Genetics

Genetics 101
Here, you can find which genes(/alleles) work together to create each colour and some information about various markings.

In the next few steps I will take you through the steps of figuring out what foals a horse can have. For this, I will be using an example from Zafira's stable.

If you still have questions after this, don't hesitate to contact us either in e-mail or in the comments down below.

My two chosen horses:

Libretto, Arabian stallion	Alicante Zamani, Arabian mare

1. You need the horse's alleles. Those are the characters you can see everywhere in the chart above.
Neither Libretto, nor Zamani have had any testing, so we'll just guess.
Libretto is chestnut, so his alleles could be:
ee/AA
ee/Aa
ee/aa
I am going to use ee/Aa in this case.
Zamani is palomino, so her alleles could be:
ee/AA/Crcr
ee/Aa/Crcr
ee/aa/Crcr
Once again, I am going to use the middle one.

Now, you can do the next part yourself or you can use a generator to do the work for you. Personally, I think doing it myself is fun, but it might not be so for you. You can find the generator HERE.
If you want to try the DIY method for yourself, you can find the steps below.

We have to compare each gene pair with the corresponding one from the other horse's alleles. We'll do this in twos and we'll be using lots of charts. Each gene has to be checked, because the foal will take one gene from each parent, and that will give it its final colour.

2.

	e	e
e	ee	ee
e	ee	ee

I put the mother's genes into the top row, and the father's into the left column, and just added each one. In this case, it is easy. e + e makes ee.
As you can see, there are 4 results and every single one of them is ee, which means there is a 100% chance the foal will have two e genes.
So far we know that it, for sure, will be: ee/xx/xx

3.

	A	a
A	AA	Aa
a	Aa	aa

Now there's a bit more variety.
2 results out of the four are Aa, one is AA and one is aa.
This means...
50% ee/Aa/xx
25% ee/AA/xx
25% ee/aa/xx

4.

	Cr	cr
cr	Crcr	crcr
cr	Crcr	crcr

2 results are Crcr, 2 are crcr, which means there is a 50% chance the foal will carry the Cr gene.
If you break it down...
50% ee/Aa - 25% ee/Aa/Crcr 25% ee/Aa(/crcr)
25% ee/AA - 12,5% ee/AA/Crcr 12,5% ee/AA(/crcr)
25% ee/aa - 12,5% ee/aa/Crcr 12,5% ee/aa(/crcr)

5. Results!
25% ee/Aa/Crcr - Palomino
25% ee/Aa - Chestnut
12,5% ee/AA/Crcr - Palomino
12,5% ee/AA - Chestnut
12,5% ee/aa/Crcr - Palomino
12,5% ee/aa - Chestnut
So in the end, 50% Palomino and 50% Chestnut.