White Horses and
Not So White Horses

Probably the most hard to understand and most hotly debated color is White. Surely, they are the most famous kind of horse. There's the White Lipizzaner Stallions, the Lone Ranger's horse Silver, white circus horses. The list goes on and on. However, many horse people do not consider White to be a color. However, there is the American Albino Registry, and they beg to differ. One thing is for certain, white horses are not a "breed".

 
Here is the coat color White.  In short, the hairs are white, the horse has pink skin, and can have blue, brown or hazel eyes. They can have small, colored spots in random areas on their coat. These horses are very prone to sunburn so great care should be taken to protect them from the sun. My purpose is not to go into the genetics of the horse, so suffice it to say that there is a white color gene. The white color does not breed true (heterozygous, for you geneticists out there). If you see a white horse and it has black skin, then you've to a grey horse that turned white with age. Hence, the white lipizzans are not white, but grey (with some bays and other colors). Pretty interesting, eh?

 
Here is the coat color Cream, (a.k.a. Cremello).  These guys are basically what happens when two palominos get together and create an even lighter palomino. ("Double dilution of chestnut"*, for you geneticists out there.) They can have blue or dark eyes. They can have facial and leg markings.
Here is the coat color Perlino.  It is an "off-white or pearl [colored] body with rust color on tips of mane and tail and sometimes on lower legs."* ("Double Dilution of Bay"* for you geneticists out there.) They are pretty cute.

I am not an expert in the ways of white horses. You probably noticed that in this page, I used quotation marks. It is because I am so unfamiliar with these colors that I could not rely on my own words, but on those of the expert author*. I really did not want to go into genetics, but in this instance, I felt it was necessary for everyone to have an idea about where cremellos and perlinos come from. Everyone should know that the horse species has no true albino color genes. There are no albino horses!! "Albino" happens to be a convenient word to use to describe white horses. To be a true albino, the horse would have to have pink eyes and pink skin. No horse, according to the people who write he books, has ever had pink eyes. Sorry, no albinos. :^(



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Disclaimer:  I got the information for this page exclusively from the second edition of The Horse, by J. Warren Evans, et al. I have plans to write the American Albino and Cream Horse Association to learn more about these neato horse colors.

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