Equine Pigments

My service-learning project is going to be studying equine pigments at the local horse rescue. St. Francis horse rescue is a non-profit organization that I have been volunteering for since late November. It intrigues me mainly because it has been something that interests me that there could be so many color variations that emerge from just a few base colors. The service portion is the volunteering part, along with free advertisement for the facility, and use of the pictures for promotional purposes. The learning portion is creating a comprehensive guide to what causes the different coat colors, which will be developed into a website. Along with extending my knowledge about the organization and critters in general. The process would be to tour the facility and identify 8-10 coat colors and then determine what causes these colors. For example, Agouti produces a Bay coat, when it is the dominant gene, then the black coloring extends to the different points of the horse (legs, mane, tail, ear rims). If the Agouti is recessive, then black is uniformly distributive around the horse, creating an all black horse. Then to photographs the highlight points (body and key points). Then create a comprehensive webpage that combines the information. Already I have run into a few snags in my project, since it is a facility that has adoptable animals I have to work fast to claim the critters for my project before they find their forever homes, another hardship is that since its also a retirement facility for the horses that are too sick to be adopted out, there is the possibility that they may pass away before I get a picture. Which is the case for one of my black pigment examples. Fortunately, I have already gotten the pictures of the horses that now have new homes.

Edit: I guess I should add what I plan on getting out of this on a personal point rather then all the other scientific stuff. I find that volunteering, even though it is just scooping poop, feeding, giving some good TLC to critters that have had a rough past, and soon a hopeful future. Coming from a home with alot of critters, and my volunteer job back there I needed someplace to work off some debot and get my critter fill. So doing this project will proceed to keep me at a stable point of mind along with teaching me new skills about horses and how society reacts to creatures such as these (in good and bad ways)

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A few references since, I’m sure few of you have no idea what I am going on about…
Horse pigments is a gateway into what the text version of the final webpage will include, among other things, it explains what genes cause what horse coat colors.

St. Francis Horse Rescue, located in Rosholt WI, is where I will be sampling horse coats and determine what color pigments are showing.