Foal colors expected on breeding gold champagne horses to non champagnes.

I have been asked what color foals to expect upon breeding a gold champagne stallion to non champagne mares. I thought maybe others would want to know the answer to this question and have constructed the chart below to help. It does, of course, also apply if you're breeding a champagne mare to a non champagne stallion.

Unfortunately it's hard to be specific about bay, brown, black and their derivative colors. This is because the actual color depends on the alleles at the agouti locus in BOTH parents. It may be difficult to work out what these are in gold champagne horses, even if it's parents are known. In the non champagne horse it will be easy only if it is black. Otherwise it will depend on what evidence you can glean from the pedigree and/or from previous foals - and even then you may not be able to be certain. Review the page on bay horses if you want to try and work it out.

If the non champagne horse is a palomino

The colors will be as for chestnut except there will be a 50% chance of also inheriting the cream dilution gene. So the colors will be: 25% chance chestnut, 25% chance of palomino, 25% chance of gold champagne and 25% chance of gold cream (or ivory). Note that the % chance must add up to 100% (i.e. the foal must be one of these colors!).

If the non champagne horse is a buckskin

The colors will be as for bay, brown or chestnut except there will be a 50% chance of also inheriting the cream dilution gene.

The colors in the table will occur with half their probability, e.g. if the non champagne horse is a bay carrying chestnut there will now only be a 12.5% chance of a chestnut foal (25% x 0.5). However there will also be a 12.5% chance of a palomino (which is chestnut with a cream gene). Similarly there will be a 12.5% chance of bay, brown or black and a 12.5% chance of a buckskin.

There is also a 12.5% chance of a champagne gold foal and a 12.5% chance of a gold cream (ivory) foal. There’s a 12.5% chance of a classic, sable or amber champagne, and a 12.5% chance of a classic cream, sable cream or amber cream.

If the non champagne horse is a cremello or perlino

All the foals will carry a cream gene. Read along the appropriate row of table above and add cream to the color. So for example, for cremello we have have a base color of chesnut. Read along the row for chestnuts and add cream to color of the foal: we get 50% palomino foals and 50% gold cream (ivory) foals.

If the non champagne horse is a gray

A foal will go gray if it inherits the gray gene. If it has one heterozygous gray parent there will be a 50% chance of it doing so. If the gray parent is homozygous then the foal will be gray. The underlying color (which will show during "foal-hood") will depend on the underlying color of the gray parent. Flea-bites might develop later, returning some of the original color to the gray horse.

If the non champagne horse is a roan

A foal will be roan if it inherits the roan gene. If it has one heterozygous roan parent there will be a 50% chance of it doing so. If the roan parent is homozygous then the foal will be roan. The coat will be an admixture of white and a color depending on the color of the roan parent. The head and lower legs will be solid colored.

For paints and appaloosas there is a chance of patterning that depends on the number of pattern genes present and wether or not the parent is heterozygous at these loci. See the appropriate pages of this web site for more details.