Unfortunately there are several places on the Internet were you can find claims that there are dun Tekes. Even breeders that one think should have a basic understanding of genetics publish breeding horses on their home pages that they call dun on the same page were they show pictures of their cream colored offspring. There are also other places on the Internet were self proclaimed experts claim that there are duns in this breed.

For newcomers this is confusing, they think that producing golden Tekes is easy as two duns will always produce a dun. They get disappointed when their "Teke duns" produce bays, chestnuts, cream colored etc.

Also a dun colored horse does not have a metallic sheen as the dun gene causes a dull effect on the coat.

The dun is also a primitive gene that has been bred out of the noble horse breeds like the Tekes, the Arabs, the Thorougbreds and the Warmbloods a long time ago.

A buckskin, bay or a chestnut might have an eel, they might have striped legs, they might have sooty faces they might have "wings" but that does not make them duns.

I have asked for hair samples from the proclaimed duns in this breed for more than 10 years now and so far no one has sent me hair from those horses, as the 100% way of deciding a dun from a buckskin is to look at the color granules in the hair.

Therefore, again, I'd like to ask for hair from the purebred Tekes that are called duns by their owners.

I'd also like to remind these people that the Teke breed is the oldest cultivated breed in the world and not a first cross with Przewalski horse or the wild asses of Central Asia.

1. Heather04/03/2007 09:36:01

Oh my goodness, I feel your pain. Just because someone is in a position of "expert" does not make them so, and this can be frustrating. This morning I sat in a parent conference where another teacher insulted my curriculum on anthropology and insisted that science "lies about the age of bones all the time" and it's completely "untrue that remains can be millions of years old, because the Earth is not that old..." This is a college educated professional teaching our children alongside myself!

Anyhow, sorry for the tangent (can you tell my blood is up on this one?? ), but for the science driven professional such claims are a detriment to those of us that know the facts. I have actually seen numerous "dun" tekes advertised, and like the coloration, so I am glad of your genetic explanation! I think I am guilty of having used the term for that phenotypic look, without understanding the genetic difference. Can you explain a little more about the process of examining the hairs to confirm the genotype represented?

2. Tabitha04/03/2007 10:06:00

I would've loved to give you a hair sample if I'd known you were looking for them. But you're a year too late.
The colt I saw, that made me wonder if we do have this gene in the breed, has now been sold to Germany, so I can't help you out. He was advertised as buckskin, so don't worry about his breeder being incorrect, but his looks sure made me wonder.
Never saw such clear zebra stripes (even not on all the fjord ponies walking around here), he had an eel and a black edge around his ears and he was a little white-yellowish instead of silver shiny. Yet he is a purebred Akhal-Teke.

3. Jessica D.04/04/2007 14:01:17

I would think the best way to put it to rest is to actually do a genetic test on the horses in question and test to see if they have the Dun gene or not. If they dont, then they are not dun for sure! I know there are several places that use hair samples to run their genetics tests.

4. Jessica04/05/2007 09:29:00

Well, making informed decisions within this breed is as easy as for a blind to see! Not only do we lack reliable basic breed statistics accessible in a world language we also have to live with all kinds of creative marketing of Tekes.

A breeder who market a stallion as a dun at the same time as his offspring as perlino is really not being honest or correct.

It is frustrating to year after year explain to new breeders that there are no duns in this breeds, in other words there is no point in buying two Tekes advertised as duns as those "duns" will produce solid colored as well as cream colored offspring. Now these people are even "educated" on the web that yes, there are duns and grullas etc in this breed.

There are no tests avaialable for the D gene but for the cream gene so those who market their yellow Tekes as duns can easily do the Ccr test for their duns and this test would come up negative for the Ccr. So if you want to make an informed decision on breeding to a stallion or buying a Teke claimed to the dun, ask for a negative cream test.

A very informative site on horse color genetics is http://www.horse-genetics.com

The hair of the dun colored horse is colored only on one side, the side that is towards the body has no color granules, this can be checked in a microscope or only by looking at the hair. Next time you see a dun just check it by with your hand turning over the coat from the body and you will see the difference.

5. Darya04/05/2007 15:02:47
Homepage: http://www.avatstud.com

I agree it is rather frustrating. A few people who saw pics of my stallion say: Oh, my friend has got a dun, should breed to him etc.. I'm tired explaining them that he is not dun, but buckskin and what the difference is, as a lot of people don't even know the difference between the two.

6. Darya04/06/2007 07:13:58
Homepage: http://www.avatstud.com

Added some new pics of my horses from this morning.
http://www.avatstud.com/Sun.html

7. Jessica D.04/06/2007 10:43:08

I agree with Darya that a lot of people do not know the difference between Dun and Buckskin....they call it the same thing thinking they are not different colorings. I have a friend at the barn I board at who actually owns a Buckskin Dun though. :) He is quite cute and she does eventing with him.

Here are some pics Ive taken of him:
http://drakephotos.dotphoto.com/CPViewAlbum.asp?AID=4118783&IID=141564221&Page=2

http://drakephotos.dotphoto.com/CPViewAlbum.asp?AID=4068922&IID=139709339&Page=4

It is annoying when people claim a horse is a certain color when it is not at all that color...but I just pass it off as they are ignorant and dont know the difference...sometimes that is all one can do. There are just some people out there who aren't necessarily "The brightest crayon in the box." But then there are others who are just stubborn and refuse to accept to admit they are wrong about something and so they keep on doing the same thing.... :-

8. Kerri-Jo Stewart04/10/2007 20:07:39
Homepage: http://Akhal-Teke.ca

I don't blame anyone - there are many websites out there talking about duns versus buckskins in the Akhal-Tekes:
http://www.turanianhorse.org/colors.html
http://www.akhal-teke.org/coatmanycolors.htm
http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/horses/akhalteke/index.htm
http://www.ahalteke.net/
http://www.equine-world.co.uk/about_horses/akhal-teke_horse.htm
http://www.acmehorses.com/Library/HorseBreed.aspx?breed=1
http://www.imh.org/imh/bw/akhal.html

And right in the breed standard from MAAK:
http://www.maakcenter.org/ENG/BREED/standard.html
which states, "The commonest colours are: bay (39.9%), dun (22.4%), black (l2.3%), chestnut (ll.2%), gray, light bay and cream are less frequently encountered. "

So how confusing is that?!!

9. Darya04/11/2007 03:34:55
Homepage: http://www.avatstud.com

Some confusion may be due to translation and cultural differences. Jessica, I suppose you did not see any Duns when you went to Turkmenistan or Russia?

10. Todd Keith04/11/2007 07:46:44
Homepage: http://www.beknazar.com/

No we did not see any. We saw plenty of "Bulanaya" or buckskin horses but not dun (D locus). The britts use Dun for yellow as does the studbook. USA uses buckskin for Ccr and Dun for D locus. So there is a difference depending on where you are from!
Russian uses Bulanaya for buckskin (Ccr) and Savrasaya for dun (D).
If you do a quick look in the studbook, there are no savrasaya Akhal-Tekes.

Todd

11. Jessica04/11/2007 08:02:53

Kerri-Jo, you can find plenty of fairy tales about horse breeds on the web. If I want to check out something about a breed I am not familiar with I go to the official site of the breed's mother association or the national sister association for facts.
The sites you mention like for example the Turanian and other private sites are written and edited by self appointed authors that are ackredited or approved neither by the breed associations formally nor by the breeding community informally. Read it like you read this blog or other mailing lists, do not believe anything until you have checked with a reliable source.
As Todd mentions the Russian studbook that in this case is the only source of authority we have does not list any dun Tekes at all.
So the only valid source in this case supports my claim to 100%.
However it is difficult to each and everyone to verify my claim as the studbooks are difficult to access due to availability and translation issues.
The studbook management is aware of the fact that the correct name for the bolanaya color is buckskin. Unfortunately I see their publication of the word dun in their English version as another proof of their arrogance to the international breeding community.
Darya, I have seen very many fantastic shades and variants of the rainbow colored horses, but so far no dun colored ones.

12. Darya04/11/2007 09:24:06
Homepage: http://www.avatstud.com

I haven't seen any dun Tekes either. I remember Russian version of MAAK only mentions buckskin. That's why I mentioned translation.
It is quite annoying how they call anything yellow "dun" in UK. When I went to BHS course and they were meant to have told us the colours of the horse, they were all sorts of piebalds and skewbalds, but no buckskin, and the lecturer did not even know what buckskin was. Such lack of basic knowledge on colour genetics is quite scary.

13. Jessica04/11/2007 09:42:53

Darya, the cream gene has not been known for such a long time, it wasn't to long ago the Swedish native breed Gotlandsruss had to remove the dun color from the breed description as it was proven that there are no dun colored Gotlands Russ, many of them have far more so called primitive markings that are said to be proof of the D gene than I have ever seen in a Teke.
Many native English pony breeds for a long time and I think still considered the blue eyed cream a defect and called in albino as they did not understand the dilution effect of the cream gene, so did the American Quarter Horse Association. They did not realise that a blue eyed cream can produce sought after palominos and buckskins.
So if you call the yellow horses dun, the blue eyed creams in the breed then cannot be explained in another way than defect.
This is one thing I think the Turkmen and Russian at least realised and therefore did not close out the creams as defect from the breeding program.
The eternal truth about horses is that we can always learn more as long as we do not think we already know everything!
When I compare the buckskin Gotlands and the buckskin Tekes I think that there are more about the cream gene that we have to discover as these buckskins look so different.

14. Darya04/12/2007 04:11:07
Homepage: http://www.avatstud.com

I still think it is embarassing that the lecturers of the largest horse organization in the country are not up to date with such things. I hope more and more people will soon pick it up. There are still plenty of unfriendly feelings towards blue eyed creme horses and it is a bit sad, so I will continue to spread the information. Hopefully more and more people will soon know.