Cream (Cr)

The Cream gene is a dilution gene that reduces the overall pigmentation of a horse’s coat color. It can also affect the mane, tail, and eye color. The degree of dilution depends on how many copies of the gene are present. One copy of Cream is written as Crcr, while two copies are written as CrCr.

The horse’s base coat color affects how the Cream gene appears. Resulting coat colors can include various shades of buckskin, palomino, smoky black, cremello, perlino, and smoky cream. On bay-based horses, one copy of Cream typically dilutes the body color while leaving the black points mostly unaffected, creating buckskin. On black-based horses, Cream can be more subtle with one copy, but two copies will dilute the entire coat more noticeably.

See below for more specific examples of how the Cream gene affects different coat colors.

Black Base Coat

A black base coat with one copy of cream (Crcr) will result in the coat color of ‘Smoky Cream’, while a double copy of cream (CrCr) will dilute the shade noticeably.

Smoky Cream

Black Coat (EE aa or Ee aa) + 2 Copies of Cream (CrCr)

Chestnut Based Coats

The type of chestnut (Standard, Red, Light, or Liver) will determine the shade of palomino when one cream gene is present. When two copies are present, the result will be a color known as ‘Cremello’ which also results in blue eyes.

Single Cream Dilution (Crn)

Light Palomino

Light Chestnut Coat + 1 Copy of Cream (Crn)

Chocolate Palomino

Liver Chestnut Coat + 1 Copy of Cream (Crn)

Double Cream Dilutions (Crn)

Cremello

Any Chestnut Coat Base + 2 copies of Cream (CrCr)

Bay Based Coats

When a single copy of cream is present on horses with a bay based coat, the resulting color will be various shades of ‘buckskin’. The shade of bucksin will depend on the shade of bay base coat (Bay, Wild, Light, Brown, or Seal) . When two copies are present, all coats except for Brown Bay will results in a color known as ‘Perlino’ which also results in blue eyes. If the base coat is Brown Bay, the resulting color will be Brown Bay Cream. 

Wild Buckskin

Wild Bay Coat t + 1 Copy of Cream (Crn)

Seal Buckskin

Seal Bay Coat + 1 Copy of Cream (Crn)

Double Cream Dilutions (CrCr)

Brown Bay Cream

Brown Bay Coat + 2 copies of Cream (CrCr)

Pearl (prl)

Pearl is a recessive gene and will only cause dilution if it’s homozygous recessive (prlprl) or paired with one cream gene (Crprl). Horses with prln or PrlPrl genes will not display the pearl dilution. 

All horses of any base coat color will have “Pearl” as their color name.