help. I think I have a sort of cobbled-together plan now, and the current round of problematic test babies is just about ready to squint at for dun, so I am sure I will be updating this thread again shortly for more eyeballs to help me look.

[BlackOak2]

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Ha... SOMEday I'll pick an "easy" project, but apparently this is not that day.

Trying to pick up this pain-in-the-butt project after about a year of letting it sit? Crazy indeed. This is why we look for fellow unhinged siblings-in-arms to help out with these projects, I suppose!

Thank you again for your help. I think I have a sort of cobbled-together plan now, and the current round of problematic test babies is just about ready to squint at for dun, so I am sure I will be updating this thread again shortly for more eyeballs to help me look.

Sounds like a plan! for what it is.

[stickers]

Okay! Here's the new batch of new one-year-olds... as always, would love some extra eyes to look for signs of cryptic dun. The pangare and sooty is of course making this extra hard on me. And I do have two monitors to look at these with, but I find that there are still a couple signs that I don't know how to "see." I know folks have tried to explain the fetlock signs to me, but I still don't quite get it.

So yes, two are from two crosses combined together, and the others are from being tested against black Caspians. A couple seem pretty obvious passes or fails to me, but never hurts to make sure (and thought might just be fun to share):

[BlackOak2]

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I have a flushing leg study...
May prove useful to take another look...
Leg Flushing Defined

Apparently, I did these from the bottom up, not from the top down. -_- Today has been a messy day.

Bully Orchestra 1 (the last one) is definitely dun.

I'm undecided on Charming Orchestra 1. But I'm leaning toward no.

It does look like Bullsong 2 is clear.

Bully Bull 1 is quite dark, but not BLACK-black. But he has metallic and smoky... Wait, he can't have smoky... Oddly colored newborn pic. Well... AND... he also can't have metallic. With this knowledge, I'm'a say, this is a dun foal.

Pale Gunner does appear to be pretty obvious (where cryptics are concerned)***and as an aside, so you're certain, pale manes are a separate gene, NOT related to dun in case you were questioning yourself*** I'm going to say, it's the mare.

Doubtbull does also look dun-ny and also does look like there's a flushing ankle as well.

[stickers]

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Firstly, thank you SO much for the link to that flushing ankle post. I've somehow never bumped into that one before! It's super helpful; I finally feel like I have *some* idea now of how to spot it. That being said...

Lordy, I am so glad I am still posting all of my results for second opinions. Even with knowing what to look for, I am still struggling to see the subtle expression of flushed ankles on these guys, and you frickin' blew my mind by figuring that the black foal is probably dun. Aside from thinking the "black" newborn color was a little funny, I never would have guessed in a million years that it was actually dun. Goodness...

I really hope that this experiment with trying to breed more stripey horses to test for dun ultimately pans out, because I feel like I'm getting no better at spotting and weeding out cryptic dun. I'm worrying that the experiment might not actually go the way that I'm hoping, because the first gen Dd offspring with the tarpan that carries very stripey genes are so far looking more subtle than I'd like. I really hope that cryptic dun isn't more dominant than bold dun...

Also yes I know that pale manes are a separate thing! I just wanted to keep track of them in case I wanted to store them away to use for a different breeding project later. I can't remember if this gene ended up being the same thing as plume or if it was something else. I think one of my big hiatuses happened right in the middle of everyone trying to figure out the details of that gene.

[BlackOak2]

Firstly, thank you SO much for the link to that flushing ankle post. I've somehow never bumped into that one before! It's super helpful; I finally feel like I have *some* idea now of how to spot it. That being said...

Lordy, I am so glad I am still posting all of my results for second opinions. Even with knowing what to look for, I am still struggling to see the subtle expression of flushed ankles on these guys, and you frickin' blew my mind by figuring that the black foal is probably dun. Aside from thinking the "black" newborn color was a little funny, I never would have guessed in a million years that it was actually dun. Goodness...

I really hope that this experiment with trying to breed more stripey horses to test for dun ultimately pans out, because I feel like I'm getting no better at spotting and weeding out cryptic dun. I'm worrying that the experiment might not actually go the way that I'm hoping, because the first gen Dd offspring with the tarpan that carries very stripey genes are so far looking more subtle than I'd like. I really hope that cryptic dun isn't more dominant than bold dun...

Also yes I know that pale manes are a separate thing! I just wanted to keep track of them in case I wanted to store them away to use for a different breeding project later. I can't remember if this gene ended up being the same thing as plume or if it was something else. I think one of my big hiatuses happened right in the middle of everyone trying to figure out the details of that gene.

Well... The person who was doing the study on that was...
???
Hold on, I have it around here somewhere...
***
Gaagii
That was the player.
Anyway, after they went through all the work, they decided that it was like plume but a decidedly different gene. I'm not sure what convinced them however.
But from what I remember, they had looked up and did some studying on the actual plume gene (known in prze horses in real life, as well as fjords and some others) and although it was quite similar, there were some distinct differences.
So, it was decided it's a plume-like gene, but since we don't seem to yet have a plume gene (otherwise) in-game, then it's often just referred to as 'plume'.

So... yeah. Plume.

***
Sometimes talking things out helps to define what's being seen or dealt with. So, when you see me (sometimes quite often) rambling on with working through a problem or question somebody has, it's actually a process that not only helps me define what I'm seeing, but also helps others learn how to define it as well.


You have quite an exceptionally difficult cryptic dun issue. And I'll repeat what I've said before, 'we may not be able to tell if we've every really and fully bred out cryptics until we get gene testing'.

As far as the first Dd offspring looking more subtle... well... yeah, it might be a problem. In this case, however, it's not about the dun cryptic being more dominant then subtle or bold. That's the part that's buildable.

So, maybe I'll remind you this way.
Think of the dun gene as a cup. The more dun you have, the stronger expression you have. But each parent can only give [at maximum] what it has and no more (or very little more, depending on how admin coded our growth-specs).
A full cup would represent a strongly bold expression of dun. But a cryptic cup might only have one or two drops in it. So, even if you have two cryptic parents, they might only give 4 or 5 drops apiece at most (or far less). So if the tarpan has a strong expression, but not the strongest one available, that cup for that tarpan may only be at 50% full. Thus, as a parent, it can only pass on what it has. If it shows only 50% of the cup, but it has 20% to 60%... It could still pass on a 20% expression, leaving you with another cryptic, only slightly stronger than the ones you currently have. Because your other parent only has a couple drops to pass on. The foal, therefore can have as little as 25% of that dun cup.

Maybe that's a little too confusing. But sometimes the cup-theory is easier to grasp. The numbers are made up, but offer some insight into the theory for grasping-effect.

Best we might be able to do, is try everything under our hat and work through it a generation at a time.

[stickers]

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Sweet, I'll take the "yeah it's that thing we have that we call plume but isn't really plume," since that's still a clearer answer than the last time I asked, back when everyone was trying to figure out what it even was and what visible expressions were part of it and what weren't.

And ha, yeah, I'm always glad you do ramble through your thought-processes on things. It does help me learn. For instance... this "dun cup" analogy. I had grasped some parts of how this might work, but thinking of it like that does at least give me some hope. I'd been thinking of the formula of what each parent contributes being something like: some unseen dun "pattern" pieces, plus whether the dun switch is turned on or not. I know the Belgians are the ones responsible for the cryptic dun in this case, as they never quite get a lot of the stripes and things that Przes and Tarpans get, so in my head the pattern pieces they contribute were generally cryptic, and that was most of the story. But thinking of it more as the parents contributing pattern pieces, a dun switch, and an amount of dun to pour into that mold, makes more sense.

...In either case, if weeding out every last bit of dun ultimately turns out to be too infuriating or too impossible (especially as this is all going back into more Exmoors, which always have dun, so I'll have to do it all over again), I might just have to change my goal from "breed dun out of the line" to "breed dun down to an extremely cryptic level."

[BlackOak2]

...In either case, if weeding out every last bit of dun ultimately turns out to be too infuriating or too impossible (especially as this is all going back into more Exmoors, which always have dun, so I'll have to do it all over again), I might just have to change my goal from "breed dun out of the line" to "breed dun down to an extremely cryptic level."

Yup! That's what I ended up doing with the pangare in my lp tarpan line.
I just cull out any that shows it and shrugs at those that I know have it, but can't actually see it.

You pretty much already have that phase. So if you really feel irritated to the level of giving up, it is okay to give up. After all, this is your project. You know how to deal with things like this and in the future, you know you'll tackle it in a different way.

Whatever your decision, I'm willing to keep trudging along as well, as I'm sure others on this game are, too, if I happen to not return with an answer in quick fashion.

[stickers]

[quote="BlackOak2"][/quote]

Boy, thank you so much not only for all of the learning you're helping me with, but the encouragement too. It's hard to not get weighed down by perfectionism when I already have that tendency, on top of seeing what seems like folks cranking out all of these difficult and perfect projects that go way over my head.

I think I'm going to continue this phase of the project, at least in part, but also start moving ahead with bringing the line back into Exmoors and see what happens. I'm feeling very impatient to see how that goes!

[BlackOak2]

Boy, thank you so much not only for all of the learning you're helping me with, but the encouragement too. It's hard to not get weighed down by perfectionism when I already have that tendency, on top of seeing what seems like folks cranking out all of these difficult and perfect projects that go way over my head.

I think I'm going to continue this phase of the project, at least in part, but also start moving ahead with bringing the line back into Exmoors and see what happens. I'm feeling very impatient to see how that goes!

Many, Many of us know about that perfectionism.
I have OCD-like tendencies that 'encourage' me to do certain things. Luckily, I'm not OCD. Makes me feel rather poorly for those that suffer that and because I can feel what my own tendencies bother me into doing. I certain do not envy them.

The nice thing, is that games like this (of which there is just one ) do appear to help alleviate such perfectionism. If we use such drives on this game, it can help soften the effects we feel in the real world. And that also appears to help those with OCD as well, maybe? I don't know to what degree, if any. But from other conversations I've had, that seems to be the leaning.