Difference between bay and brown?

[skips and soda]

Have been asked to find this out by my RI for my BHS Stage 1, thought someone on here may be able to help me?

I know there IS a difference, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is!

Sorry, thankies muchly! :)

[ForestGump]

A bay has black points, so has black legs and black mane and tail.

Whereas a brown horse doesn't have black points and has a brown mane and tail :)

[*Sez*]

Bays have black manes and tails and have black points (otherwise they cannot be "bay", I believe? :confused: ) although black points can be "masked" by white (i.e. white socks).

[chev]

Brown is basically a black horse with lighter colouration on the soft parts (muzzle, flanks, inside the thighs etc)

Bays have red body colour (can be masked by the sooty gene) and black points.

[igloo]

Brown is basically a black horse with lighter colouration on the soft parts (muzzle, flanks, inside the thighs etc)

Bays have red body colour (can be masked by the sooty gene) and black points.


So what makes a dark bay? Is it a seperate gene? Or just darker? :)

[chev]

Shades of colours are relatively poorly understood but it's theorised that dark bay is bay + sooty. Sooty is a gene that adds black hair to a bay starting at the topline. This can be as little as a countershading stripe (some are similar to dun stripes but tend to be blurry and are black stripes as opposed to base colour as you get with dun) through to expansive dark shading that extends down the ribcage.

[acw295]

http://www.newrider.com/forum/showthread.php?t=170654 lots of info on this thread I posted about Molly, who we have concluded is brown :)

[skips and soda]

That's fab! Thank you everyone! :D