A black horse can carry the red gene, or it can carry TWO black genes (making it homozygous black).

Black horses may fade  or burn with exposure to sun, this is called a fading black.  The odd black horse will not fade and will always look dark black - this is called a Non-fading black... they are still the same colour - BLACK.

Your average black foal will be a black colour with lighter sooty areas along the underside of it's body. It's normal for a black foal to have light coloured legs as seen in the photos below.

A true black horse DOES NOT carry bay (if it did it would look bay), so if you ever put a true black horse to a chestnut horse and get a bay foal – you then KNOW that the chestnut carries bay.
Similarly if you ever put two black horses together and get a BAY foal then you know at least one of those horses is not really black, but is dark bay.
 

  >> Black Examples

Want to get Technical?

Black pigment in mammals is caused by Eumelanin (yoo-MEL-a-nin). Black is one of the base colours for horses, the other is red (Chestnut). All horses will have a black or red base colour. The control for Black is located at the Extension locus and is dominant at that locus. 

Black at the Extension locus is symbolized by "E", since it is dominant. Chestnut is also located at the Extension but it is recessive so it's symbolized by "e".

• EE means the horse is genetically (homozygous) and physically Black*
• Ee means the horse is genetically (heterozygous) and physically Black*
• ee means the horse is genetically and physically Chestnut*

*These horses look Black or Chestnut when there are no dilution or modifying genes present.

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