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May 19

Unusual smokey cream

An archived post from January 4, 2013


close-up of the left side of a double-dilute foal, showing a large, irregular patch of darker hair along the shoulder and barrel

The same foal as the previous image, shown sleeping on the ground. Smaller patches of darker hair are visible on the hindquarter.

I have seen a few double-dilute foals with unusual dark patches recently, so I was happy when Jess Aisthorpe gave me permission to run the images she took of her day-old cream dilute filly. The patches on her body are not from being wet or dirty, but are a deeper color than the rest of her coat.


close-up of the back of the foal, showing that the patch on the shoulder extends over the withers

The largest area of dark hair covers her left shoulder, but she has smaller patches on both sides of her body and her face.


Close-up of the face of the foal showing small patches over the bridge of the nose and the muzzle

Her markings are very similar to those found on the smoky cream Morgan, Prairie Hill Apache. To date, the other examples of these darker cream patches that I have seen have all been on black-based double creams. The color on Jess’ filly is not yet known, but she has a buckskin sire and a grey dam with a palomino grandsire, so it is possible that she is a perlino or smokey cream.


It would be interesting to know if markings like these are visible – and a pronounced – when the horse is mature. So far the examples I have seen were all in very young foals. If you have experience with double-dilutes with markings like these, please share them. It would be interesting to see more examples, especially if there are both foal and adult photos.

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