Horse Color Genetics: Cream

Review: E = black, A=bay, G=gray.  The next color gene is the cream gene. This gene does a lot of different things, depending on whether the horse inherits one or two of this gene. This fact is called "incomplete dominant", which means that the cream gene will effect any color, but what it will do depends on whether the horse is homozygous cream or heterozygous cream. Cream creates palomino, cremello, perlino, smoky black, smoky cream, and buckskin, depending on different combinations. I will start with palomino because it is the easiest to understand.

A palomino is a chestnut horse with one cream gene. The cream gene dilutes the chestnut into a lighter color. But for a palomino to happen, it has to have inherited only one cream gene (heterozygous; heterozygous means there is only one dominant in that particular gene). If it inherits two cream genes, chestnut is diluted even further to produce cremello. Cremello looks like an albino, but it is different. Cremello is a cream color with blue eyes.

Backing back up to the palomino; palomino is an easy horse to breed. If you breed a Cremello horse (cremello's have two dominant cream genes) with a chestnut (think blank slate), you end up with a horse that inherits one dominant cream gene from the cremello parent. Therefore making palomino.

So the horse above's genetic code would be: ee, a?, CRcr. No black, but it could possibly carry one or two bay genes but you wouldn't know because there is no black to push out. Now if it was like this, ee, a?, CRCR, then the horse would look like this:

Looks an awful lot like an albino, right? But it has blue eyes(this indicates there is pigment in the eyes; albino animals lack any pigment whatsoever) and the coat color is more cream, not white. If you compare this horse to the gray horse below, the gray looks even more white than the cremello. I know this is a gray because of the dark skin around the muzzle.

Perlino is another color that is very similar to cremello, and you may not be able to tell them apart. Again, perlino requires two dominant cream genes, but also a black gene and a bay gene. These are more rare, because you have to have that combination. Usually perlino's have slightly darker manes and tails, but they will have blue eyes like a cremello. Cremello's, perlino's, and smoky creams are all born with this color. The horse below is a more obvious perlino:

Smoky black and smoky cream are rather rare, simply because most people may or may not know that they have it. Smoky black is a black horse (at least one black, or E gene), that has only one dominant cream gene (I'll call it C from now on). There is barely any difference between black and smoky black, other than maybe the tiniest lightening. The horse below also carries a silver gene that lightens its mane and tail, so if you could ignore that for now, please do. It almost looks more like a dark bay, and the lighting is kind of weird, but you get the idea.

Smoky cream is a horse with at least one dominant E gene (black) and two dominant C genes. If it had only one C gene it would be smoky black; if it had no dominant E genes then it would be cremello. The horse below is advertised as smoky cream. It looks the same as cremello and perlino, though! You would really need to have your horse genetically tested to really be able to determine. It also looks slightly pregnant, or has been pregnant....

The last color C gene can make is buckskin. Buckskin is also a complicated color, but I will do my best. To make a buckskin, there must be at least one dominant E gene, at least one dominant A gene, and only one dominant C gene. If there are two dominant C genes, then it is perlino. There could be two dominant E genes or two dominant A genes, but there has to be only one cream gene.
Another thing you must understand is the difference between buckskin and dun. Genetically, they are completely different, but they look very similar. Buckskin is a golden color with a black mane and tail (remember, the A gene pushes existing black away to the edges), while dun horses can be almost any color with certain markings. Dun is not any particular color, but dun and buckskin are often mistaken for one another.

People who are familiar with horses will know what I mean when I say that duns always have a very clear dorsal stripe and sometimes striping on the legs, like a zebra. The horse above is a buckskin because there is no dorsal stripe. Think Spirit; he has a black stripe along his back. An example of what the horse above's genetic code could be: Ee, AA, Cc. Or EE, AA, Cc. Or Ee, Aa, Cc. Or EE, Aa, Cc. get the idea? It could never be ee, aa, Cc. That makes palomino; it has to have at least one E and one A.