Equine coat color
Videos
Horses exhibit a diverse array of coat colors and distinctive markings. A specialized vocabulary has evolved to describe them.
Three horses with different coat colors
Bay (left) and chestnut (right)
A black coat
A bay horse, showing black points
Chestnut (horse color)
Videos
Chestnut is a hair coat color of horses consisting of a reddish-to-brown coat with a mane and tail the same or lighter in color than the coat. Chestnut is characterized by the absolute absence of true
Equine coat color
…pheomelanin ("red"), which produces a reddish brown color, and eumelanin, which produces black. These two hair pigment genes create two base colors: chestnut, which is fully red, and black, which is fully black. All other coat colors are created by additional genes that modify these two base colors. The most…
A chestnut horse
A chestnut horse with white markings
A liver chestnut
This light, flaxen, mealy chestnut Haflinger might be mistaken for a palomino