Coat Color in Horses
The description of equine coat color can vary with the breed or the part of the country. The following guidelines are provided to familiarize you with some of the more common colors and the terms used to describe them, but it should be understood that legitimate disagreements will arise between knowledgeable equestrians.
Most solid colors (no spots) are derived from variations on and dilutions of black, bay, gray, and chestnut.
True black horses are rare except in a few breeds (e.g., Shire and Percheron). The body hairs and all the points are completely black without brown or white hair intermixed. Black coats frequently bleach with prolonged exposure to sunlight, rendering them less deeply black.
The bay horse’s body color ranges from tan through red to reddish-brown. The points (mane, tail, lower limbs, and ear rims) are black; the black limbs may not be apparent on individuals with extensive white markings. Many adjectives can be added to the basic term “bay,” but fortunately most of them are self- explanatory. Blood bay, red bay, mahogany bay, and sandy bay are just some examples of these terms. Very dark bays (sometimes called black bay or mahogany bay) are described as brown in some registries (notably the Jockey Club, which registers Thoroughbred horses).
A gray horse’s coat has an admixture of white and darker (generally black) hairs. The skin is black. Many gray horses are dark at foaling and gradually accumulate white hairs as they age, lightening the entire coat. When the darker hairs are red, the gray may have a pink cast, and depending on the breed and the individual’s preference, these horses may be referred to as rose gray or roan (discussed later). Dappling is characterized by a pattern of dark and light circles in the coat with the centers lighter. Any color can be dappled, but the term is most commonly applied to gray horses.
Chestnut horses are some shade of red or brown, varying from diluted shades that are nearly yellow to a deep liver chestnut. The points on the chestnut may be the same as the body color, lighter (sometimes even flaxen), or slightly darker, but they are never black. As with bay, many descriptive adjectives can be added to chestnut to describe the color more specifically. One variation of chestnut is sorrel, most often encountered in reference to the Quarter Horse. In this breed, sorrel is used for light chestnut shades, including red chestnut, whereas the term chestnut is reserved for dark (liver) shades.
Palomino describes a light-colored body with lighter mane and tail. The most desirable palomino horses have a body color of “newly minted gold” with white mane and tail. This ideal is uncommon, though, and most palominos have body hairs in some less golden shade of yellow. All palominos’ manes and tails are white or cream. Strong dilutions of palomino can be nearly white in appearance. These diluted horses, described as cremello, often arise from palomino to palomino crosses. A buckskin’s body color is yellow or gold, and points are black. Many horses with this color also carry dun markings (discussed later), most prominently the dorsal stripe. The American Quarter Horse Association registers these horses as buckskin only if they lack the dun markings. The American Buckskin Registry Association, on the other hand, registers (and actually considers ideal) horses as buckskins with the dun markings.
The term dun has been used loosely to describe a variety of diluted colors, but a more restrictive (and more common) use limits the term to mean colors that are characterized by the dun markings. These “line-backed” duns always have a dark dorsal stripe running from the mane to the base of the tail. other, less universal markings include a shoulder bar, transverse stripes on the caudal aspect of the forearm and sometimes the hock (so-called zebra stripes), and concentric darker rings on the forehead (cobwebbing).
There are many shades of dun, described by a variety of adjectives (e.g., yellow dun, red dun). one notable variety of dun is called grullo (grew’ yoh) or grulla (grew’ yuh), the terms masculine and feminine, respectively. Grullos have black points, and the body is a slate color, often with a bluish cast.Roan hair coats are composed of dark hairs mixed evenly with white hairs over most of the body. Unlike grays, roans do not lighten with age, although the seasonal variation in a given roan’s appearance may be considerable. The specific terms used to describe roans depend on the background color into which the white hair is mixed. The roan pattern on black horses, for instance, may be described as blue roan, on bay as red roan, on the sorrel coat as strawberry roan.
The defining characteristic of the pinto is large, irregular patches of white against a solid color. This pattern can take one of two basic forms, overo or tobiano. Distinguishing between these two patterns can be difficult, and in fact, some individuals have characteristics of both. The tobiano is a white horse splashed with darker spots. White patches extend over the midline of the back, and the head is solid colored, although there may be white facial markings. Generally, all four limbs are white. spots are usually smooth-edged and rounded. The overo is a colored horse splashed with white. White rarely extends over the midline of the back. Generally at least one and often all four limbs are the dark color. The head and face are often broadly marked with white. The markings are irregular and splashy. A further set of descriptors used to describe pinto coat patterns distinguishes between black and white (piebald) and brown and white (skewbald) pintos. Overo and tobiano refer to pattern distribution, while skewbald and piebald refer to color combination.
A Paint is fundamentally a Quarter Horse with pinto coloration. The Paint Horse Association registers only horses with Paint or Quarter Horse lineage.
A Paint may be double-registered as a pinto, but not all pintos are registrable as Paints.The Appaloosa is also distinguished by its characteristic coat pattern. The Nez Perce indians of northeastern oregon and northern Idaho, particularly in the region of the Palouse River, whence the breed derives its name, used selective breeding to develop the Appaloosa. in addition to the classic spotted hair coat, three distinctive pigmentation patterns are common in Appaloosas: (1) the sclera of the eye is white,
(2) skin is mottled black and white (this is most obvious around lips, eyes, and genitalia), and
(3) hoofs are striped vertically in black and white. The most striking thing about the Appa- loosa is, of course, its showy, spotted hair coat (although not all registered Appaloosas have spots!). This may assume many patterns, each of which is described with specialized terms by aficionados of the breed. Many Appaloosas feature a solid body color with a white andIor spotted blanket over the hips and loins. White horses with dark spots over the entire body are leopard Appaloosas.