A little over a month ago I started giving my colors section a facelift – it was high time for updated info and images. There is some new stuff there and the rest is just better than it was before.
Dilutions
There are a wide variety of dilution genes which can affect the two base colors as well as those affected by modifiers and white patterns. Today I want to share a little about the cream dilution produces a rather wide spectrum of colors, and has a different effect in single and double doses.
Cream Dilution
The cream dilution affects base coats by lightening them. The most obvious effect is on chestnut and bay animals, even a single dose will have an affect on their coat. Although black based animals can carry the gene, it usually requires a double dose to produce obvious changes to black hair (including the mane, tail and points of a bay).
Cream Colors
The color spectrum that cream creates is quite large, a single dilution on a chestnut will turn palomino and a single on a bay will produce buckskin – on a black coat a single dilution will have very little affect. A double dose of cream turns chestnut bases to cremello, bay bases to perlino and black bases to smoky cream. All double dilutions will have pink skin and blue eyes – and are often incorrectly mistaken for albino, which doesn’t exist in equines.
A chestnut base is the only one whose mane and tail are affected by a single dose of cream. However, a double dose turns almost any color into glorious creamy white hair.
Learn More About Color
Be sure to visit the new and improved color section for more information about cream horses and stay tuned, next week we’ll continue the dilution genes by looking at the silver dilution gene – which incidentally creates animals that look very similar to palominos.