On bay-based horses, sooty often mainly affects the topline and upper part of the body - as if someone dumped a bucket of soot on them. This may cause a broad fake “dorsal stripe”, as is seen in dun horses.

Sooty (STY, sty) or smutty is a modifier that causes a darkening of the coat that can be expressed in many different ways. It can often be characterised by a concentration of dark hairs mainly along the topline of the horse, which is called countershading.

Mar 27, 2023 · A bay horse is equine with a reddish-brown coat, dark skin, and black points including its mane, tail, ears, and lower legs. Although very rarely, they can have white markings on their head and legs. The bay horse color ranges from a light copper red to a blood bay color to dark bay and mahogany.

Jul 22, 2022 · The different shades of bay include standard bay, wild bay, blood bay, mahogany bay, cherry bay, copper bay, golden bay, sandy bay, light bay, sooty bay, dark bay, and seal bay/seal brown. Are all thoroughbreds bay?

Apr 8, 2023 · Sooty bay: dark shade of bay produced by the sooty effect (see “Glossary” below). Standard bay: reddish-brown medium shade without a mix of darker or lighter hairs. Black: Has solid black body, legs, mane and tail; dark eyes.

On bay-based horses, the most common type of sooty is black countershading. This darkens the top side of the horse, sometimes turning the back, croup, and shoulder almost black, while leaving the underside of the horse redder. At its darkest, this effect may be confused with seal brown, while in minimal forms the dark hairs may not be noticed. [2]

Similarly to chestnut horses, sooty used to display on bay Norman Cobs inconsistently, with certain variations connected to both sooty and non-sooty horses. After the migration, some bays will change their appearance depending on their genetics. Example: Old coat on the left, new sooty coat in the middle, and new non-sooty on the right. Seal Bay

One is a theorized sooty gene which produces dark shading on any coat color. The other is a specific allele of Agouti linked to a certain type of dark bay, called seal brown.

Sooty (STY, sty) or smutty causes a darkening of the coat in chestnut and bay-based horses. It can be expressed in many different ways. On Chestnut-based horses, it often mostly darkens the legs or lower body or changes the entire coat colour from red to a shade of brown. This is often named liver chestnut.

Oct 31, 2021 · A different gene called the sooty gene can cause a coat to appear very dark, and dilutions such as the Cream or Dun gene lighten the coat of horses. But ALL horses have a base coat of Red or Black or the absence of both (white). SOOTY: Some horses have the ‘sooty factor’ which can darken the coat of any horse.