He may change a lot between winter and summer too. Especially the red hairs can look really different in the different seasons (they actually grow from separate follicles). Either way he's super cute!
Rowan is a silver bay pinto and his mane and tail (where they aren't white) are a complex combination of hairs that are flaxen, silver, and darker chocolate color. His legs above his high whites are a darker chocolate while most of his body looks chestnut. He does not have striped hooves, but he has four white socks so his hooves are all white also. Of course I have no idea what he looked like as a foal, but maybe the end result comes down to the exact ratio of the different colored hairs as well as how much the dilution is affecting them?
If you find your horse gets really bleached-looking in the summer, it could actually mean they need more copper and zinc. I think there has been some research also that shows that horses with dilution genes (what I read referred mainly to chestnut since it's the most common, so I'm not sure whether it applies to other dilution genes) may have higher trace mineral requirements because they don't metabolize certain things as well. I'm not sure how good this research was but I do know that my bay horse's mane stopped sun-bleaching to brown when he was getting minerals to balance his forage. And when I was doing saddle fitting, I noticed that chestnuts and palominos were FAR more prone to white hair formation from saddle fit issues than horses with non-diluted base coat colors.
