The Color of Horses

DR. BEN K. GREEN THE COLOR OF HORSES The Scientific and Authoritative Identification of the Color of the Horse

Text and reproductions of original oil paintings by Darol Dickinson from the book “The Color of Horses.” This is the first definitive book on the color of horses. Dr. Ben K. Green has taken the research of thirty years and created an easily-read and well-documented book on how color occurs and can be identified in horses. This is a book which horse owners, traders, breeders, riders and admirers have waited years for. The differences in opinion concerning horse color are widespread, and since horse enthusiasts are independentminded people, this book may not settle all arguments. But it will certainly provide a standard definition of all colors for those who are interested.

Available from most bookstores, or from Northland Press, P.O. Box N, Flagstaff, Arizona 86001. Price $25.

Dr. Green began his research in the 1940's in the Trans Pecos region of West Texas. It was an ideal time and place, for as Doc Green states, “Horses were cheap at the time and there was an array of colors that was unmatched anywhere else in North America.” He also studied horses during his travels in South America, Europe and the Middle East. Thirty-four full-color reproductions of oil paintings by well-known western artist Darol Dickinson provide illustrations of the colors which Dr. Green has isolated and described. Each painting and printed proof has been approved by the author as representing the color stated. This handsome book, Printed and published in Arizona by Northland Press beautifully printed, is destined to become the standard reference on color at every race track, farm and ranch in the world.

Dr. Ben K. Green has traded, raised, treated and used horses throughout his life. His understanding of them is as extensive as anyone's in this country. He worked as a veterinarian in Texas for many years and during that time began his research on the color of horses. Dr. Green has written several best selling books about his half century of experience with horses, cattle and people. Among them are A Thousand Miles of Mustangin' and Horse Conformation.

Darol Dickinson is a young artist acclaimed for his handsome oil portraits of some of the finest horses in the world. Both the author and publisher recognized his ability and realized he was perfect for this book. He is a member of the Cowboy Artists of America and lives with his wife and family on a ranch near Calhan, Colorado.

INSIGHT INTO HORSE COLOR

I first heard the color of horses discussed and began to know that some people preferred different colors of horses for different reasons when I was washing buggy wheels at the livery stable the year before I was old enough to go to public school. Sometimes I would give those buggy wheels an extra good washing if there were a discussion going on among the men in the livery stable about the color of horses. I learned at a tender age that the teams that were matched in color and size were more highly prized by their owners than teams made up of different colored horses.

Old horsemen all seem to have their own choice of color. I remember a traveling salesman, who was referred to as a drummer in those days, that rode the train to Cumby and then hired a team and hack to call on his various customers around the trade territory. This was a fancy-dressed fellow who was a loud talker and always made a point that he would rather have a solid bay team because they had more endurance. Then I heard other colors discussed and various reasons and excuses given for liking and disliking them.

As a small boy, so far as I was concerned, walking was all I took up when I was born. I saddled a horse after breakfast and unsaddled before I went to bed the first twenty-five to thirty years of my life and decided early that if color had anything to do with stamina, intelligence or soundness, I had better learn about it. I heard old cowboys brag especially about the many good qualities of dun and buckskin horses. However, I had begun to notice by the time I was a teenage boy that you rarely saw horses of fine breeding that were of dun color.

There may be someone more qualified to write “The Color of Horses” there may be but as Dr. Ben once remarked, “He ain’t been born yet.” Ben K. Green in his lifetime, traded, raised, treated and used more types and breeds of horses than anyone else we know. He wrote several best selling books about his more than half century of experiences with horses, cattle and people in all walks of life. Ben Green died of a heart attack on October 5, 1974, while driving through Kansas on his return to Texas from Rapid City, South Dakota, where he had attended the Western History Association Convention. Prior to leaving Rapid City, Ben told friends he felt “Like he was just about rode out.” We loved Ben despite his... “incredible amazement at the sheer brilliance of our ignorance” regarding horses.

GREY: Threeto four-year-old Arabian. During the third and fourth years of the life of a grey horse, there is the continued failure of the second layer, and the beginning failure of the third layer of the pigment glands, giving the steel grey color that gradually approaches dappling. This horse is lighter still than the two-year-old. It has more hairs which have lost their pigment and is a further development of the hair pattern shown for the yearling in the illustration on page 5.

By the time I was in the fourth and fifth grade in school, I was trading a good many horses. Occasionally somebody would ask me to try to find them a horse of a particular color which in those days was not hard to do since there were lots of horses. In the early part of my horse experience dapple greys and various shades of chestnut horses were harder to find than the general run of bays and browns. There were few solid black horses, but there was a demand for the color. However, I frequently heard the complaint that black horses "sunburned" too bad in the summertime, and their color was too hard to keep. Blacksmiths told me that white feet were worse to split and were softer to cut and shape than dark-colored feet. I soon began to know that a horse of any color that had one or more white feet would have to be kept shod in order to be able to stand constant use. When I was about eighteen years old, there was a great fad on for spotted horses, and I traded around until I came up with some good, young spotted horses of various color patterns and average ranch size and began to use them hard. I learned that the white foot story was still true and began to notice that the white hide of a spotted horse if under the saddle or the cinch was quicker to skin and scald from sweat and heat than the dark hide of the same horse. I also began to know from observing my horses and those belonging to other riders that blistery faces and irritated eyes were common to bald-faced horses in cases where the white extended out over the eyes. White hair has no refraction of light qualities and does not afford white skin under it any protection, and the absorption of extreme heat reflects and irritates white hide, whereas the dark hair of a dark hide refracts the sun rays and deflects those damaging effects to the extent that no harm is done to the more durable dark hide.

Blacksmiths told me that white feet were worse to split and were softer to cut and shape than dark-colored feet. I soon began to know that a horse of any color that had one or more white feet would have to be kept shod in order to be able to stand constant use. When I was about eighteen years old, there was a great fad on for spotted horses, and I traded around until I came up with some good, young spotted horses of various color patterns and average ranch size and began to use them hard. I learned that the white foot story was still true and began to notice that the white hide of a spotted horse if under the saddle or the cinch was quicker to skin and scald from sweat and heat than the dark hide of the same horse. I also began to know from observing my horses and those belonging to other riders that blistery faces and irritated eyes were common to bald-faced horses in cases where the white extended out over the eyes. White hair has no refraction of light qualities and does not afford white skin under it any protection, and the absorption of extreme heat reflects and irritates white hide, whereas the dark hair of a dark hide refracts the sun rays and deflects those damaging effects to the extent that no harm is done to the more durable dark hide.

Dun, buckskin and grulla horses have long been described by early-day cowboys as being the toughest horses the West ever had. I had heard this conversation for a good while. During my teenage years and early twenties I rode long hours in rough country and was extremely hard on horses, and it took several to keep me mounted. I decided that if there were any-thing to this toughness of the native colors dun, buckskin and grulla that it was about time I tried them out. In the course of about three months I bought and traded for three young dun geldings, two good-bodied buckskin mares and two grullas, a mare and a gelding. These horses ranged in age from four to eight years, and in my opinion these are the best years for hard use in a horse's lifetime. I was careful to get horses with good feet and legs and well-balanced bodies that should stay sound regardless of color. I was working a good many feedlot cattle that required me to be mounted on quick horses that could stay under me day in and day out. At this particular time I was buying and gathering lots of mules from over a wide scope of country for resale. During the fall, winter and spring, I learned how these coat colors got their reputations for being tough. All seven head stayed sound in spite of hard riding, but here was the answer to their toughness. These colors belong to horses of native, western breeding that have very little hot blood infused into them and self-preservation and survival is much more instinctive than in the hotter breeds of horses that have been bred for performance. There was very little fretting nor the unneccessary or excessive use of energy in these colors of horses. The reasons they were considered tough is because the rider worked a little harder at getting them to do, and they stopped a little short before they ran out of wind or were completely used up. It might be said, with few exceptions, that horses with these colors always take better care of themselves and are less responsive to the demands of the rider and less affected by the length of the workday, and their reputation for toughness results from their instinct for self-preservation and survival.

Horsemen that were particularly fond of chestnut and sorrel horses would argue that they had more sense or that they were faster or possibly had more action than horses of other colors. I began to notice some chestnut horses were good performers in cutting and roping and also in sports events such as polo and open jumping. So I decided I needed some chestnut horses. The fact of the matter is there weren't many horses tough enough to stand young cowboys in their late teens and early twenties. So these rugged cowhands were always hunting for a better horse. I was quick to detect the difference in the performance ability of chestnut and sorrel horses as compared to horses of other colors. The sorrels and chestnuts that I came in contact with had an infusion of some percentage of Thoroughbred blood which gave them more action and more speed. However, they were tender mouthed, and it took a little better horsemanship to keep from ruining their mouths and performance ability. It was also evident that the darker shades had better feet, better reflective qualities in the hair around their eyes and were less subject to scalding and chafing by saddles and cinches. The light shades of chestnut and sorrel had less darkness in their feet and were more trouble to keep shod. Most palomino horses had amber-colored eyes, and if there were no white markings in their face, their eyes wouldn't get sore and run. But their skin was less durable than the darkercolored horses. In my growing-up years I saw a good many grey horses at hard ranch work and being driven by the public to various kinds of carriages and delivery wagons. Even though the color of a grey horse gets lighter as it grows older, the skin will be exceptionally tough and withstand the use of harness and saddle with a minimum amount of damage.

BRIGHT CHESTNUT: Thoroughbred. This is the first shade of chestunt in which refraction of light is very brilliant to the eye, and is not as protective to the hide. It is the first shade of the self colors that would be subject to the caustic effects of sand-scald, not to be confused with "sunburn."

COPPER DUN: Quarter Horse. The hide of a copper dun is comparable in serviceable qualities to that of a standard chestnut. It withstands heat and light equally as well, but tends to have less durability and resistance to pressure. The hooves can be black; however, in most instances the hoof is generally a dark amber color and when devoid of white markings, is still a serviceable hoof.

BUCKSKIN: Quarter Horse. The body color buckskin is a self color and is clean of any of the smuttiness that might appear in other colors. As the name implies, a true-colored buckskin horse with black points that do not extend above the knees should be the color of a tanned deerhide. The color is a durable one, and usually the feet are black.

A live horse to an envelope together with atmospheric and light changes, it would not yield anything for Busche even though he used the same process I might be using at the same time.

One day I was called to sew up a horse that had been badly cut on a barbed wire fence when a band of horses had been buzzed by an airplane from a nearby air training field. Much of the hide from the neck, breast and forearm of this dark chestnut horse was dangling, and in spite of my best surgical efforts, there was a small piece of hide that had to be cut off. I removed this small piece of hide, threw it in the dirt and finished attending to the horse's wound. I got in my car and was halfway back to town when I realized how stupid a man could get when he is searching for something. I turned around and went back to the corral and found the small piece of hide and washed it off in a water trough. I went directly to my laboratory and started doing a dermis dissection. I called Busche in New York, and he told me how he thought pigment might be extracted from the tissue of the horse's hide. By midnight I had about two drops of amber fluid which was the first time that we had been able to extract pigment in its fluid form.

By laboratory techniques, I learned how to extract the pigment from the hair and from the dermis tissue. After a year of extracting pigment from horses of various colors, I was convinced by my findings that there is only one pigment that colors all horses. This pigment that I had extracted by several different laboratory processes always came out as a dark amber substance and when crystalized by dehydration process still remained this same amber color. When I put the crystalline substance back into solution with triple distilled water, saline solution or normal horse scrum, it was still amber. This finding caused me to ponder why the horses had the appearance of different colors when it was the same pigment that I extracted from all different colors and shades of hair and hide. I placed this pigment extract under the microscope and even made slides from it. By using the various laboratory stains on it I detected that the pigment was a round globule substance that later proved to be a protein. These small round objects were identifiable only under the strongest focus that I had in my good laboratory microscope.

During the process of pigment extraction, I determined that horsehair is hollow, that the pigment is inside the shaft of the hair and that the walls of the hair itself are clear. I started the process by placing the hair on a slide under the strongest focus of my microscope, and I began to discover pattern arrangements of these microscopic, round, amber globules. It was in the third year of research that I began to understand that it is the arrangement pattern of the pigment in the shaft of the hair and the density of pigment that refracts the light and reflects the color that is identified by the human eye as being bay, chestnut or any other color.

Each color treated in this book will show the pigment arrangement refraction pattern that causes a certain color or shade of a color.

In the days of my research I was practicing in an area of two hundred miles every direction from my home-office in Fort Stockton, Texas, where lots of horses and hides and different colors were easy to come by. This research extended over a period of five years from 1942 to 1947. I occasionally worked on the extraction of pigment as late as 1950 if a hide of unusual color happened to show up. This research was done for the sole reason of satisfying my own curiosity about the coloring of horses. At that time I had not the slightest idea of ever putting my research into book form, but because Busche made such elaborate notes on what he did and mailed them to me, I felt that I should follow his example. So I made very explicit notes on each hide and extract, wrote them up, filed them with my other office records, and sent him a copy.

The statement has been made in literature since man began to write about horses that grey foals must have one grey ancestor. In the black mares with the one-quarter to one-eighth Percheron background being bred to a dark bay Thoroughbred stallion, there were two beautiful grey colts the third year that I kept records. They were born black and changed to steel grey by the time they were two-year-olds and dapple grey by the time they were four. In another band of mares, there was a bright chestnut mare with no white markings that produced five red roan foals in seven years. Light chestnut sires and dams crossbred to the native buckskin color produced forty percent of their entire foal number in dilutes known as palominos.

In view of my laboratory findings and the foals produced by these mares over a period of ten years, it is not possible for me to agree with the chapter on color in Tesio's book, Breeding the Race Horse, published in 1958, or with any writer before or since who has not through laboratory research extracted the pigmentation from the hair and hide of a horse. The most exhaustive research of any kind should be substantiated by actual practice, such as the breeding of large numbers of horses and the observation of their offspring through a period of several years.

I have never resorted to the research of written pedigrees described by human beings of all nationalities who might have varied opinions and ways of describing color that could easily be confusing. I am referring to the difference between bay or brown or what shade would be considered light or dark and the many other varying judgments and analyses arrived at by the human eye to determine any genetical factors pertaining to color. Written pedigrees and written subject matter by horsemen of other ages is subject to as much error as the judgment and opinion of the horseman of this age. The only worthwhile research pertaining to the color of a horse should be obtained by the extraction of pigment from the hair, hide, mane and tail of a horse and the microscopic examination of the arrangement of the pigment bodies in the shaft of the hair. This method should be free from any suspicion of incorrect description of colors as identified by different human eyes.

For more than two hundred years scientists and especially geneticists have listened to and practiced the theories of Mendel, the great botanist of his time who established Mendel's Law in the hybrid crossing of peas. It is true, and I am more than willing to concede, that Mendel's Law has been a great governing factor and contribution to the improvement of plant varieties by agricultural and plant scientists. However, scientists who do their research from the manuscripts and printed matter of others, I term reading scientists. Those people have gone far amiss in their attempts to apply Mendel's Law to animal life and especially to domestic animal life. From research actually done on the horse, I cannot agree with the writings and conclusions drawn by old writers who have reached their suppositions and conclusions by applying Mendel's Law to animal life.

The strongest evidence against applying Mendel's Law to animal life is clearly shown by a fact which has been proven many times. In the case of sires and dams of equal breeding, the sire marks his dominant characteristics on the female offspring, and the dam marks her dominant characteristics on the male offspring. This pattern is further borne out in the explicit records of racing breeds where sires become known as the sires of dams that produce winners, and the dams become known for producing male offspring that are dominated by her characteristics, which in effect is the transposition from her sire to her male offspring. These facts are proven by hundreds of written records especially in the racing breeds of horses, and they clearly show that Mendel's Law cannot be applied in the breeding of horses.The writers of the early nineteenth century who relied on Mendel's theory and those of the twentieth century who have had scientific opportunities to do true research on the horse have settled for the conclusions and old expressions of the writers of another century. In doing this they have fallen far short of their goals and responsibilities to the present-day horse breeder.

The facts written and illustrated in this book are not conclusions drawn from other inadequate, secondary sources but have been gained by extensive, time-consuming, exhaustive research on many horses of all breeds. During this period of extensive research I have extracted the pigment from the hair and hide of one hundred and thirty-five horses. The findings of this basic laboratory research are the basis for this book.

SPOTS, PAINTS, PINTOS, PIEBALDS, AND APPALOOSAS

Regardless of the pattern of dark and white hide that covers a horse's body call it spots, paint, pinto, piebald or appaloosa no breed can be established on color. All the horse registries in the world that have survived the test of time and have been of service to mankind have recorded horses that were bred for a type that would serve a specific purpose. A horse is bred for muscle structure, and in part, bone structure, to perform a certain feat or a useful purpose to mankind, whether it be a Thoroughbred for racing, a standardbred for light harness or the draft breed for hard pulling and so forth. To try to establish a breed by color is one of the fallacies of the thinking of so-called horsemen.

Parti-colored horses have hides with areas that are nonpigmented, which creates white. The darker area of the hide which contains pigment is some shade of color. A horse that does not have a durable hide cannot withstand harness, saddles and other trappings of man and would be useless as a beast of burden. The darker-colored hide of a horse would be the most useful since it is the pigment which is contained in the colored hide that gives the hide the ability to withstand heat, pressure and the rubbing and chaffing of harness and saddles. The white hide on a horse is much thinner because of the absence of pigment and is subject to scalding, blistering and peeling.

White hide around the eyes does not deflect sunlight, and the eyes are more apt to be sore from the absorption of light. A horse with such eyes will be less useful. A dark eye contains phosphorous pigment that enables a horse to catch the slightest glimmer of light and see in the night. On a non-pigmented white-faced horse, the eyeball and the inner area of the eye have no pigment, or at least have little pigment, and the horse is generally referred to as being glass-eyed or marble-eyed. This absence of color in the eye causes the horse not to have all of the reflective quality that enables a horse to see and severely affects his vision, especially at night.

The white foot of a horse does not hold the natural oils of the hoof which normally prevent the hoof from cracking. Also, the walls of a white hoof are soft and wear and break more easily from rough terrain than those of a dark-colored hoof. The appearance of spots, paints, pintos, piebalds and appaloosas is pleasing to the unknowing eye, but there is no practical reason for mankind to have ever endeavored to weaken the useful purpose of the horse by breeding out pigments essential for soundness and deflection of light.