# Buckskin or Grullo?



## farmpony84

The one picture looks grulla but the rest look buckskin to me. Although I'm no expert. What color are his eyes? Are they kind of an odd color?


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## SunnyDraco

You can always test for dun. To be dun, he needs at least one parent to have the dun gene. With so much white, it is hard to tell especially since the white prevents you from seeing what that dorsal is doing when it goes into the mane and tail. It is possible for a non dun to have dun like shading.


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## BreezylBeezyl

First impression is grullo to me. I owned two buckskins, their faces were not that dark... And it looks like there is a dorsal strip in the last picture? Maybe that's just the picture though.

His summer coat looks more grey to me, which is the color I would go off of. I don't trust fall/winter/spring coats, they tend to lighten up and make liars out of colors. I had a buckskin mare who literally turned into a blue roan in the winter and spring. 

Many grullos are tan/buckskin/silver colours in the middle and then darken towards the front and hind ends. I think the colour you are seeing in the middle that looks like buckskin is just the shade of grullo the horse is.

That's just my opion, the horse looks more grullo than buckskin to me. :lol:


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## gee50

I see Pinto; specifically Tobiano.


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## BreezylBeezyl

gee50 said:


> I see Pinto; specifically Tobiano.


Pinto/tobiano is a pattern, not a colour. I believe the OP is asking what COLOUR of pinto/tobiano he is.


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## gee50

WillowNightwind said:


> Pinto/tobiano is a pattern, not a colour. I believe the OP is asking what COLOUR of pinto/tobiano he is.


Ah, got it. Thank you.


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## Joie

He could be a smokey brown or smokey black. My guess, looking at the mare, she is black. Looking at the sires' pedigree, I don't see any dun, so I would go with smokey brown.

The picture I posted is a smokey brown purebred thoroughbred I owned. He looks very similar to him IMO...


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## stevenson

A dorsal stripe would show down the entire back ,
Buckskins have the darker points, mane tail legs, 
I would call him Grulla .
His foal color was what I would call a palomino shade. 
he is cute


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## poundinghooves

I don't know a lot about coloring (although up until the last picture I was thinking grullo) but I just had to say that he is stunning! I love his coloring, whatever it is!


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## Joie

I don't see where grulla would be coming from. There doesn't appear to be dun in his pedigree.


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## KigerQueen

he looks 100% grulla!
most have that cool gray color (like your boy has is sevral pics)









Some can have more gold







.


This is what other grulla tobis look like
(this looks more like a dark dun to me though)










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here is a grulla foal shedding o8ut from a palomino color







.


this is a buckskin paint
note the uniform color of the face.









this is a brown skin (all horses with brown agouti have pailer muzzles.


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## SunnyDraco

He could very well be grullo, but as I said before, at least one parent needs to have the dun gene because grullo does not pop out of thin air or skip generations. The mare appears black in the foal picture which means not a dun carrier. If the sire is buckskin, that is also not dun. However, there are many mislabeled or not totally accurate colors horses are listed as. If the sire was a dunskin, then he could produce a grullo foal. If the stallion was a bay dun but registered as a buckskin, then he could certainly produce a grullo. But, if your horse is grullo and the dam was black and the stallion registered as the sire is buckskin and has no dun gene, then he isn't the sire. 

OP, do you have a picture of the sire? And if you want to know for certain, test for cream and dun


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## stevenson

the dam has dun , and could have been dun and not buckskin, The owners fill in the color on the registration papers, and without the color dna test being mandatory, they could have the incorrect color on the papers. 
Similar to the bay vs brown . I had a yellow dun mare that reg as palomino .


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## KigerQueen

In the last pick you can clearly see the dun stripe on ops horse.

that being said the sire is a buckskin from what i can tell. unless he has some weird dilutes going on to cover the dun.









he has produced another grullo out of a "black" mare so idk whats going on there. he has 3 including Ops horse i think.
Offspring | Stallions | Hickorys Gunsmoke (Horatio) | The Eagles Ranch on Texel | Paint Horse Stud Farm on Texel
he might have a weird chimera thing going on, or he is not the sire. That horse is a grulla. just like a gray horse is gray, and a chestnut is a chestnut. that horse has the dun gene.


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## KigerQueen

yeah mom is black. get him tested, and to be honest i would test to see if the stud is even his sire. there is something odd going on with the duns he is getting from no dun mares.


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## Zexious

Wow, 'dis thread is awesome. Such pretty horsies. 

So, what was the conclusion we came to about OP's horse? xD /curious


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## KigerQueen

i think that either the stud is NOT the actual sire, or that he has some weird double dilute going on hiding the dun gene.


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## DraftyAiresMum

stevenson said:


> the dam has dun , and could have been dun and not buckskin, The owners fill in the color on the registration papers, and without the color dna test being mandatory, they could have the incorrect color on the papers.
> Similar to the bay vs brown . I had a yellow dun mare that reg as palomino .


The dam has dun a couple of generations back, but dun doesn't skip generations, so it doesn't matter. Just like grey, one of the parents HAS to be dun in order to produce a dun. The dam is clearly black with no diluting factors )like dun).
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## haviris

Grullo, and my guess is dad is a buckskin dun, but his dun factor is covered up by his white markings. The site that was linked shows his mom was buckskin-tobi, also most likely buckskin dun, and her sire is a dun-tobi, that is where the color came from.

APHA does not give the option of buckskin dun, they choose between the two. My buckskin dun is registered as a dun (although I picked buckskin on his application).


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## verona1016

The sire, Hickory's Gunsmoke, could be a dunskin. He has a lot of white covering the areas where dun markings would show up. There's a photo of him with his dam, Miss Dun Hickory Bar, here: ::Color Me A Paint Ranch:: and she has a lot of white in those areas as well. Her sire is listed as dun and dam as palomino, so possible she could have gotten both dun and cream, but only got listed as buckskin because the dorsal and/or leg barring are faint or covered with white.


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## Stritzo

farmpony84 said:


> The one picture looks grulla but the rest look buckskin to me. Although I'm no expert. What color are his eyes? Are they kind of an odd color?


They are very dark brown with a blueish edge. and the pink inner eyelids.












KigerQueen said:


> yeah mom is black. get him tested, and to be honest i would test to see if the stud is even his sire. there is something odd going on with the duns he is getting from no dun mares.


I will look into the cost for a test. Think it is around 40,- euro for the dun test. It is possible for 'Horatio' to be a dunskin as i don't believe he has been color tested.
However i'm very sure that 'Horatio' is the sire; we've been visiting that ranch for a few years now and he is always 24/7 out on the field with the mare herd.


I want to thank everyone for joining in on the discussion, seems it was a lot of fun and of course thanks for calling him a pretty boy 

Think the conclusion is: that to be sure, i have to color test my horse.
I think from everyone's help i can assume him to be a grullo or a smokey black/brown. But he certainly is *not a buckskin*.

My other question is still: Should i contact the association and have his papers corrected (after i've color tested him of course) or won't it matter at all.
I'm asking because i do want to compete with him eventually(casual) and might have to cross borders to do so as i live in Europe.


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## SunnyDraco

After color testing him and he is grullo, contact the registry. I know you can usually have the color changed on the registration with minimal cost.


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## AnnaLover

Don't bother color testing him- he's 100% grulla  As with all colors, shade varies from horse to horse. It is also common for grullas to appear "buckskin" at birth.


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## GraysAndBaysRanch

The ear tips and dorsal gave it away for me. He's a grulla. Their color changes throughout the seasons from a silvery or steel gray to an olive or yellowish slate color. The creamy color when he was a foal is because he's a silver grulla. (Those supossedly are more desirable)


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## Bridgertrot

stevenson said:


> *A dorsal stripe would show down the entire back* ,
> Buckskins have the darker points, mane tail legs,
> I would call him Grulla .
> His foal color was what I would call a palomino shade.
> he is cute


Not unless there's a white pattern, that will cover it up. 

Everyone else already covered what I would have said. Dam's side is showing the only side of dun but she herself looks black. But the horse in question sure does look grullo. Somewhere something isn't right, whether it is the wrong sire or somebody is misregistered.


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## Yogiwick

I'd be curious to see good pics of mom and dad.

There is dun on dad's side too.


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## DraftyAiresMum

Yogiwick said:


> I'd be curious to see good pics of mom and dad.
> 
> There is dun on dad's side too.


I would be more inclined to believe that dad is a mislabeled dunskin (which is the extremely likely case) than that the sire is someone different than the breeders thought.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## LPH

I think the sire is a dunskin, especially considering he has produced other dun babies out of thin air. His white is in all the right places to conceal the barring and dorsal stripe. SBR Formula One is a dunskin and looks VERY buckskin aside from his barring and dorsal stripe. The body color itself looks very similar to buckskin.

Looking just at the pictures of the OP's horse I would say grullo as well. Even a sooty buckskin wouldn't look like that. The color is too uniform I guess you could say. Regardless, he's GORGEOUS! Lucky you to get a good minded AND fabulous looking horse!
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Yogiwick

I found an adult picture of the filly above the sire on that site. SHE IS HIS FULL SISTER.

Dun Smokin The Blues | Secret Hills Ranch

I was interested as she's very pretty then noticed while being called buckskin her test results say she is heterozygous for dun... (and she does not look it). You can't pick "dunskin" on all breed.

May just be the breeders then! I wouldn't bother to test just call the registry and complain!


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## Cherie

I had a black mare. It turned out she was a 'smokey black'. She produced a buckshin, a dun (very prominent dun factor but the sire also carried a dun factor) and a grullo foal. The buckskin came from her as the stud never sired another buckskin. He did not have a dilute gene. This mare not only carried a dilute gene while being jet black, she was a champagne. Every foal was born with blue eyes and they turned a yellow / amber color as they matured. I still have the buckskin and the dun, both with yellow eyes. A close friend got a pearlino from his black mare when he bred her to a palomino. I do not know how to tell by looking if a black horse has a dilute gene. 

I have a Cutter Bill bred buckskin gelding that is also a champagne.


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## Paintedponies1992

Sorry if off topic but, I have the same thing going on with my AQHA mare, she was registered Grullo XD Debating on if it's worth getting it changed


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## DraftyAiresMum

Painted, if I were to label your mare a color, I'd probably call her a dunskin (buckskin with dun). What were her parents' colors, do you know?


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## Yogiwick

Either dunskin or dun but not grullo


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## Paintedponies1992

Oh I know i'm still laughing at the papers XD Her sire is a chestnut and they labeled the dam a grullo too, but I can't find a picture of her. She's a dun.


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## AnnaLover

Yep she's a bay dun not a dunskin


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## Paintedponies1992

The funniest part is her colour as a foal was a lot like the OP's foal; I have pics but I'd have to scan them and my laptop is not attached to a printer at the moment.


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## DraftyAiresMum

AnnaLover said:


> Yep she's a bay dun not a dunskin


Idk. Her face and legs (the parts that stay darker on a dun) seem too light to me to be a bay dun. I could be wrong, though.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Paintedponies1992

Don't know if any of these will help, but either way love her.


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## NdAppy

Not cream-y enough in tone to be a dunskin. Total bay dun IMPO.


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## AnnaLover

Yep! Text book bay dun


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## LPH

I'm 100% sure she's a bay fun, Painted. A dunskin is going to look like a buckskin with dun markings pretty much. That mare isn't creamy enough to have any cream genes. She's super pretty!
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Paintedponies1992

Yeah I didn't get to register her myself or else she would have been put down as Dun, her papers came that way; so don't know if either the registration picked that colour or the breeder did. As soon as I saw her though I knew she was a dun .


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## Paintedponies1992

Oh and thank you LPH


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## BarrelracingwithSkipper

grullo horses sometimes tend to change their color through out the year with weather change and all there are a few grullo horses at my barn and they do that during the winter they are darker like a normal grullo color but during the summer they get surprisingly light!


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## danicelia24

My paint mare is a red dun and she has a batch of white over her rump and her dorsal stripe doesnt continue through the white.


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## Yogiwick

danicelia24 said:


> My paint mare is a red dun and she has a batch of white over her rump and her dorsal stripe doesnt continue through the white.


I like to think of white as a blanket. It covers EVERYTHING else.

Or like snow... LOL this winter is getting to me! But it's maybe a better description?

Where there's snow it's white, no snow, the ground can show through!


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## DraftyAiresMum

Yogiwick said:


> I like to think of white as a blanket. It covers EVERYTHING else.
> 
> Or like snow... LOL this winter is getting to me! But it's maybe a better description?
> 
> Where there's snow it's white, no snow, the ground can show through!


Great analogy, Yogi!!
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Yogiwick

Thanks-it wasn't intentional! I was saying the blanket thing like I always do and it just popped into my head. So. Sick. of Snow.

I will use it in the future though!

I think it's a better visual as blankets are (typically lol) one solid area.


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## Pebbles42

Well his sire's black and it only says his dam's paint so if his dam carries dun then yes, he would be grullo. The second picture does look very grayish but the rest do look buckskin. Maybe he's a sooty buckskin? 
If you can, see if his dam or one of his dam's parents carried the dun gene and that may be, unless his sire was also dun. 
That's about as much as I can help you.


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## dunmorgans

I've studied the dun colors for well over a decade and many grulla foals are born the buff color that your guy was born. I can easily see why buckskin is a guess for his color based on his foal pic!

Dark ear tips mean almost nothing as I've seen many non-dun horses with dark ear tips. My question is does he have light tips?! I mean at the very ends of his ear tips. Not all, but some dun dilutes have light tips. So far I have not seen evidence showing any non-dun with them, though.

Based on what I can see of his dorsal, it looks pretty distinct to me. Does he have any dark portions in his tail at all? I can't tell because none of his pics are from the rear. Just wondering if there was any evidence of a dorsal within the tail.

My best guess ... and that's all it is at this point ... is that he is a grulla.


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