Part 3

WHAT THE?  My foal shouldn’t [can’t] be that colour!!!!

BEWARE J horse colours are not always what they seem…

Many a time has someone bred two chestnuts only to receive a black based foal – NOT POSSIBLE YOU SAY J

It IS possible if one of those horses is in fact silver bay… the silver bay gene CAN lighten bay points just enough to make the horse look like a flaxen chestnut – esp to anyone who has not had experience with silver bay before, and MANY American mini horses are incorrectly registered as chestnut when they are really silver bay.

What about the person who breeds two solid horses – one might have a blaze or stockings etc.. and gets an almost all white foal?  

The sabino gene, while sometimes only giving a bit of “chrome” – ie stockings, blaze etc, can also be shown in the “extreme sabino” form… 
Extreme overos can also occur from a LWO parent with little white. (see below)

The breeder who gets a frame overo from what appears to be non-overo parents…  

The overo gene can be passed on without displaying LOTS of white, your horse may have an overo parent s/he inherited the gene from… and of course this may happen over more then one generation - for this reason it’s a good idea to get overo bred horses tested to prevent accidental lethal white foals in the future…

 Cream horse from none cream parents?   

If one of those horses is black then it MUST be a smokey black… look at its pedigree if possible and see if one of its parents is cream.

Silver from non silver parents?  Could be two reasons:

1. That chestnut is really a silver bay (see above), or
2. the chestnut based parent carries silver (can’t see silver on a chestnut)

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