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This page has been sourced from REC.EQUESTRIAN, the body of the text has been unaltered as far as possible. The information is for use at own risk.

4. DESCRIPTIONS OF SOME UNUSUAL COLORS: GRULLA, CREMELLO, PERLINO

Melanie Dresser writes [22 Aug 91]: Can someone describe for me a few of the odder colors that horses come in:

  • Grulla: I've seen it, but don't know the details on the color and how it differs from a roan. (I think it has to do with the color of each individual hair)


According to the book _Horse Color_:

Grulla (pronounced GREW-ya) is a slate-colored horse with black points and a dark or black head. They almost always have primitive marks (withers stripe, dorsal stripe, and zebra stripes over the knees and hocks). It is a solid color with no white mixed in at all, unlike a blue roan, which clearly has white mixed in. In other words each individual hair is slaty (instead of some hairs being dark and some white, as in a roan). Overall this color looks like a field mouse, like grey-brown. It seems to be an ancient color; tarpans were grulla. "Grulla" is the Spanish word for the sandhill crane, which is a grey slate-colored bird. "Mouse dun" and "blue dun" are English terms referring to this same color.

  • There are some variations in grulla body color.
  • Slate grulla, described above, is most common. A blue slate color.
  • Lobo grulla or lobo dun is blacker, especially dorsally.

  • Olive grulla is browner, similar to smokey buckskin.

  • Silver grulla is creamy colored with slate blue points and head.

Genetically, grulla is caused by a dun-dilution of black or seal brown. (Silver grulla is a dun-dilution combined with a cremello-dilution.)


CREMELLO I think this may be what my first pony was. He was white in the winter and a pale palomino in the summer. (Dart was the greatest pony :-))

That's cremello all right. Cremello is a genetically a chestnut horse that is carrying two c-cr dilution genes. Each gene reduces the amount of pigment in the hair shafts. One dilution gene in a genetically chestnut horse gives you palomino (or claybank dun if the mane and tail are darker), and two gives you cremello, which is basically a very pale palomino. Cremellos are not pure white but cream or off-white (or even pale palomino as your pony was in summer) with a white or off-white mane and tail and blue eyes. They are sometimes called Type-A albino but they're not true albinos.

PERLINO

A related color is perlino, which is a double c-cr dilution of a genetically bay or seal brown horse. (A single dilution gives buckskin, yellowish with black mane and tail.) Perlinos also have an off-white body, but typically have a rusty mane and tail, with blue eyes.

See next question for more on palominos.


 Back to Colour Genetics  Next


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