Horses do change in color but I've not heard or seen this before. I know some will change in shades and some will gray or turn white.
Here are pics of when Ghost was younger:
He is a buckskin appaloosa and 7 years old. He has brown spots on his butt that darken in the winter and disappear in the summer. The white spots remain all year. Last year and this spring he looked like he was getting lighter in color.
Varnish roan at work, the white on his butt is a blanket. He'll continue to lighten up on his body throughout his life. The body areas such as on his face and legs will retain some color however.
I lean more toward sooty buckskin rather than smoky brown simply due to the lightness of his summer coat, which looks more like a pretty type-y buckskin.
HOWEVER, LP can do some pretty funky things to the base coat to make it look totally different than horses of the same color that are non LP carriers.
As for the appy genes at work, I completely agree with varnish and that's about the only one that I can differentiate. I'm not familiar enough with the other patterns to pick a snowcap from a blanket from a whatever else puts white on their rump LOL.
So if he stays grayish in color, he is no longer a buckskin, right? Even if he was before? Or was he really a buckskin before? Posted via Mobile Device
A base color is still a base color even if it gets covered over by more varnish, so if his base is buckskin (smokey brown IMO) then buckskin/smokey brown will always be his base color, you just might not see it as well as you could when he had less varnish.. Most Appies change color every single year in how much white hair they have, most continue to get progressively lighter and lighter, but with the hard points (hips, lower legs, bridge of nose) losing color very last. Most appies never reach total gray before death, but will have at least some residual color in those places.
Also were these photos taken at the same time of the year? Often the winter coat is different than summer coat on many colors, not just appies. He may well shed next summer and be the same or only slightly more varnished than he was this summer, or he may be much more varnished (really won't know until he sheds). That is one of the fun things about Appies... A different color horse every year!
I am inclined to think that classic roan might be at play here as well as varnish. Do you have summer pictures?
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