The Red Dun Filly

PRICED REDUCED I have an American Quarter horse yearling filly for sale, she is registered as a Red Dun. This little filly does have her registered papers.
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They are some shade of red-gold to cream on the body with black points and primitive markings. Chestnuts with the dun gene are called red duns. Like all colors, there is a range of shade in the dun colors, from so dark as to look almost nondilute to very pale.

Red Dun Filly

Occasionally, non dun horses have a dorsal stripe and even faint leg barring. In , a genetic cause was found for these primitive markings. This information is now included in the dun test. Dun dilution results are reported as: All foals will be dun-diluted. Primitive markings may be present.

Primitive markings are absent.

It is important to note that only horses with at least one "D" gene are actually dun. All dun Morgans come from one line, through the smoky grulla mare Pendleton Buck Missy. It is a bit of a mystery where Missy's dun gene, the only proven source of dun in the breed at this time, came from. Her dam, Cute, appears to be a smoky black in pictures, and her breeding by Ketchum, a smoky black who was also the sire of Chingadero, and out of Smokie Brown, who may also have been some sort of cream dilute, given her breeding supports this.

Missy's sire is given as the chestnut stallion King Richard. Click here for a complete discussion of "The Cute Conundrum", which details the origins of the dun gene in Morgans. Click on any photo to enlarge. Photo courtesy of Anne Ward. Rose is at the extreme dark end of the red dun spectrum- she looks very much like a bay dun with her dark points.

She tested ee Aa Dd and her base color must be a very dark shade of chestnut. On a black horse, the cream gene does not markedly change the color, though we feel that some smoky blacks sun fade more than non-smoky blacks. Sometimes born with dark blue-gray eyes, like buckskin and palomino foals possess. The eyes turn brown as the foal matures. May be born looking like a typical black, but may sun fade worse during warm seasons. Click here to see a photo of a smoky black that has faded.


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Sometimes have more pronounced countershading stripes due to sun fade. Born with ice blue eyes and pink skin Nearly white all over, without darker legs, mane, or tail "usually. Born with ice blue eyes and pink skin Slightly darker legs, mane, and tail compared to cremello foals "usually. The Agouti test result is the main difference between Smokey Cream smoky cream foals and Perlino foals.

Amber and Sable champagnes are the result of champagne on a bay amber or brown sable coat. Must have a parent that carries a roan gene Born black or charcoal colored, sometimes brownish May or may not show roaning on hips before 2 months, but should be obviously roan before weaning age. Roaning should NOT "just" be visible at the flanks. A true roan, as it sheds its foal coat, will show obvious roaning on the sides and tops of hips, sides of neck, and ribcage.

Very few, if any, exceptions Brown roans are often mistakenly called blue roans.


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    4. They are NOT genetically the same, and their heads are a different color than true blue roans. Genetically, they are closer to bay roan than to blue roan. In fact, some brown roans can not even have true blue roan offspring. Click here to see more photos. May or may not show roaning on hips before 2 months, but should roan before weaning age. Very few, if any, exceptions. Roaning at the flanks, but not elsewhere, is an example of rabicano gene expression usually. Note the dark legs of the newborns, and that you can sometimes see gray around the eyeballs very early. Born any color Base colors with black legs such as bay and black that will turn gray are often born WITH black or unusually-dark legs.

    Non-graying foals that will eventually have black legs often have buff or gray legs at birth instead of shiny black legs at birth. When born with a base color of sorrel, gray foals generally have dark skin. Often, gray hairs can be seen near the eyeballs immediately or within a couple months of birth see photos above. Click here to see mature gray horses.

    If there is only one copy of the Pearl gene, no effect is seen on black, bay or chestnut horses.

    Red Dun Filly | Cutting horses | Horse for sale in QLD | Australia | Horse Deals

    If there are two copies, the Pearl gene lightens red coats to a pale, uniform apricot color that includes body, mane and tail and creates pale skin. The Pearl gene is also known to interact with the cream gene to enhance its effects and, in horses with only one copy of the cream allele, to create "pseudo-double dilutes" sometimes called pseudo-cremellos or pseudo-smoky cream. A pseudo-double dilute will often have pale skin and blue or green eyes.

    It is difficult if not impossible to tell a double cream dilute from a Pearl-cream pseudo dilute without genetic testing. Wikipedia Click here and here to learn more about the pearl gene. Silver dapple is a dilution gene that is rare but does exist in quarter horses. Black plus silver dapple often results in a diluted and dappled body color.

    Some of the shades of silver dapple horses include: Silver may also cause striped hooves and light-colored eyelashes especially as foals. Until recently, this gene was also referred to as "taffy. Sometimes, foal coat colors can baffle even experts. Clues are often there to tell us in advance if we recognize them Here are some neat, but tricky, foal coat colors. A buckskin foal same horse in both photos Born red dun, but shed off silvery grullo same horse in both photos This foal is bay roan, but has an amazing countershading stripe and shoulder patch that will disappear over time.

    There are no duns in his pedigree, and he is not a dun. Click here and here to learn more about the pearl gene. I'm not including composite colors fully on this page because there are just too darned many color combinations. But here are a few examples of what foals can look like when they have more than one color-modifying gene. The classic dun is a gray-gold or tan, characterized by a body color ranging from sandy yellow to reddish brown.

    A dun horse always has a dark stripe down the middle of its back, a tail and mane darker than the body coat, and usually darker face and legs. Other duns may appear a light yellowish shade, or a steel gray, depending on the underlying coat color genetics. Manes, tails, primitive markings, and other dark areas are usually the shade of the undiluted base coat color.

    What color is YOUR foal?

    The dun allele is a simple dominant , so the phenotype of a horse with either one copy or two copies of the gene is dun. It has a stronger effect than other dilution genes , such as the silver dapple gene , which acts only on black-based coats, or the cream gene , an incomplete dominant which must be homozygous to be fully expressed, and when heterozygous is only visible on bay and chestnut coats, and then to a lesser degree.

    The dun gene also is characterized by primitive markings , which are darker than the body color. Dorsal striping does not guarantee the horse carries the dun gene. A countershading gene can also produce faint dorsal striping, even in breeds such as the Arabian horse or the Thoroughbred , where the dun gene is not known to be carried in the gene pool. A primary characteristic of the dun gene is the dorsal stripe, and most duns also have visual leg striping. The shoulder stripes are less common and often fainter, but usually visible on horses with a short summer coat.

    The dun coat color is thought to be a primitive trait in the horse.

    Pictorial Guide to Horse Colors Part 3: Red Dun, Bay Dun, Brown Dun, and Black Dun (Grullo)

    This is because equines appearing in prehistoric cave paintings are dun, and because several closely related species in the genus Equus are known to have been dun. These species include both subspecies of Equus ferus the extinct tarpan and the extant , but endangered Przewalski's horse , the extinct Equus lambei , and the extant onager and kiang.

    The dun gene has a stronger dilution effect on the body than the mane, tail, legs, and primitive markings, so lightens the body coat more. This explains why points on a dun are a shade darker than the coat, or in the case of a "classic" dun, the mane, tail, and legs often are black or only slightly diluted.

    Since the dun gene, when on a "bay dun" horse, can closely resemble buckskin , in that both colors feature a light-colored coat with a dark mane and tail, classic duns frequently are confused with buckskins. The difference between these two colors is the dun as a tan color, somewhat duller than the more cream or gold buckskin, and duns also possess primitive markings. Some buckskins do show countershading, but it is not related to the primitive markings of dun factor horses. Genetically, a bay dun is a bay horse with the dun gene that causes the lighter coat color and the primitive markings.

    A buckskin is bay horse with the addition of the cream gene , causing the coat color to be diluted from red to gold, often without primitive markings. A red dun may also be confused with a perlino , which is genetically a bay horse with two copies of the cream gene, which creates a horse with a cream-colored body but a reddish mane and tail.