Cream of the Crop
January 16, 2009
The cream dilution gene causes some of the most sought-after horse colors in the business.
The Midas Touch Kid, owned and bred by Kimberlee Brown of New Richmond, Wisconsin, is a cremello.
By Andrea Caudill
The color of a newly minted gold coin, the palomino horse is the stuff of dreams. Immortalized by Roy Rogers’ Trigger, it’s a popular color and often demands a pretty penny (no pun intended). Palomino, along with buckskin, cremello and perlino, is caused by the cream dilution gene.
The cream gene is incompletely dominant, which means that it is always expressed when present, but affects the horse’s color differently depending on if it has one or two copies. If a horse has one copy, it will be either a palomino (red-based), buckskin (black-based with agouti) or smoky black (black-based). If there are two copies present, the horse’s coat color will be further diluted into a cremello (red-based), perlino (black-based with agouti) or smoky cream (black-based).
A palomino is a sorrel horse with a single copy of the cream dilution. It turns the body color from red to a golden color, and changes the mane and tail to white. A cremello is a sorrel horse with two copies of the cream dilution. This creates a horse with a nearly white coat (white markings are still discernable, though). The eyes will be blue and the skin pale.
Get more examples of cream-based horses. Download AQHA’s FREE Horse Color and Markings Chart! Share it with your friends.
A bay horse with a single cream dilution will become a buckskin; the dilution causes the coat color to become golden, but does not affect the points. A perlino is a bay with two copies – the body color becomes a very pale cream, the points are diluted to tan or orange, and the eyes are blue.
A smoky black is a horse that would be black, except it also has a cream gene. This color is difficult to distinguish from black, and indeed is often registered as black, brown or buckskin. A genetic test can provide proof that it is a dilute, however. A smoky black with two copies of the cream gene becomes a smoky cream. It appears to be a mousey to creamy color with darker points and is usually registered as a perlino. All of these colors can happen in conjunction with another modifier, such as dun or roan.
Perlinos and cremellos began to be registered with AQHA in 2003. Mislabeled as albinos – a trait that does not exist in horses – they were reputed to be easily sunburned and to go blind, due to their pink skin and blue eyes. While they will sunburn like any other pink-skinned horse, research has shown that the horses are no more likely than any other horse to have eye problems.
Color Facts
- A palomino or buckskin horse has a 50 percent chance of passing on its dilute color to its progeny.
- A double dilute will always produce a dilute foal. For example, a cremello bred to a sorrel horse will produce a palomino foal 100 percent of the time.
- Cremellos and perlinos were previously defined as albinos. True albinism does not exist in horses.
- The 1930 stallion Plaudit contributed his palomino color to many famous descendants, including Question Mark, Skip’s Reward, Gold Mount and Diamonds Sparkle.
AQHA’s Horse Color and Markings Chart is the perfect reference tool for identifying horse colors. You can keep it in your horse trailer or glovebox. Download it FREE today!
Click here to see more photos!
Comments
25 Comments on “Cream of the Crop”
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January 21st, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Very informative overview. Thanks!
January 22nd, 2009 at 7:14 am
I have a descendent of Blondy’s Dude a beautiful buckskin mare. Very interesting article!
January 22nd, 2009 at 8:17 am
WE currently have two Cremello Stallions. We have had two instances in the past year where a Bay mare bred to one of these Stallions produced pallomino offspring instead of buckskin. Can this be explained?
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:22 am
havign shown a white older grey mare for 2 yrs as a youth. I would not buy one of these cremello/perlino pink skinned animals. Dealing with sunburn protection, and the the 3+ hours of show prep to make them their true color again, after rolling in the poop and pieing on their tails, etc…. uuuugghhh never again.
To those of you who enjoy them, you can have them. Me and Mine will stay with a red dun, bay, or golden buckskin anyday over that.
January 22nd, 2009 at 10:28 am
I owned a white horse with pink skin and blue eyes. His name is Snow and he is a registered paint. I was told he was an albino. Now I know better, thanks. I didn’t have any problems with him sun burning even thought I live in Texas. The only problem I had was with his blue eyes; he seem to squint his eyes when in full sun. On playdays, I would draw a black line (with Hallowen make-up)under each eye like the football players do to stop the reflection. It worked well and I received many comments on it.
January 22nd, 2009 at 10:53 am
J. Wade Hill says, “We currently have two Cremello Stallions. We have had two instances in the past year where a Bay mare bred to one of these Stallions produced pallomino offspring instead of buckskin. Can this be explained?”
To answer your question, a bay horse is a black-based animal with the agouti gene, which is the modifier that limits the horse’s black color to its points (legs, mane, tail, eartips). The black based horse can be either homozygous for the extension allele (two copies black – EE) or heterozygous (one copy black, one copy red – Ee) for the black color (because black is dominant, an Ee horse will appear black-based). A horse can carry the agouti gene whether it is black or red (this is why a black bred to a chestnut/sorrel may produce a bay). It is impossible to tell phenotypically (from looking at the horse) if it is homozygous or heterozygous.
This means that when you cross a cremello (a sorrel/chestnut with two copies of the cream gene) on a bay (black with agouti), you can get buckskin, palomino or smoky black, depending on the horses’ exact gene combination.
It seems your bay mare is heterozygous for black, which means when bred to the cremello, she passed on her recessive e gene. That combined with the stallion’s recessive e gene plus the cream gene produced a palomino (a single dilute with two copies of red).
Sincerely,
Andrea Caudill
January 22nd, 2009 at 5:21 pm
I have a friend who bred her grey mare to a cremello stallion. If the grey mare has no chestnut or bay genes so that a palomino or buckskin are not possible, and only carries 2 dominant grey genes, what will the foal look like. Does the creme dilution lighten the grey color.
Also does the cremello ever pass on the blue eyes. I
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:29 am
VERY GOOD ARTICLE. I HAVE A DEAR FRIEND, WHO IS 84 YRS. OLD, THAT USE TO AND STILL DOES TALK ALOT ABOUT THE COLOR GENES IN HORSES.
I DON’T KNOW WHERE HE LEARNED ALL OF HIS INFORMATION, BUT 35 YEARS AGO WE WOULD SIT AND DRINK POTS OF COFFEE AND DISCUSS, AND ARGUE, ABOUT THIS SUBJECT FOR HOURS. YOUR ARTICLE BRINGS BACK ALOT OF GOOD MEMORIES.
THANK YOU
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:14 am
Andrea, I really enjoy your articles on color and the answers that clarify the genetics involved. I teach horsemanship at a behavorial modification school and the information you supply is very helpful to me and my students. They are all so interested in the colors! Thanks
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:33 am
Mary says, “I have a friend who bred her grey mare to a cremello stallion. If the grey mare has no chestnut or bay genes so that a palomino or buckskin are not possible, and only carries 2 dominant grey genes, what will the foal look like. Does the creme dilution lighten the grey color.
Also does the cremello ever pass on the blue eyes.”
To answer your questions, all gray horses carry color genes other than just gray. For example, your friend’s gray mare was born a color other than gray, and if that color is known it gives an indication of the mare’s base color. A gray horse bred to a cremello has the possibility of producing a palominio, buckskin, or smoky black, and there is at least a 50% chance any of those will turn gray.
The blue eyes of the cremello/perlino are the result of their having inherited two creme dilutions, but when bred to solid colored horses the offspring only inherit one creme dilution, therefore should have dark eyes.
Sincerely,
Debbie Black & Lisa Covey
AQHA Color Specialists
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Carol said, “Andrea, I really enjoy your articles on color and the answers that clarify the genetics involved. I teach horsemanship at a behavorial modification school and the information you supply is very helpful to me and my students. They are all so interested in the colors! Thanks”
Carol – No, thank you for such a kind compliment! Please let me know if there’s anything we can help you or your students with. In my humble opinion, there’s little that is more fun than combining the fascinating worlds of biology, genetics and our favorite animal!
Thanks,
Andrea Caudill
January 25th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Grey bred to cremello.
Iron Eyes Doc is a beautiful grey with black points like a bay except his tail has white at the bottom. Check out the pic on allbreedpedigree.com. He has a palomino dams mother and I don’t know the dams color. If the dam was a buckskin then maybe the sires grey with the cream dilution from the buckskin is what produced such a beautiful grey horse. I am sure my friend would be excited to have such a beautiful grey baby from her grey mare and the cremello stallion. Of course the buckskin and palomino would be great too.
January 26th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Just want to make sure I understand. I have a bay mare and have been thinking about breeding her, in hopes of a buckskin. If I understand correctly, I could get a Palomino or smokey grey as well?
January 27th, 2009 at 9:46 am
I have a chocolate palomino mare that will not raise a palomino for me. She has had a cremello and a buckskin and 3 sorrels. I plan to breed her to a red dun. What color should I get?
January 28th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Susie question is what to breed a bay mare to to get a buckskin, is a buckskin. Your bay mare could carry a chestnut gene that is more recessive that the bay she shows. Chestnut and palomino gives a good chance (50%) of palomino. Now your bay mare could also have a more recessive black gene that when bred to buckskin could give you the sooty black. Her bay gene with a buckskin creme dilution is what will give you a good chance of buckskin, but if she also has a chestnut gene you could get a palomino or a chestnut when bred to the buckskin. Of course the sire could have a chestnut gene too and then you could get either bay or chestnut, no color.
Rick to get the cremello from your palomino mare you must have bred her to a buckskin or a palomino? Did you breed her to a bay when you got the buckskin or did you breed to the same stallion that produced the cremello, but got luckier and both parents did not throw the cream dilution resulting in only a single cream dilution and a buckskin. To get a chestnut as expected your mare carries the least dominant color, chestnut, along with the cream dilution. You have a 50% chance of palomino when breeding palomino to chestnut. Palomino to palomino gives a 25% chance of cremello and a 50% chance of palomino.
I have no idea how the red dun would cross with your mare. Dun might be more dominant than palomino.
February 5th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Rick said, “I have a chocolate palomino mare that will not raise a palomino for me. She has had a cremello and a buckskin and 3 sorrels. I plan to breed her to a red dun. What color should I get?”
Rick – Breeding for color is a game of percentages, and the odds of any given color depend on the exact genetics the sire and dam carry. The cremello foal did get your mare’s copy of the cream gene — but you assumably bred her to a cremello, perlino, palomino or buckskin stallion, which meant an extra cream gene was passed from the stallion to get cremello. If you bred the mare to a sorrel stallion, you have a 50/50 chance of getting a palomino or sorrel (and the odds aren’t cumulative over her breeding career!)
A red dun is a sorrel/chestnut horse that also has the dun gene. A horse can carry both cream and dun (which is termed “dunalino” or “dunskin” depending on if it’s palomino or buckskin). The famed Hollywood Dun It was a dunskin (he was a bay-based horse and carried both the cream and dun genes).
Crossing a palomino to a red dun would result in the possible colors of red dun, palomino, dunalino (a palomino with the dun gene) or chestnut.
The color calculator provided by Animal Genetics Inc can be very helpful in defining the resulting colors of possible crosses:
http://www.animalgenetics.us/CCalculator1.asp
Sincerely,
Andrea Caudill
March 17th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I have a palomino mare. What color stallion should
I breed her to to hopefully get a grullo,buckskin,black or a palomino.
March 25th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
I recently purchased a cremello gelding and I wonder if I will need to take precautions against sunburn. We have over 250 sunny days where I live and temperatures in the summer are often over 95 degrees. Since he has blue eyes as well, will I have trouble with him seeing?
April 5th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Question 1. We have recently acquired an all white stallion with two blue eyes. We expected his genetic testing to come back homozygous sabino1 (“maximum sabino”). Testing actually showed him to have one copy of the lethal white and one copy of the sabino. Our other stallion is a typical frame overo with some roaning who tested exactly the same. Where can I find any additional research that has been done on the amount of white that may be expressed by a horse when the overo type genes are inherited?
Question 2. I have heard that the roan colour pattern may also have a lethal component like LWO. Is this true? Is there a test for roan?
April 6th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Kerri-to answer your first question about the homozygous sabino1 and lethal white I would contact the American Paint Horse Association.
To answer your second question about breeding roan to roan it was long considered a theory that one-third of the offspring would be aborted or absorbed before birth because of a lethal factor regarding the roan gene. However a study by Dr. Ann T. Bowling disproved this theroy that no lethal gene exists when breeding roan to roan.
To answer your third question there is currently no test avaiable for the roan gene.
Sincerely,
Lisa Covey or Debbie Black
Equine Color Specialist
April 17th, 2009 at 10:13 am
[...] explained in Cream of the Crop, buckskins are bay horses with a single dose of the cream [...]
April 17th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
My horse is a sorrel almost dark red with red mane and tail. Both parents were light colored red duns. What happened?
April 2nd, 2010 at 8:07 am
[...] Today, the horse isn’t used as much for transportation, hunting or rushing messages by Pony Express. However, it is important in equally exciting ways. People all over the world enjoy horses for recreation, work, sport and entertainment. Perhaps you, or someone you know, ride in competitions, train, race or saddle up for therapeutic or health reasons. Why, horses have even become famous movie stars like Lone Ranger’s horse, Silver and Roy Roger’s horse, Trigger. [...]
May 18th, 2010 at 6:43 am
I have a cremello mare, but a photo of her Sire looks like he is grey. I did not think this was possible. What do you think?
Also, conformation wise, my mare is beautiful- in fact, halter qualitly. I was told by a trainer not to waste my time conditioning her for halter showing– that there is a bias against cremellos in the showring. Do you agree?
This is my first AQHA horse– I come from a different breed– and I have never had such a sweet, trainable, steady horse. I am impressed– either I just lucked into a great horse, or I have found a new breed (or both!)
May 18th, 2010 at 7:31 am
Dear Shelley,
It is possible for a gray horse to carry the creme dilution. Most likely the gray sire of your mare was a palomino or buckskin before he turned gray.
AQHA rules allow you to show your cremello mare, even at halter. I am not aware of any bias and color should not play a role in judging a horse on conformation. That doesn’t mean we humans don’t have preferences.
I am glad you found our wonderful Quarter Horse and a very sweet lovely mare to boot! Enjoy her no matter what you do.