What colors are horses like these?

Likely not then. Maybe a buckskin with silver? Silver and cream do some pretty odd things when combined together.

Edited to change perlino to buckskin, because I had a Friday afternoon brain fart.

While Roan and Tobi can exist (but not homozygous for both because they’re on the same allele), many Tobianos have some roaning as a function of the Tobi itself

don’t forget smoky cream too!

Pearl + cream mimics double cream but it also still looks “wrong”

the big question! This is why you can’t rely just on the white pattern to say a horse is or isn’t X. Other white patterns can hide the presentation of Frame, for example.

Champagne puts greenish/blueish eyes on, and speckled skin visible around the eyes, nose/lips, and genitals, and normal colors can have those lighter golden brown eyes.

Washed yellow with gray could have been buckskin with silver

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I have nothing to say, I’m just reading this thread for the pretty pictures. :rofl:

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Oh man I forgot all about the “chocolate palomino” description

Yeah the sorrel v chestnut debate :roll_eyes: I was married to a calf roper, it was a point of contention.

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In Connemaras, one of the official colors is “dun”. But genetically it is buckskin (dilute + bay)

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What a cutie! Congrats.

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Here in the land of sorrel, the only time I hear chestnut is to describe a liver chestnut.

Mostly, people locally tend to call horses by their actual colors instead of the names for those colors. They’ll say a horse is red, yellow, gray or black. Red covers both bay and sorrel. Horses that have flaxen manes/tails are called “flaxey.” No one ever says they have a brown horse, because brown usually falls into the “red” category, unless it’s a liver chestnut, in which case it’s called…liver chestnut.

I hope that’s clear.

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The ca 1959 World Book Encyclopedia i had as a child showed a solid white horse it called an Albino.
Years later another horse book said there are no albinos among horses.
I still don’t know what color/breed Silver and Thunderhead really are.

:rofl: Me, too! Life-long bay OTTB owner.

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Interesting. Where do you live? Where I’ve lived, horse people say chestnut, bay, grey, palomino, and black. Non-horsepeople tend to call older greys white. There can be some disagreement as to whether a seal brown horse is a brown or a bay. Especially the ones who are seal brown in winter and bay in summer. Most horsepeople use dun and buckskin interchangeably. Unless it’s a red dun. Then, in winter, it might be mistaken for a chestnut.

The original Silver was a White horse. Which (combination of) genetics it was, who knows.

Thunderhead was also White, genetics of it unknown.

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My very first horse was a color conundrum, to me, anyway. He looked white, but when wet from a bath, you could see his pink and black spotted skin. One eye was brown and one was blue.

Twelve-year-old me, ignorantly and in jest, called him an “albino pinto.” Not too far off; I’ve since been told that he was a fully greyed-out pinto.

they are genetically bay. The Brown test was proven to be invalid.

Just like chestnuts, who can range from peachy pale, to blackest liver, bay also has shades. I have one who is quite dark in Winter, and very “bay” in Summer. I also have one who is “black” in Winter, and still “seal brown” in Summer. The difference is usually about Agouti, which restricts black pigment. Aa is darker than AA, as the double A does more restriction. But then like chesntut, there is more to shades than just that.

The whole Dun thing also gets very confusing because of how some breeds use terms. The Fjord breed has 5 dun colors - brown dun, red dun , gray dun, white dun and yellow dun

There is no gray, or brown (see above), or white genetics, it’s all about the phenotype

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It doesn’t. That is not what I meant.

I meant that some breeds have restricted color to only what they believe is possible for a purebred member of the breed with a long & documented lineage. But it’s been shown that there are purebreds with color that doesn’t conform. The breeds actually have more color than the breed standards have allowed.

I don’t know if the purebred lines always had it, just not expressed except rarely, or if it was a mutation … I don’t know how that works.

A long time ago, Morgans were thought to be dark bay and darker bay. Then black, too. OK chestnut, too. As of this point in time I don’t know where Morgans are on color. “[The breed] has also exhibited colors like gray, palomino, perlino, dun, roan, cremello, silver dapple or buckskin.”

The AQHA took decades to admit that there is PINTO COLOR in line-bred registered QH’s. :astonished: Bold markings and pinto patterns have been a curious denial on the part of the registry, considering how young the breed is and how wide a group of horses were accepted (by inspection) in the very early days, without knowing their color lineage. But for decades the registry denied registration to boldly marked and pinto foals of registered parents. That door was finally kicked open.

Fortunately I don’t think Thoroughbred registries have ever had color restrictions. Although most TB’s are the stereotypical bay, chestnut or gray, with minimal markings, there are a few who radically depart from that color scheme. A lot of TB owners I’ve known don’t know horse colors anyway, and don’t care. As far as they are concerned, all of their horses are brown, except for the ones that are white or gray. Some are darker brown than others. Life is certainly easier that way. :grin:

And so on. My point is that, even if one is not a horse color expert, we know enough now from science that color is not a reliable indicator of purebred lineage, or not.

Below: Trashadeous, born 1987 of purebred QH stock. BUT he was considered way outside the QH color restrictions of the day, so he was denied AQHA registration for a long time. His name reflected the owners’ ridicule of the attitude of the day that this color would only show up on a “trash” bred horse. Trashadeous was finally admitted to the AQHA registry, a landmark as he was already registered with the paint horse registry APHA. The AQHA had sworn that no APHA registered horse would ever be AQHA as well … but here we are. :grin: :

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If the AQHA thought that was a lot of color … :smile:

Below is the purebred Thoroughbred racing mare, Buchiko. (look at the groom’s socks :smile: )

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A better look at Buchiko’s color …

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Somewhere on COTH is a thread full of pix of purebred TB’s with bold color patterns. :grin:

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Most of my TBs aren’t just bay, they’re plain bays. (If I’m lucky, I might get 5 white hairs on a forehead.)

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Morgans are/were one of those “color-restricted” breeds. When I was horse shopping, the breeder I bought from offered me a filly that he couldn’t register because of s “belly spot,” at a pretty good discount.

I was brought up to believe that pinto patterns were an evidence of impure breeding. Also, contradictorally, that “a good horse is never of a bad color.” 🤷

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Mine is plain as plain dark bay (before he works on his summer sun exposure, even then he’s not bright).

Except for a teeny tiny star in the middle of his forehead. It isn’t even solid, it’s kind of wispy-looking, just a little bit of leftover white hair. Plus he’s the rangy narrow racetrack-y type - there must be millions of almost identical TB’s.

When he’s all cleaned up and moving like a prince of the realm, people say “oh he’s beautiful!” It is definitely his presence, not his color. Although a healthy glowing horse is always stunningly beautiful. :grin:

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The attitude amongst the range-working old-time cowboys where I grew up was that any white marking was undesirable. The more white, the more “trashy” breeding. They said that white markings were weak points. They had no respect at all for grays, pintos & appys. The registries for paints & appys were an abomination, in their opinion, strictly for spoiled rich kids who wanted to show off. They were ok with a little star in the middle of the forehead, it helped tell one horse from another in a herd of ranch horses.

I don’t know but I suspect it was from the serious effect of the burning sun on all paleness. And the belief that white on the hooves was weaker. They were convinced of the information passed down from previous generations.

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ok, that makes more sense. The whole “line bred” was confusing, as there are way more breeds than just AQHA that do line breeding (and in-breeding). Smaller registries are much more in/line bred than the QH

But also, it’s not necessarily that the colors aren’t allowed, they just aren’t listed as an option. Until quite recently, the JC for example didn’t allow the dilute colors as registered colors. Palominos were chestnut, buckskins were bays, and if an actual black had any brown hairs they were called bay/brown. But the colors were allowed. AQHA doesn’t have forbidden colors, they just might not call them what they are

Morgans have cream, gray, and dun, silver, and several white spotting patterns like Splash, so they can have any of those combinations.

The whole “line bred” doesn’t really belong in here. QHs are no more or less line-bred than many other breeds, and there are lots of QHs who don’t have any repeat horses in their pedigree for 10 generations

What the AQHA took forever to acknowledge was that white patterns exist in the “pure” QH, and yes, the cropouts were denied for a long time.

Well, it could be. If you see a tobiano “Friesian” or “TB” then it’s not. If you see a “palomino” Arabian, it’s not.

Not sure how long ago that was, but there are entire lines of loud Splash Morgans, and have been for a while.

Yes, this. Plus the fact that mustangs and “Indian ponies” had a lot of white patterns, frame Overo actually mutated in Spanish stock in North America, while TB were more likely to be solid color. So I suspect that crop outs of white patterns made them think a junky grade stallion jumped the fence. Also frame Overo which is lethal white is not necessarily a great thing. And some Splash bald face horses are deaf if they have white ears. And appaloosas can have vision problems.

I walked away from the book My Friend Flicka thinking a palomino was chestnut X albino. But what color was Banner the golden chestnut?

I absolutely have seen pure white horses with pink skin and blue eyes. But now I think genetically they are maximum white of one of the pinto patterns like Splash?

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