[quote=1403614812][author]bezo93[/author]White purebred Friesians don't exist in real life so there is no reason to add them to the game as a possible Friesian coat colour.[/quote:0]
I am sensing a discrimination here... Is it too bold to believe its more plausible to have white Friesians than pegasi donkeys (or normal pegasi for that matter)?

+1 I am not arguing here, because you are right about white color and Friesians, I am just having fun... You made my day

I was checking on line and there is one white. They say he is grey, but he looks white. He is not a purebred Friesian, but Nero is a very impressionable horse. He has earned several ribbons. He is a very beautiful horse.

But the friesian should be able to be white since the colorcode in the dna can have mutations

Interesting subject...

Looked up the white Friesian. Unfortunately he's a 'Friesian Sporthorse' which means not a purebred. He's actually quarter Arab.

Still, Entoyable is right, there could always be a mutation...

Chestnut exists, but they are trying to breed the recessive gene out. Now it's possible to do genetic testing, apparently you can't register a stallion unless he's been tested. So it's still possible to produce a purebred chestnut Friesian, but dad won't have been properly registered...

Going back to Nero, calling him 'grey' is probably correct. It's the standard term for a 'white' horse with a common genetics, for good reason. There's (if I remember correctly) 3 genes that produce horses that appear white. One is cremello, then there's 'dominant white' which is bad as a horse can only be heterozygous for it (have one copy of the gene and something else). Homozygous foals die in the womb. (I'm not sure if dominant white is actually an albino gene?)

The 'grey' gene is the common one. But foals with it tend to be born darker! Nero may be white in maturity, but he may well have been dapple grey when younger. Foals can even be born black or dark brown and turn white: this is the pattern with Lippizanner horses: there's actually no such thing as a white Lippi foal!

I'll have you know my pegasus donkey is feeling very left out with Howrse excluding his noble species from the game



A quick, rather oversimplified summary of horse coat genetics is that *all* horses are either black (EE or Ee) or red (ee) pigmented. Every other coat colour and pattern you find is a modification of these base colours. The agouti gene modifies black pigment to push it to the points of the horse, giving us bay horses; dilution genes 'dilute' the coat colour to give us coat colours like palomino, buckskin and smoky black; and pattern/depigmentation genes affect where pigmentation is expressed and where it is 'blocked', giving the horse white markings.
Purebred Friesians lack most of these modifiers, including the grey gene which is responsible for most 'white' horses (including Nero, the horse most commonly pointed to when talking about white Friesians, but he is only three-quarters Friesian; his grey coat comes from his Arabian grandsire). They can have depigmentation genes, which is why a small white star is the only permitted marking when registering a Friesian, but not the dominant white that would be needed to create an all-white horse.

While in theory a mutation could lead to a white Friesian, in reality this is vanishingly unlikely to happen because genetics and gene mutations don't work like that. It would require an extremely precise and specific mutation to occur, which random mutation is not likely to lead to. The only realistic way to get white Friesians would be if they were crossbred with breeds that do have the grey gene, such as Arabs, and then future generations from those crosses were permitted to be registered as Friesians as long as they met all the breed standards other than coat colour - but that would still be us changing/relaxing our definition of a Friesian rather than a true purebred Friesian producing a white/grey foal.

However, we've strayed pretty far off-topic. Getting back to spoilers, I can't wait for the

It should. Promos usually (always?) end on Mondays and start on Thursdays. If it started any later that would just be weird.

Please remember to use spoiler tags when posting about things not yet on the game.

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Is there going to be new trophies for the new companions? Because it doesn't make much sense that the divine one isn't in the trophies but the precious ones are

The next phase has started

Yes, I would love this. I personally love collecting pets and find it incredibly hard to track them all down.

Shadow: they are now here! Under all the pets you have them

When does the Halloween event start? I thought it would start at the daily update, but that was almost 3 hours ago. Am I right if I say it starts at 12:00?

My friend said there was suppose to be a big update on Equideow and there was a bug wth that. Maybe the bug is why the promo hasn't started? It's weird though

Most contests start at 12:00 gmt. It is currently only 11:22. However, bear in mind that today is Halloween so anything could happen

Usually it starts at 12 GMT+1 for the french time, no?. That's why I find it surprising. But true, it's Halloween, anything is possible

It should start in 90 minutes, as usual

[quote=1403615178][author]<em>Retired breeder</em>[/author]It should start in 90 minutes, as usual[/quote:0] 90 minutes? So at 2?

I’ve never looked more forward to a promo and it is now 5 minutes late. *internal screaming*

I miss as the times these posts were posted at. So another hour? *cries silently* I could have sworn they started at 8 for me.. but maybe 9 is right.

I'm in EST and they usually start at 8am for me