How many colors are there in the Icelandic horse breed?

Sometimes people wonder how many colors there really are in the Icelandic horse. It is very much a matter of definition. Before you decide how many colors there are, in your opinion, in this breed, you have to define what a color is. Are all chestnuts the same color, or are a liver chestnut, a light chestnut, and a light chestnut with flaxen mane 3 different colors?

Let's take the tobiano gene as an example. Thake the color pinto (tobiano) and add to it all the other versions of colors, so you have

  • black-pinto
  • bay-pinto
  • yellow dun-pinto etc,
    and you'll have maybe 20 different pinto colors to start with. The color combinations are so many.

    Shall we count?

    Tobiano (15-20 combinations possible)
    Overo (15-20 combinations possible)
    Yellow dun (light, medium, dark)
    Blue dun (light, medium, dark)
    Bay dun (light, medium, dark)
    Buckskin (light, medium, dark, with or without legstripes)
    Cremello/perlino/creme black Palomino (light, medium, dark)
    Smoky black (light, medium, dark)
    Silver dapple (light, medium, dark and 15-20 combinations possible)
    Roan (15-20 combinations possible)
    (Champagne?!?)
    Chestnut (light, medium, dark/liver)
    Flaxen chestnut (light, medium, dark chestnut color)
    Bay (light, medium, dark)
    Black
    Pale black
    Grey
    Blazes (black horse with blaze, chestnut horse with blaze etc...)
    Snips (-"-)
    Stars (-"-)
    Sclera (-"-)
    Pangare (-"-, light, medium, dark)

    So it all depends on what you call a color. If you only count the base color genes, the colors are not very many (all the dun colors are for example caused by the same gene). If you go to the other extreme and call a silver dapple blue dun pinto another color than a horse that is silver dapple blue dun pinto with a blaze, then you can count the colors in the hundreds.


    BACK TO COLORS