I am coming in on this disscussion late and I just have to reply to one of the posts.
[I]My husband and I run a small horse farm in eastern NC. We have had our first Cremello; which was supposed to be a palomino, but may be one that broke the rules. She has pink skin, 2 blue eyes, and is VERY, VERY light; beautiful. Her dam is a Barlink mare which have been known to “hide” a creme gene in a chestnut.
Well, after reading and re-reading all postings to this topic, I learned that it is NOT possible to bred a cremello out of a chestnut mare???
Soooooo, guys, and WHY is that foal a cremello???
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That is easy. The foal is NOT a cremello.
The foal is also not a maximal sabino, although that is an extremly good guess.
That foal is actually the product of a newly discovered gene, so new it was only described in the last year.
The gene is apparently an incomplete dominant gene which has been called Barlink Factor. In a single dose, barlink factor dilutes only the skin, not the hair coat, resulting in a “normal” horse color and pink mottling of the skin. In a double dose, barlink factor produces a horse with dilute skin AND dilute hair coat, resulting in a horse which appears remarkably like a champagne of whichever base coat. MOST homozygous barlink horses which are currently known happened to be on a chestnut base and look very like a gold champange.
If you combine Barlink Factor with one cream gene, you will get a false cremello such as the foal being described. This horse is NOT a cremello as it is a product of two entirely seperate genes. It does however mimic a homozygous cream horse very well!
Please see the following link for more details.
http://www.ichregistry.com/Barlink%20article.doc
I hope this helps.
As to the other part of the discussion, i.e. if that foal is perlino or not, my conclusion is that Mahal has just wasted the money for a red factor test. 
The foal appears to be a palomino. As other posters have stated, the foal does NOT have the light blue eyes of a double dilute, nor does he have the bright pink skin. Therefore he could not be a double dilute of any sort.
Due to his parentage, he can only have inherited a copy of the red gene from each parent, because that is all they have to give him.
The only way this foal could be a perlino would be if one parent was a product of the silver dilution. That said, if silver was present in this line of horses, odds are that a bay or buckskin would have popped up long ago out of apparently chestnut based horses. And if that had happened, I am sure someone would have taken note of such an odd occurance.
As to the grandparents colors effecting the color of the offsping, the foal will only recieve the genes that the PARENTS have to give. If the parent did not inherit said gene from the grandparent, the gene is not there to give.
I hope this helps!
