In  July 2026 it was announced [news here] that HoFa in many areas around the site would be going from an image layer system to a flattened image.   What does that mean?   Basically horse images used to be made up of individual layers that stacked together, and PC players had the ability to inspect elements and see the individual layers that made up what the horse looked like, but now all these layers on many pages are merged all together to make one single element.  In the process of this change HoFa needed to change its variation system.   Variations used to be a fully hidden mechanic outside of inspecting layers to see what variation layer a horse had or testing through breeding / foal predictor.  Now after you get a horse gene tested at the vet they will gain a "Gene Variants" list on their gene page.   This will show you what variants your horse has / carries.  

This update pertained to:   List views of horses like Stables, Auction pages, individual horse pages

This update did NOT flatten:  Foundation, Wild horse encounters, Previewer, Foal Predictor

So what are Variants?   What do they do?

Variants or Variations are what determine which version of a gene your horse will get.  The best way to think of variations is as a gene modifier.   Genes determine WHAT your horse has and displays, but variations determine HOW those genes look / are displayed.

For example the two above horses are both "Bay Sabino" Arabians (both are Sa1n on the KIT portion of the gene string).  However the first Arabian has KIT 1 Variant 1 and the second Arabian has KIT 1 Variant 4.   This is why their Sabino marking looks different from each other.   While they both have and display the Sabino gene, they appear differently because they have different variations of that gene.

But Rose, they both show dapple variants without having dapples?  This is because neither horse has the genes needed to be dappled, but they can still carry and pass on variations of the gene to their foals.   Just because the horse has a variation listed, doesn't mean they have the gene related to it.