This calculator will give you the possible offspring coat colors and their probabilities when given the parents coat color and pattern information. For a gray sire or dam, you must enter what color the horse was before it went gray as well as check the box labeled gray to the right of your color selection. Calculation accuracy of the offspring color possibilities and probabilities can be greatly increased when providing the color genetics of the sire and dam. Select as much genetic information as you know for the sire and dam. This will increase the accuracy of the offspring color probability calculations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Question: Where is the color Brown?
Answer: Brown (and I’m not referring to Seal Brown) is a somewhat ambiguous term used to identify a number of horse coat colors but most often refers to a dark variation of Bay. As the genetics behind the variations of the Bay base color become more understood, we will try to make changes to the calculator that will incorporate these variations. But for now, selecting Bay for the color brown will give you the most accurate calculations. However, colors such as liver chestnut or even smoky black are sometimes misidentified as brown. In which case Bay would obviously not be the correct selection.
Question: How do I select Gray for my Sire or Dam?
Answer: The Gray gene causes the progressive loss of pigment throughout the horses coat and will affect any color horse. Even though the horse is gray, it still has all the genetics of the color it was before going gray. To determine the possible offspring colors that the gray horse can produce, it is necessary to know what color the horse was before going gray. To select Gray on the calculator, you must enter the color and pattern of the horse before going gray and check the box labeled “Gray”.
Question: Where is Chocolate? Where is Taffy?
Answer: Some horse colors are given different names depending on the breed of horse or what region of the world the horse is in. This is the case for Silver Blacks (a black horse with the silver gene). The most widely accepted name for a silver black is Silver Dapple but in the Rocky Mountain Horse breed, the color is often referred to as Chocolate. In Australia, a Silver Black is referred to as a Taffy. We like to refer to the color as Silver Black since it best indicated the genetics of the color. A Chocolate Palomino is a dark palomino (a dark red horse with the cream gene) and does not involve the silver gene.