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Cowgirl asked in PetsHorses · 9 years ago

How tall will my filly be?? (horse) ALSO one blue eye and one brown eye?

She is almost 4 months old and she is already taller than my shetland pony. Her mother is 15 hands and her father is about 17 hands. She is a full paint horse.

ANOTHER question!!!!!!!!!!! This same filly has one brown eye and one blue eye. But her parents have blue eyes? Why is this?

7 Answers

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  • 9 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    There's no surefire way to tell exactly how tall a horse will be before they reach maturity. Every horse grows and matures at slightly different rates and each horse matures with unique proportions. It is possible to guess though. A horse's growth plates fuse from the ground up. Their lower leg is the first to reach its full length. This is why young horses look so leggy and why string testing is a good way to guess the final height of a foal. Refer to this link for good instruction on how to string test: http://ultimatehorsesite.com/info/stringtesting.ht...

    Blue eyes are not inherited in horses like they are in people. They are associated with pinto patterns (most often tobiano). Their inheritance is not entirely understood, but it is assumed that the extent of white markings and blue eyes in horses that are genetically dictated to have them are determined by the environment in utero as opposed to genetics themselves. What I mean is a horse that is genetically tobiano, will be tobiano, but how much white they have and where the white lies is determined by environmental factors. It is believed that pigment in the eyes on pinto horses that are prone to blue eyes is determined the same way. Your horse and your horse's parents both have the genetic predisposition for blue eyes, but whether or not they end up with one, two or even just a partial blue eye is left up to other factors beyond genetics.

    Here is an example to prove my point. Scamper and Clayton are clones. They are exact genetic matches, and yet, clayton has more extensive white markings than scamper.

    http://www.charmaynejames11.com/clayton

  • Anonymous
    9 years ago

    Brown eyes are probably a recessive trait. Sometimes horses do come out having different colored eyes. It's not common.

    Well it's totally impossible to be able to tell you 100% how tall that horse will be. I would say a tall 15 to 16 hands. You just don't know though. We have this mare out of a 16.3hh stallion and a 15.3hh mare and she ended up around 17hh and could still get a little taller. Yet, I've had a mare out of parents who were each 15.3hh and she ended up only getting to be 14hh.

  • 9 years ago

    It really depends on how fast she grows and stuff like that. They usually stop growing and filling out between 4-7. She will probably be closer to her fathers heigh.

    As for eyes: blue eyes are very rare. Just because both of her parents had blue eyes does not mean she would. It is because one blue eye is rare and two is even more rare.

  • ?
    Lv 5
    9 years ago

    she probably will mature to be around 16h from what you said height wise about her parents there are special ways of seeing a close estimate of how tall she will be if you take a string and measure from the middle of the fetlock to the point of the elbow and double that distance, that is how tall the horse will be, or measure from the middle of the knee to the coronet. I believe one inch = one hand and just like humans its just genetics maybe her grandparents had brown eyes on each side of the sire or dam its nothing uncommon, and sometimes studs or mares will throw off a trait or common color in their foals

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  • 9 years ago

    A guess would be 16 hands. But there's absolutely no way to guess. I've seen foals out of a pair of 16 hand horses turn out to be just barely 14. My friend has a 16.2 hand barrel horse whose parents were both under 15 hand reiners. There's no absolute correct way to guess.

    http://www.ultimatehorsesite.com/info/stringtestin...

    That site has a couple ways to guesstimate your foal's potential height, but they're just guesses.

    As for her eyes, what is here color pattern (and her parents)? Blue eyes are a recessive trait for horses, so it looks like your girl only inherited the blue eye gene for one of them. (Would the blue eye happen to have a white marking over it?)

  • ?
    Lv 4
    9 years ago

    She will most likely be between 15 and 17hh. As for the eye, no clue. Hopefully someone more educated on the topic will answer, because I would like to know as well.

  • 9 years ago

    Somewhere between 15.2 - 16.2. I doubt she'd get as tall as the sire.

    Not too sure about the 2nd question.

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