Magical gene / mane and tail

Striped Mane and Tail

Mane and tail split into alternating bundles, light where the hair is dark and dark where it is light - in cream and near-black, or in one colour the line carries.

What it can come out as

Outcome	Carrying
Striped mane and tail	`Smt/Smt` · `Smt/Smc` · `Smt/n`
Coloured striped mane and tail	`Smc/Smc`
Wild type	`Smc/n` · `n/n`

How each one is actually drawn - region by region, and the layers it is built from - is on the coding tab.

Crossing two of them

Finding one

About 1 in 595 wild horses is born showing this. That is the whole of the supply: catch one, or make one with the carrot below. Breeds set their own pools and a breed built around this gene will carry it far more often than the wild population does.

Wild pair	Shows as	How often
`Smt/Smt`	Striped mane and tail	0.006% — 1 in 16,667
`Smt/Smc`	Striped mane and tail	0.024% — 1 in 4,167
`Smt/n`	Striped mane and tail	0.114% — 1 in 877
`Smc/Smc`	Coloured striped mane and tail	0.024% — 1 in 4,167
`n/n`	Wild type	99.832%

Its gene carrot

The file

common/src/main/resources/horsegenetics/genes/striped_mane_tail.json — a data-driven gene, not a Java class. It is listed in the index.json beside it and registered by Genes' class initialiser at startup.

Key	`horsegenetics.striped_mane_tail`
Phase	magical — it adds signed colour in phase 3, after the pigment has resolved
Priority	404 — where it sits in the one `(priority, key)` paint order
Alleles	`Smt` · `Smc` · `n`
Varies per horse	3 values drawn once off the expressing allele copy, so a foal that inherits the copy inherits the look
Built from	PIGMENT, STROKES, TOWARD

What it paints

Each outcome, described the way the gene file describes it, and then the layers that draw it in the order they are painted. The prose is the part a reader checks a bake against; the list underneath is what the engine actually did.

Striped mane and tail

Three to nine bundles spaced along the crest, each running the whole length of the strand it is in, though about a third of them thin out and feather away partway down. The forelock joins in about half the time, at one to three bundles. The tail carries two to six, a little wider at the dock. The bundles are whatever contrasts: light on a dark mane, dark on a light one. No body coat expression of any kind.

light bundles, where the hair is dark — STROKES × PIGMENT, painted with TOWARD
dark bundles, where the hair is light — STROKES × PIGMENT inverted, painted with TOWARD

Coloured striped mane and tail

The same alternating bundles, worked in a colour the line carries rather than in cream and near-black: the bundles that would have gone light take the hue bright, and the ones that would have gone dark take it deep, so the striping still reads as striping and reads as one colour doing it. Fully recessive - it takes two copies, and a single copy beside the white allele shows white. It never gives blue eyes.

light bundles, where the hair is dark, in colour — STROKES × PIGMENT, painted with TOWARD
dark bundles, where the hair is light, in colour — STROKES × PIGMENT inverted, painted with TOWARD

Wild type

Unstriped hair.

Paints nothing.