Breeding For Color:  BUCKSKIN 

Buckskin is another "black based" color and in this issue we examine the results of mares crossed on six different buckskin stallions. In the table below, you will see a slightly higher percentage of black based colors than you might normally expect from these crosses. The reason for this is that one of the stallions (the sire of about 90 of the foals) was homozygous for the gene which produces colors that fall into the group traditionally having black points . . .bays, browns, grullas, blacks, duns, and yes, perlinos (which have very ‘diluted’ black points). As a matter of interest, Poco Tivio was a stallion who sired only horses with black based color. He was homozygous for the gene which produced this color group. You will not find any sorrels or chestnuts sired by Poco Tivio.

The term, "Buckskin", for the purposes of this article, is as defined by AQHA. In other words ... no dun factor.

Because AQHA began classifying any dilute horse with a dorsal stripe or leg barring as either dun, red dun or grulla starting with the 1987 foal crop, only data from foals born in 1987 or later is included here. All data is taken exclusively from AQHA get records.

The major difference between grulla (the subject of color of a previous issue) and buckskin are the modifying genes present. Those modifying genes are the same ones that differentiate black from bay, respectively. As you can probably see, close inspection of the results in the table below show definite trends that fit right in with what should be expected, genetically, from these various crosses. 

Up to 25% of dilute to dilute crosses result in cremello or perlino foals which usually won’t show up in this table because AQHA would not register them until just recently. This reduces the number of dilutes present in the table, and skews the results a bit. The data in this table could be reversed if you had a buckskin mare and wanted to check on the results of breeding her to a bay, sorrel, etc. colored stallion.

As an example, under the column entitled broodmare colors, you can see that a total of 14 grulla mares were bred to this group of 6 buckskin stallions. The result of these grulla X buckskin crosses were a total of 5 grulla foals, (reading to the right) 2 buckskin foals, 6 black/brown foals, and 1 bay. In a larger sampling you should also expect duns, red duns, palominos and sorrels. But in this particular sampling, none of those colors were produced.