Horse Markings - Coat Colors With Distinctive Patterns

Coat Colors With Distinctive Patterns

Some horse coat colors are distinguished by unique patterns. However, even for horses with coat colors that are arranged in a manner unique to each individual horse, these patterns are not called "markings." Some coat colors partially distinguished by unique patterning include:

• Appaloosa or "Leopard": A breed and a horse coat color pattern of small leopard-type spotting.
• Bay: A horse coat color that features "black points" on a red base coat. All bay horses have a black mane, tail and legs (except where overlain by white markings), caused by the presence of the Agouti gene. Most have black hairs along the edges of their ears and on their muzzles, and occasionally will have a slight darkening of the hairs along their backbone.
• Brindle: An extremely rare horse coat color, it features faint vertical striping in a shade slightly diluted from the base coat color. (Not to be confused with the zebra, which is an entirely different species.) Brindling may be associated with chimerism.
• Dun: A horse coat color that features primitive markings: a slightly darker hair shade from the base coat located in a dorsal stripe along the horse's backbone, horizontal striping on the upper legs and sometimes transverse striping across the shoulders. These markings identify a horse as a dun as opposed to a buckskin or a bay.
• Pinto: A horse coat color that is distinguished by one of several possible broad spotting patterns, as opposed to the smaller spots typical of the Appaloosa. Variations include Piebald, Skewbald, Overo, Tobiano, Tovero and Sabino.
• Roan: A horse coat color that features white and dark hairs intermingled together, but the horse has head and legs of the base color with very little white. Roans sometimes have dark areas on their coats similar to Bend-Or spots, called "corn marks".