Incidence of Mutation for Silver Coat Color in Black Forest Horses

Abstract

Black Forest horses are typically chestnut colored with flaxen mane and tail. However, as their coat color can get very dark, they are sometimes also indicated as silver, a color depending on a black base color. To analyse if the silver allele is present in the Black Forest horse population, we genotyped 250 horses of this breed for formerly reported coat color mutations within <em>MC1R</em> and <em>SILV</em>. As a result, all Black Forest horses of this study were chestnut colored due to <em>MC1R</em> genotyping. Surprisingly, the silver mutation (<em>SILV</em>-1852C>T) occurred with a prevalence of 0.8%. As chestnut coat color is predominant in this breed, the silver mutation is expected to have very few to no phenotypic appearance in Black Forest horses and presumably results from incrossing of another breed.