MONTE HANCOCK

[Pat Mefferd]

I see the notes have changed on MONTE HANCOCK.

Near leopard - solid head & white body w/ black spots

MONTE HANCOCK was originally registered AQHA Appendix as a gray horse
ApHC Stud Book lists him as light blue roan w/ black spots over body
He was the 1962 Leading Sire of ApHC Winners (2) and Money Earners $8197.39
Breeder: Tom L Burnett Estate, Tx
Owner at time of registration: Kandy Anderson, Wichita, KS

Who got the idea he was a "near leopard with black spots? He was a gray horse, any marks are from kick and/or bit marks...and the hair came in darker.

Show me the LEOPARD in this horse....

Pat
_________________
Pat Mefferd, PM MEFFERD Pedigree Research, Anderson, CA. (Retired)
Proud daughter of Fred Kennedy (1982 Stuntmans Hall of Fame)
http://members.tripod.com/~horsefame/fredkennedy.html

[NZ Appaloosas]

A lot of people don't understand that to be a leopard (or near leopard), an app has to be BORN that way, not roan out to look like a leopard. Chances are that's what happened here--his spots would have been the last to grey out, so he would have looked "leopard" as his base colour greyed out.



Diane
_________________
"Nothing can be sliced so thin that it doesn't have two sides" Anon.

CAUTION: All emails are the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, printed or forwarded without permission from the author.

[x factor fan]

Pat,

First I'd like to say that I didn't change the notes. However, I can see why someone did.


To the best of you knowledge is the pedigree information posted for Monte Hancock correct?

If so, here's a horse with brown QH sire, and a gray/roan blanket Appy dam. So there shouldn't be any color coming from the top side of the pedigree.

Monte Hancock seems to have had enough color to be registered as an Appy.
(And if there's a photo out there someplace I'd love to see it.}

Going back a generation his dam--a Burnett mare gray/appy blanket was sired by a chestnut Arabian; And she was out of a unnamed appy mare. No color specified.

So the color had to have come up via this unnamed mare. Given the way color genetics work, this mare could have been a roan, a gray, or a appy roan of some type. (or some combination)

No photo of Monte himself but there is a son with a very nice color photo--Double Hancock.

Double Hancock sure looks like a black based appy roan with large spots, on what may be a 3/4 blanket. And Double Hancock is out of a black QH mare, with QH and TB blood.

So.... If Monte Hancock was a gray, then where did the spots come from?

There's not enough information of the color of the offspring of either Monte, or Double to rule out either of them carrying the gray gene, but is seems kind of unlikely.

No matter which Appaloosa genetic theory you subscribe to, it sure looks like both these guys were real appys not grays.

[whnywriter]

First of all, Pat is right...Monte Hancock was not a leopard. He was an Appaloosa whose dam had to be gray because he was.

Double Hancock was a gray; his great daughter Zero Hancock was a gray; and her great son BR Go Zero Go (sired by Go Man Go) was a gray. All three of these horses achieved legitimate AAA race ratings.

Dottie Hanock, a national champion (costume class) daughter of Monte Hancock was a gray.

I remember seeing a photo of Monte Hancock in a circa late 1950s Western Horseman magazine. He was, according to the ApHC stud book, supposed to carry the Burnett Ranch's triangle brand on his left jaw. As I recall, you couldn't see it in the photo...it was taken from the rear. In the photo, he was just a gray horse; I could not (at least not at that time) detect any Appaloosa color...the gray had completely masked it.

I have no idea where the Arabian part of his pedigree came from or who uploaded it on the ABDB site. The ApHC simply lists his dam as a Burnett Mare.

Opinion here...nothing more or less...the leopard pattern doesn't magically appear. For an Appaloosa to be a true leopard he has to have true leopard ancestor(s). Many people call Joker B a leopard. He wasn't, he was a blanket-hipped horse that roaned out to a beautiful blue roan in front. His blanket and the haloed spots in it remained the same his entire life. I have some photos taken of him early in his life when he was less roan in front. I also THINK I'm on the trail of a photo of him as a foal.

Frank Holmes
Kiowa, CO

[x factor fan]

Is the photo posted in the database really Double Hancock? The caption seems to identify the horse as Double Hancock.

If so, does he look like a gray?

To my eye, he looks like a 3/4 blanket over the rump with a blue roan front end. Given that he's racing, this might be a photo of a relatively young horse. And if he carried the gray gene in addition to the appy genes, he might have turned white later in life.

If anyone has more photos of Monte Hancock's offspring could you share them? Love to unravel this little mystery.

[whnywriter]

When he won the World Wide Futurity, Double Hancock was a beautiful blue roan color in front. As he matured, he lost that blue hue and was basically just a gray horse with some faded spots over his hips...same with Zero Hancock and BR Go Zero Go.

There are ads on Double Hancock in some old Appaloosa News magazines and he was just as gray as Alias King.

Joker B was a true blue roan; Double Hancock was a gray.

Frank Holmes
Kiowa, CO

[x factor fan]

Ok, so the photo on the database is accurate and is that of Double Hancock.

If Double Hancock was a blue roan blanket appy that carried the gray gene, does this make him not an appaloosa?

Half his offspring should carry the gray gene, while the other half would not.

http://i14.tinypic.com/47lboet.jpg

http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/double+hancock2

[whnywriter]

Double Hancock was very definitely an Appaloosa; he just had the misfortune of inheriting the graying gene from his sire. It makes absolutely no sense to me to introduce the graying gene into the Appaloosa gene pool. Back when I was first getting interested in the Appaloosa breed in the early 1960s, I would see ads for "classically-colored black Appaloosa foals with big white blankets and spots." These youngsters had white rings of hair around their eyes; when they shed their foal hair, they'd be either almost or completely gray in front. If the spots in their blanket were not "haloed," those spots might also fade to varying degrees...some would disappear completely. This caused a lot of trouble between those early sellers and buyers until the graying gene and how it masked the Appaloosa gene was better understood.

To his immense credit, George Hatley attempted to educate the Appaloosa community about what the graying gene did when he put out a lavishly-illustrated pamphlet entitled, "Crosses that Kill Color." He also included buckskin, dun and palomino in the mix. I always dis-agreed with that part.

Alias King was born a sorrel, blanket-hipped Appaloosa who inherited the graying gene from his sire and turned completely gray with no contrast as a result. I would guess that 90+ percent of his foals were gray. Dreamfinder, his most famous son, wasn't. And he, to my knowledge, never sired a gray foal that wasn't out of a gray mare.

Frank Holmes
Kiowa, CO

[x factor fan]

Getting back to Pat's original post.

What do you call a horse that starts life with the appy pattern, then gray's out due to the action of the gray gene? Is this a gray, or an appy?

It sure looks like the only place the appy genes can come from is from Monte Hancock. Who must have been a appy that also carried gray.

And by the way, gray appys might have introduced the color genes into the QH gene pool. Only to appear like "magic" once the gray gene and the appy coat color gene(s) stop traveling together.

[NZ Appaloosas]

Blanket with roaning. A leopard/fewspot has to be born that way, it cannot "become" a leopard.



Diane
_________________
"Nothing can be sliced so thin that it doesn't have two sides" Anon.

CAUTION: All emails are the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, printed or forwarded without permission from the author.

[x factor fan]

But an appy with lets say, black base coat, Appy roaning, blanket + the gray gene, isn't going to roan out, but gray out turning completely white over time.

Quite different from the natural changes that appy roaning can make to a coat pattern.

In the first case the genes are there, are expressed on the foal and young horse coat, then vanish as the action of the gray gene burns out all the color producing cells resulting in white hairs.

In the second case time and hormone levels change the expression of the roaning.

And I'm not arguing with that leopard and blanket patterns are one and the same. My guess is that they aren't a progression --small blanket--large blanket--full leopard, but something else. Maybe the largest blanket pattern can look like a full leopard pattern, making breeding a bigger problem for folks trying for a specific pattern.

So back to Monte Hancock. Is he properly described as a near leopard-or blanket, or a gray horse?

[whnywriter]

X Factor,

I'm getting a little confused here. I don't think our discussion of what color(s) Monte Hancock and Double Hancock were is an "either/or" situation.

Although I have never seen a photo of Monte Hancock as a young horse, he would appear to me to have been a blanket-hipped Appaloosa horse that carried the gray gene; I know this to be true with Double Hancock.

I don't think they have to be described as either "Appaloosa" or "leopard" or "gray." They were Appaloosas whose true color(s) were masked by the graying gene.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't ALL gray horses have a base color? Bay, Brown, Sorrel, Dun, Whatever? Doesn't the graying gene just "mask" a horse's true color?

I'm asking here; not telling...

Frank Holmes
Kiowa, CO

[x factor fan]

Yes, all horses start with one of two base coat colors either black or red.
All the other colors are shades produced by modifiers.

A palomino is Red + Cream
Cremello Red + Cream + Cream

Buckskin is Black + Agouti (bay) + Cream

And so on.

Patterns are white hair that the color producing cells have been turned off.

Gray is a modifier that accelerates the color producing cells then burns them out so they no longer can produce any color at all coming in white.

Going back the the original post from Pat.

[whnywriter]

One more remark and then I think I'll leave this thread to others.

I've never cared for the term, "near-leopard." As far as I'm concerned, a horse is either a true leopard (from a long line of true leopards), or it is a blanketed horse with spots. Just because the blanket starts at the withers doesn't make a horse a near-leopard; it makes him a horse with a blanket that starts at the withers. If this "big-blanketed" horse then roans out in front and spots appear in the roaning (up to and including in the face and one the jaws), to me the horse is not a near-leopard; it is a blanketed horse.

True leopards often-times don't show their true markings until they've shed their foal coats, BUT THEN the color that is manifested stays unchanged for the life of the horse...again...unless the true leopard also carries the graying gene.

The intriguing thing about true leopard families, at least to me, is their ability to throw back through an absolutely solid-colored horse (i.e. a solid horse with one or two true leopard parents) and produce a true leopard. I've seen this first-hand back when I did a story decades ago on Lee Warne and his Bambi E Appaloosas.

Frank