A Horse of a Different Color

What is your favorite color of horse? Is it the pitch black of Walter Farley’s Black Stallion? The whiteness of the Lone Ranger’s Silver? The sunshine gold of Roy Rogers’ Trigger? How does a breeder capitalize on the fancy colors that bring big bucks? Unfortunately, it’s not always as simple as breeding a black stallion to a black mare to get a black foal. The late Ann Bowling, PhD, author of

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What is your favorite color of horse? Is it the pitch black of Walter Farley’s Black Stallion? The whiteness of the Lone Ranger’s Silver? The sunshine gold of Roy Rogers’ Trigger? How does a breeder capitalize on the fancy colors that bring big bucks? Unfortunately, it’s not always as simple as breeding a black stallion to a black mare to get a black foal. The late Ann Bowling, PhD, author of Horse Genetics; and Phillip Sponenberg, DVM, PhD, of the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, have both done extensive research into the specifics of coat color genetics and their expertise will help you understand how horses pass color from one generation to the next.

Remember Genetics Class?

The genes of the horse determine everything about that animal, and they are passed from generation to generation in chromosomes. The location of a gene on a chromosome is called the locus, and there are two alleles, or alternate states of a particular gene, at each locus. A dominant allele is one that masks the traits of the recessive (unexpressed) allele, and the way the two are paired indicate which allele is expressed. If a horse carries two dominant or recessive alleles for a gene, he is said to be homozygous for that trait. If he carries one dominant and one recessive allele, then he is heterozygous for the trait.

Two main pigments in the hair account for all colors in mammals. The first is eumelanin, which is responsible for black or slate blue and, although very rare in horses, brown. The second is pheomelanin, which produces colors ranging from reddish brown to yellow. Many horses have a combination of both. In contrast, white hair is basically hair without color and results from a lack of pigment granules

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