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Gray is a coat color of horses, consisting of black skin, a white to dark gray coat, and a mane the same color or darker than the body coat. Gray horses are born bay, brown, or black, never white. Graying can occur very quickly on one horse and very slowly one another.
A gray horse turned "white" will still have black skin and dark eyes, unless there are other modifying genes masked under the gray, such as the champagne gene or creme gene.
The gray gene always blocks out other colors. So any color plus gray remains gray. However, if a parent is gray, it can still pass along a different color instead of the gray coloring, if it is masking another color.
Graying follows this process:
Dark foal changes slowly to a rose gray or dapple gray then changes to a white coat or fleabitten gray coat So, dapple grays and rose grays (a pinky-gray color) are both intermediate steps that a horse takes when graying, as it is changing its color from chestnut, bay, brown or black to gray. When the horse has finished changing, it will have a white coat or a fleabitten gray coat (a white coat with tiny speckles of brown/black dotted randomly on the body). A horse that has finished graying out will not be dapple or rose gray. Dapple gray and rose grays only occur in the steps between "dark" and "white."
White Horses True white horses are extremely rare. The difference between a gray and a white horse is the skin color: gray horses have black skin, white horses have pink skin. Some gray horses may have a pink nose (which, if they had a dark color coat, would had been the place where they had a white marking on their face). White horses always have a pure white coat, with absolutely no other color hair. They are born white (unlike a gray, which is born dark coated) and stay that color the rest of their life.
White horses are usually born with brown or hazel eyes, although there have been cases of white horses with one eye or both eyes blue. This can't be confused with Cremello. Although the horse may look like a cremello, and a cremello next to a white horse with two blue eyes may be undistingishable in their differences, they are NOT the same thing. If the cremello was to breed, it would pass on a dilution gene. The white horse would pass on a white gene. So a cremello bred to a chestnut would produce a palomino. A white horse bred to a chestnut would produce either a white foal or another color (see below).
White horses are heterozygous in their white gene. This means that they have only one copy of the white coloring gene, from only one parent. If a horse gets two white genes (homozygous white) with one gene from each parent, it will die.
Breed a...
- Colored Stallion X Colored Mare: Colored foal
- Color Stallion X White Mare (or vice versa): 50% foals will be white, 50% will be colored
- White Stallion X White Mare: 50% foals will be white, 25% will be another color, 25% will die.
It's a bit hard to do punnet squares on here, but I'll try my best to show the possibiliies of each breeding. It helps if you all have a bit of background in basic genetics (like high school biology):
W= white, c= color other than white (all other colors are recessive to white, so if a horse has a white gene from one parent and a colored gene from the other, the colored gene will be "masked" by the white, and the foal will appear white).
- Wc (white stallion) X cc (colored mare)= Wc (white), Wc (white), cc (color other than white), cc (colored)
- Wc (white stallion) X Wc (white mare)= WW (lethal), Wc (white), cW (white), cc (color other than white)
There can be no WW X cc because the WW would be dead: there are two white genes, which is lethal.
Because there is a 50% chance of getting a white foal when you cross a white horse and a colored horse, and a 50% chance when you cross a white horse to a white horse, if the breeder is breeding for white coloration it is best to breed the white horse to a non-white horse, so the risk of lethal white is gone.
Sabino whites can occur in any breed with the Sabino gene. Just imagine white markings on a horse so big that they cover the entire horse. Sabino whites have white coats (sometmes with a few dark hairs on the poll or ears), pink skin, and dark eyes. Unlike the frame overo gene, which causes all-white foals to die shortly after birth (called "lethal white syndrome"), sabinos can be born entirely white and be perfectly healthy.
Albinism There have been no reported case of a true albino horse. An albino horse would have a white coat, mane, and tail, with pink skin and pink eyes.
Despite its name, the American Albino Registry accepts white and cremello horses, not albino, since there are none in the horse world.
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