Anderson: Coat Color in Horses 



483 



BKEEUl.NG OLT THE GRAY 



This gray mare is out of a gray dam, but has solid colors in her sire's ancestry. Her foal is bay 

 by a bay stallion. Gray is ordinarily dominant to bay (and to other colors) and the fact 

 that it does not appear in this colt shows that he has lost it permanently and that he can 

 not transmit it to his own progeny. (Fig. 5.) 



The fashionable color for almost all 

 classes of horses is the bay.^ The 

 average bay horse has bay hairs on the 

 body, but black on the legs, mane and 

 tail. This black may extend along the 

 back and up the legs to the body and 

 even appear on the underline of the 

 barrel. When the sides of the body 

 show black in alternating patches with 

 bay, the horse is frequently registered 

 as a brown. This brown is known 

 among horsemen as a mahogany brown. 

 As common practice allows mahogany 

 browns to be registered brown it makes it 

 quite difficult to interpret some results 

 as shown by matings. The mahogany 

 brown is a bay. The coat is a compro- 

 mise between bay and black but it is 

 not blending although it resembles a 

 blend. In technical terms it is a sim- 

 plex bay, that is, a bay produced by 

 two germ cells one of which carries the 

 determiner for bay, the other carrying 

 the determiner for black, the bay factor 

 in this union not showing the usual 

 dominant strength which should exclude 

 black hairs from the bodv- The ma- 



hogany bay represents the one extreme 

 of bay and varies from this condition 

 to the bay that has no black hairs on 

 body or legs. The bay hair varies in 

 shade from the very dark wine colored 

 bay to the very light shade close to 

 chestnut. 



In all the stud books examined the 

 horses registered as brown may vary in 

 shade from the dark or mahogany bay 

 to black. As noted above the so-called 

 mahogany brown is a dark bay and 

 should be so registered, although custom 

 sanctions the other method. The horse 

 which is called seal brown by horsemen 

 is almost a black horse. The top line 

 is all black, as is the mane and tail. 

 The legs, except for possible white 

 markings, are black up to the body. 

 The body is very dark, in some cases 

 showing a lighter shade near the flanks 

 and back of the nostrils. The flanks 

 and muzzle are said to be tan in color. 



The lighter shade, called tan, on 

 muzzle, flanks and sometimes the hips 

 is not due to the presence of brown 

 hairs for the reason that there are no 



- Comparison of early and late volumes of the Register shows that the American Saddle Horse 

 is going rapidly to a chestnut color. This is partly due, doubtless, to the ease with which chest- 

 nuts can be bred, all that is necessary being to mate a chestnut sire and chestnut dam. 



