Roans & Grays

 Written by Raul Del Solar from question on Good Peruvians Yahoo Groups

In the 50's in Peru 90% of the horses going to shows and in
general Peruvian Pasos were grays, roans and horses of other colors with
a lot of white but with exceptional strength and pisos and brio.

In the 60's two things happened, first Sol de Oro V and then Sr. Fernando Grana. Sol de Oro V put horses of very good quality and Sr. Grana hated the grays and roan colors. Then he was selected to be the judge that would guide the breed to the future. I was very young then but I remember perfectly how Sr.Grana would pick horses of solid colors, chestnuts and bays only. Once in while he would pick a palomino or a buckskin.

I have seen competitions where the gray horses were superior than the chestnut horses and everybody would come and ask him why the chestnut were picked over the superior grays and he would say "el color lo hace superior" "the color makes him superior". At the same time the gringos appeared soon with the dollars in their hands, at first buying grays and all colors and whatever they liked, but after a couple of years of seeing that in the shows that grays and roans were discriminated against by the judges from Peru they didn't want to buy gray or roan anymore. So
consequently the Peruvians stopped breeding to gray and roan horses.

A big circle started by a few people and pretty soon everybody in Peru was trying to have horses of only solid colors. to my thinking, a big
mistake for the breed. Because we not only lost beautiful colors but we
also let go a whole section with wonderful qualities of gait strength
and brio that is very hard to find now. In these modern times I have seen in Peru that when there is a gray or roan horse born some breeders will castrate him right away, as you can see there are some exceptional gray and roan geldings. Behind the thinking of Sr.Grana in later years, I asked him why he discriminated so much in the colored horses, his
answer was "gray color will have problems with melanoma, roan horses
when injured the scratches come back in black color and never go back to
the same color they were, and horses with a lot of white will have
problems with skin cancer and albinism (I did not understand that because he owned a herd of pure white horses)". I hope this will help to
understand why you do not see a lot of roan stallions.