Horse markings

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The Sign of a horse is usually a typical white area on the base color of the dark base. Most horses have some marks, and they help identify horses as unique individuals. The signs are present at birth and do not change during the life of the horse. Most signs have pink skin underneath most white hair, although some vague marks sometimes have white hair without pink underlying skin. Marking may seem to change slightly when a horse grows or releases its winter coat, but this difference is only a long-term hair coat; the underlying pattern does not change.

In a gray horse, the signs seen at birth may become hidden when the horse turns white with age, but the mark can still be determined by cutting the horse's hair thoroughly, then drying the coat to see where there is pink and black skin under the hair.

Recent studies have examined the genetics behind white markers and have found a specific genetic locus that affects their expression.

In addition to the white marks on the base coat, there are other markers or patterns used to identify horses such as Appaloosa, Pinto or Brindle, as well as artificial markers such as branding.

Video Horse markings

Type of white mark

Face tagging

Face markers are usually depicted based on shape and location. There may be more than one sign of a different face and if so, will be named separately. Sometimes, when the white mark extends above the eye, the eye may be blue instead of brown, although this is not consistently seen in all cases.

Common face signs are:

• Blaze: a wide white line in the center of the face.
• Strip, line, or race: a narrow white line in the center of the face.
• Bald face: a very wide fire, extending to or through the eye. Some, but not all, balding faced horses also have blue eyes.
• Stars: white marks between or above the eyes. If there is a line or inflammation, the star should be significantly wider than the vertical mark to set separately.
• Snip: a white mark on the snout, between the nostrils.

Additional terms used to describe facial markers include the following:

• Fainting: A small but permanent mark that usually consists of the pink underlying white hair.
• Disconnected: The mark, usually a strip or fire, is broken and not solid for the entire length of the face.
• Connected: Sometimes used to describe different distinct signs that happen to be combined with each other
• Irregular or crooked: A mark, usually a strip or a blaze, which has no more or less straight path.
• Lipmarks: do not have a custom name, usually described by location, such as "bottom lip", "chin", etc. Lipmarks can indicate the presence of a sabino color pattern.

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The foot sign is usually depicted by the highest point of the horse's legs covered by white. As a general rule, horse nails under the white markings on coronary lines will also be colored ("white"). If the horse has partial marks or ermine spots on the coronary band, the nails may become dark and light, corresponding to the hair layer above. Where the Leopard gene is present, the nails may be striped even if the mark is not visible on the coronary band.

From the highest to the shortest, common toe is:

• Stocking: white marks extending at least to the bottom of the knee or hock, sometimes higher.
• Sock: white mark extends higher than fetlock but not knee-deep or hocked. This sign is sometimes called "boot."
• Fetlock or Sock: a white flag that extends above the fetlock, sometimes called "boot."
• Pastern: a white mark that extends above the top of the nail, but stops under the fetlock.
• Coronet: white just above the nail, around the coronary band, usually no more than 1 inch (2.5 cm) above the nail.

Additional terms used to describe white toe include:

• Irregular: Marks within certain height limits, but with uneven edges significantly. Shown by white high point. Most often used to describe certain types of stockings.
• Partial: Irregular markings that only extend part of the foot to the indicated height, sometimes with the other side of the dark leg. Usually used to describe socks and other short marks.
• "White High:" White stockings stretching over knees or hocks, sometimes extending past the stifle to the pelvis or abdomen, are considered characteristics of the sabino color pattern.

Maps Horse markings

Example

Face tagging

The

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Non-white mark

• Indentations-or spots: Unclean, usually seen on horses with Chestnut or Palomino coats.
• ermine Sign: The occurrence of a black mark on a white marker, most commonly seen on foot marks just above the nail. Can cause striped nails.
• "Drug hat": Pinto type or unusual paint coloring where the horse has dark ears and polls (like a hat on the head), but is surrounded on all sides of head and neck with white.
• Shield: The dark pinto marks where the horse has a dark chest, surrounded completely by white on the shoulders, legs, abdomen and neck. Sometimes it is used to illustrate the example of a rarer horse with a completely dark head surrounded completely by white.

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Other tagging

Horses may have isolated body points that are not large or large enough to qualify them as Appaloosa, Pinto or Paint. Such signs are usually simply called "body spots," sometimes identified by the location, ie "stomach point," "pelvic area," etc. When this type of isolated spotting occurs, it is usually the action of the sabino gene.

Horses may develop white marks over areas where there are injuries to animals, either to cover scar tissue from wounds or abrasions, or to reflect damage to the underlying skin or nerve. One common type of scar that produces white hair patches is "saddle signs," which are round or oval on either side withered, produced by pinching saddles that have been worn for a long period of time.

Natural flag

Birdcatcher Point is a small white patch, usually between 1 mm and 1 inch (25 mm) in diameter. Not yet known what controls their expression, although it is believed that they are not genetic. Birdcatcher spots occur in many breeds. These spots can occur at the end of a horse's life, or may occur and then disappear.

Scramble or Birdcatcher lice is a sign that involves white hair spots on the sides, and white hair at the base of the tail, called the "skunk tail". These patterns are permanent and may be genetic. It is thought that this roaning effect may be associated with the rabicano gene. The name comes from a Thoroughbred horse called Birdcatcher, which has white hair all over the pelvis and its tail.

Scars, skin diseases and injuries

• Rainscald or Dermatophilus congolensis can leave horses with small white spots, especially along the top of the line.
• Dwarf horses often develop dense (dark) hair spots on their rippling parts wherever there are scratches or damage to the underlying skin, albeit only slightly. These are sometimes called "corn marks" or "maize spots".

Scars on horses usually produce white hair that grows over the wounded area, although sometimes there is no hair growth above the scar at all.

• The saddle can be seen on the back or wilted as a patch of white hair, usually due to wearing saddles that are not properly installed for long periods, but can also be associated with saddle long-term saddle direct, saddle blankets and other causes. The only forward white sign of the withers may be the result of an unsuitable horse blanket worn for long periods of time.

• A kind of deliberate human-made scar that produces white hair is Branding freeze, a method of permanently marking horses for identification purposes. Some forms of heat branding may also be light enough to leave white hairs rather than bare skin.
• The remaining foot of the firing pin or bar, where the blister injury with hot iron, can leave the point or line of white hair in a very different pattern. This is usually seen in the thoroughbreds that have sped up. This treatment is not common, but such signs are sometimes still visible.
• Scars from accidents, as well as old wound sites (such as bent tendons), can also be used to identify horses.

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Other identifier features

Horses can be uniquely identified by more than just signs or brands. Some other physical characteristics that are sometimes used to distinguish horses from others are:

• Whorls, colloquially known as "cowlicks": Divergent or convergent plots of hair are found anywhere in the body but mostly in the head, neck, chest, abdomen, or just in front of the stiff.
• "Glass" eyes, "Moon Eye", "Chinese Eye", Eyes "eye" or "Night": Blue eyes. Horses with blue eyes are less common than horses with brown eyes, but can look just as well.
• Chestnut: An area that looks like calluses inside the hooves of a horse that has a fine pattern, but unique to every horse. It has been suggested that chestnuts can be used as a type of "fingerprint" to identify horses, but the idea fails to become widespread in practice, perhaps in part because chestnut continues to grow and change, making precise measurements a challenge./li>
• "thumb of the Prophet", or muscle dimple, is a small indentation in the muscle, usually found in the horse's neck.

Color fur with different pattern

Some colors of horsehair are distinguished by a unique pattern. However, even for horses with feather colors that are arranged in a way unique to each individual horse, these patterns are not called "marking." Some coat colors are distinguished in part by unique patterns including:

• Appaloosa or "Leopard": The pattern and color of a small leopard leather coat.
• Bay: The color of a horse coat that features a "black dot" on the red base layer. All horse bays have black manes, tails and legs (except where they are crushed by white marks), caused by the presence of the Agouti gene. Most have black hair along the edges of their ears and on their snouts, and will sometimes have a little dark hair along their spine.
• Brindle: The pattern of a very rare horse coat; typically a faint vertical striping feature in the shade is slightly diluted from the base color of the mantle. Negotiations may be related to chimerism.
• Dun: The color of a horse coat featuring primitive signs: hair color slightly darker than the base layer located on the dorsal line along the horse's spine, horizontal striping in the upper leg and sometimes across the shoulders. These signs identify a horse as dun as opposed to deer or bay skin.
• Pinto: The color of horsehair is distinguished by one of several possible broad patches, as opposed to the typical small freckle of Appaloosa. Variations include Piebald, Skewbald, Overo, Tobiano, Tovero, and Sabino.
• Roan: The color of horsehair that has white and dark hair mixed, but the horse has a head and foot of the base color with very little white. Roans sometimes have dark areas in their mantle similar to Bend-Or spots, called "corn marks".

References

• "Horse Mark"
• "Horse and Horse Head Markers"
• "Horse and Horse Foot Signs"
• "Identify Parts and Signs of Horses," Adapted From: Horses To Dummies, Edition 2.

Source of the article : Wikipedia