HGG Community Forums

Warning: A very long post is ahead of you! At the bottom I bolded the conclusion :p

I'm not so sure if you can tell DP in black/silver black at all.

As you can see on the genetics page about DP: http://www.huntandjump.com/geneticsguide/?page_id=135

"Inheritance studies and cloning have proven that how dark or light a horse’s coat ends up is determined by genetics. This is likley the result of many different genes but in the game it has been simplified to two. Sooty influences eumelanin (black pigment) and pheomelanin (red pigment) while dense pheomelanin only influences pheomelanin."
This means that DP only influences red pigment (that is why it shows so good on chestnuts/palominos, turning them into livers/chocolates. And that's why it also shows on Brown/Bay horses, as they have red pigment because of their Agouti genes.
If you look at the pictures you see that a fully black horse does not show if it has DP or not, as they do not have any red pigment.

Silver is a dilution gene, but it does not give the horse red pigment, so in theory a silver black/grullo can never show/become darker because of DP, only because of Sooty (as that influences both red pgiment [pheomelanin] and black pigment [eumelanin]).



I don't breed that many silver black horses. However, there are a few oddities around them that seem darker or different from the others, making me not 100% sure of this theory. This is my list of my Silver Black foundations: https://www.huntandjump.com/adv_search.php?runsearch=1&status=any&ageg=&agel=&agee=&erag=&eral=&erae=&heightg=&heightl=&heighte=&boneg=&bonel=&bonee=&f_basic=none&f_adv=none&f_limit=25&stallion=1&mare=1&gelding=1&spayedmare=1&bty=1&foundation=1&name=&name_lm=like&color=&color_lm=like&owner=160524&owner_lm=like&breeder=&breeder_lm=like&sire=&sire_lm=like&dam=&dam_lm=like&barn=&barn_lm=like&pasture=&past_lm=like&tattoo=&tat_lm=like&tat_and=and&club=&bc_lm=like&bc_and=and&e1=&e2=1&a1=&a4=2&a2=2&a3=2&f1=&f2=&p1=&p2=&s1=2&s2=&s3=&c1=&c2=&c3=&d1=&d3=&d2=&g1=&g2=&ch1=&ch2=&z1=&z2=1&sa2=&sa1=&mu2=&mu1=&chn2=&chn1=&kit1=&kit2=&kit3=&kit4=&kit5=&kit6=&kit10=&kit11=&kit12=&kit7=&kit8=&kit9=&sp1=&sp2=&sp3=&spM=&pax31=&pax32=&rb1=&rb2=&o1=&o2=&l1=&l2=&ice1=&icei=&ice2=&ice3=&ice4=&ice5=&ice6=&ice7=&ice8=&ice9=&ice10=&ice11=&ice12=&ice13=&ice14=&ice15=&nexn=&nexx=&nexr=&nexg=&nexb=&nexw=&rainr=&rainwt=&rainpl=&raint=&rainna=&brindle1=1&brindle2=1&wf1=1&wf2=1&wf3=1&wf4=1&wf5=1&wf6=1
As you can see there are quite a few different hues. As I do not have many, I am not sure if DP shows in them. Some of my horses are quite a bit darker, but that also can be natural variation of the color that has nothing to do with DP.

My own suspection is that those more brownish silver blacks have DP (like your mare), or for example this mare:

MSR Pro7721878 ZBLK pDP
However, I do not have any proof for that yet, as I do not have many silver black to breed.
These are the only two:

I have 1 lined silver black horse that is DP for sure (coming from a homo DP parent):

MS2 SummerReturnedGPDP
I bred her to another homo DP stud, and got this foal, a silver grullo:

MS3 WildsnowReturn
This does not give much conclusion.

So I've looked at my older silver blacks, see if that color is in there or not. The following horses are all fully lined horses, coming from lines from a time when there was no DP in the game yet:

MS SHOW 14PT L 7635912

MS GeorgesCoreRomantice L

MS Public Peaches L

MS SHOW L 7635923

MS DiamondsBeenBad L SHOW

MS SHOW L 7477355
So as you can see, that brownish color occurs even in lines that do not have DP.


The final thing to check if DP has any influence on silver blacks is to search for other proven DP horses. So what I did next is I searched for proven DP herd helpers (king's ransom is het DP, chocolate is het DP, rhtyhm of four is het DP, cherry drop is hom DP, freaky friday is hom DP) and see if there were any GMT'd horses that are silver black.

I found one, a GMT'd freaky friday Silver black. This means she is homo DP.

KTF E7 Freaked Out
However, she does not look particulary dark to me.
Then I looked at her foals, as they are all het DP for sure: https://www.huntandjump.com/adv_search.php?&dam=6109629&runsearch=1
1 seems a bit darker, but the other foals look like normal silver blacks to me.


So, as I started my post, I'm not 100% sure about this at all. I did some research, and this seems to confirm the theory that DP cannot influence silver blacks (as DP only influences red pigment) and thus cannot be seen from looking at the coat color of the horse.
However, to become sure of this it would be wise to create /GMT a few het/hom DP silver black horses and breed them a lot to test how their offspring looks like.
Ofcourse, other factors like S+, Cream, Dun, Champagne etc might influence the coat color and thus might influence how 'dark' a horse looks. However, in theory those factors should not matter, as the base color of the horse still is black (constisting of only eumelanin), and DP only influences pheomelanin (red pigment).


Conclusion of this story: DP very probably does not show in Silver Blacks (and any black based horses) as DP only influences red pigment. A few oddities are out there, so to be sure the only way would be to test breed and find out!

@Kintara That's interesting! I do not have any experience with chinchilla myself, but if that influences silver blacks then DP probably has to do so too?
I guess this means I/we have to breed/GMT some horses to find out!^^