This thread got me to thinking about the color possibilities. (Its too hot to work outside this afternoon.)
Let’s say you breed a black horse with some minimal white markings (ie. Socks, blaze) to a Red horse that also has some similar minimal white markings. What are the possibilities for colors of the foal?
Well, the Black could easily have one Black color gene and one Red color gene (Red being recessive, it would not show). Additionally, the Black could carry Cream (making it a Smokey Black) which would not show. The white markings might indicate ANY of the Pinto genes: Tobiano, Splash, Sabino, or LWO. The Black horse could not be carrying either Silver or Agouti, as they would show on a Black horse
The Red horse would of course be homozygous for Red as Red is a recessive color. It cannot carry Cream as Cream will show on a Red horse as Palomino. It can however carry Silver and Agouti, which would not show on Red. The White markings on the Red horse also could be ANY of the Pinto genes.
Therefore, the resulting foal COULD be any of the following colors:
Red (by receiving Red gene from BOTH parents and not the Cream gene)
Black (by receiving Black gene from one parent and recessive Red from the other and not receiving the Silver or Agouti genes)
Bay (by receiving the Black gene from one parent and Agouti from the other)
Silver (by receiving the Black gene from one parent and the silver from the other)
Silver Bay (by receiving the Black gene from one parent and both the Silver and Agouti genes from the other parent)
Palomino (by receiving red genes from both parents and the Cream gene from the Smokey Black parent)
Buckskin (by receiving both the Black gene and Cream gene from one parent and the Agouti from the other)
Silver Buckskin (by receiving both the Black gene and Cream gene from one parent and both the Agouti and the Silver gene from the other)
White (as in maximum expression of one of the Pinto patterns, especially Sabino OR a Lethal White if both parents were LWO positive)
The foal could be solid (assuming neither of the parents was homozygous for one of the Pinto genes) or Pinto, either minimally expressed or maximum expressed.
The foal COULD NOT be Cremello or Perlino as it would have to get a Cream gene from BOTH parents and if the Red parent had a Cream gene, it would be a Palomino. It also could not be a Dun, as that would have shown on one of the parents.
And this web-site wants to charge for their prediction of foal color based on the color of the parents??? I hope they guarantee their results.