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Black Horse

Black is a coat color of horses characterized by dark brown eyes, and black skin with an entirely black coat lacking brownish or reddish hairs. The color black occurs due to the presence Extension and Agouti genes. It is an uncommon coat color, and people unfamiliar with horses often mistake bays or dark chestnuts for black.

Black horses may have pink skin with white markings underneath areas of white hair, and if these markings occur around the eyes, they may be blue.

The black coat color has two varieties, including the “fading black” or “sun-bleached black” that occurs due to exposure to heat (causing them to sweat and lose the rich black shade) and “non-fading black” that do not get sun-bleached. A sun-bleached black is also confused with a smoky black coat color but can be identified by DNA testing or pedigree analysis.