What colour is he?!

D

desert_storm

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Feb 20, 2009
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What colour would you say he is? Brown/ dark bay/ other?! He was practically black as a foal but has been getting paler every year!
Both parents are black.
DSC_0989-1.jpg DSC_0986-1.jpg
Closer photo from behind:
IMG_20140605_134739-1.jpg
 
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To be a bay you need have black legs don't you?
I can see aspects of dun in the face but would go with brown.
 
He's gorgeous whatever! I can't see his legs well enough to see if he has black points so can't tell if he's bay or not, but I believe primitive bays don't have black points, although I don't know if they would be as dark as that anyway.

I find it really interesting what you say about his foal colour - in my extremely limited experience of foals I've seen a couple of blacks and both were born a much lighter, almost beige, colour and moulted out to black when they lost their foal coat. The only bay I've seen was also born a much paler colour (they thought she was going to be buckskin) and moulted out to bay.

Will be really interested to find out what he is! Love the horse in your avatar too.
 
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Well I would say his mane and tail are not black but brown, so that would make him brown as I understand it, though you need Chev really for the full story.

I like his paler underparts :)
 
If both parents are black he can't possibly be bay. The bay gene (agouti) works on the body of a black horse to turn it bay so if a horse is black and carries the agouti gene it will be bay to look at. Bay can't hide on a black horse like it can on a chestnut (chestnuts can carry the bay gene but because they have no black in their coats you don't 'see' bay).

Again if he was brown at least one parent at least one parent should also be brown.

If I was to hazard a guess it would be that one parent is black + cream. Cream can hide on a black horse if only one copy is carried. They can fade out in sunlight or stay perpetually faded.

To look at I'd have said either dark bay or smoky black (black+ 1 copy of cream) but I'd also like to see both parents just to make sure they are black! Black x black can only ever produce black or chestnut. Black is like your basic colour; horses come in one colour - black or not-black. Not-blacks are chestnut, blacks are, well, black. All other colours are dependent on genes that mutate those colours. A horse gets one colour gene from each parent. Black is a dominant gene so if one parent passes on black and the other not-black (chestnut) the foal will be black. Black can also hide the not-black gene so if two black horses are hiding not-black genes they can produce a chestnut foal. But never bay-as I explained that works on black pigment so you get bay foals.

If I wanted to know for sure on this one I'd test for A (agouti or bay) and Cr (cream).

newforest- those will be foals that carry grey on top of whatever base colour they are. Black foals are often born a sort of mushroom colour but by no means all of them.
 
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Chev I am amazed and so impressed every time you give us the benefit of your knowledge on the genes of colouring. I would have just looked at him and said a dark bay. Ignorance is bliss a lot of the time but I do love learning something new in the horse world.:).
 
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Thank you all for your replies; that's very interesting Chev! I never knew that. I haven't any photos of his dam, but this is his damsire:
gellle02.jpg
All his mum's relatives are blacks, except one chestnut way back!
This is his sire:
MinyfforddMasterpiece.jpg
His parents are both apparently dark bay, so I'm guessing he must actually be dark bay?!
 
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