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Hershey the likely
Smoky Black

How she came to be, and why she is thought to be a smoky black!

Click thumbnails to see full size picture.

	Hershey's sire, Kalamino. Now we notice that there is a cream gene present in this horse (see color chart) but no black gene. We can't tell whether the bay gene is present because you need black to see it.
	Hershey's dam, Malani. She definitely has a black gene, as she has black points. She is also a seal brown, neither bay nor black, but something in-between. She has produced black foals before, so we know she has one "a" gene.mstheme-->
	Hershey, 2 days. Her owner says, "This is the odd 'pewter' shade that she was as a newborn. I was told that this is typical for black foals, but this mare had previously had a black foal and it was jet black right from birth. She had also had several seal brown foals, and they were totally different in appearance, so I knew this couldn't be that color."
	Hershey's blue eyes. "Here is a picture showing the startling bright blue color of her eyes. I had never seen a blue-eyed foal before, but I have since been told that it's quite common for horses with the cream gene to have blue eyes at birth. By one month of age they were turning a more greyish color, and by six months they had changed to light brown."
	Hershey, 2 weeks. "By two weeks old she is already looking a lot darker, but still has 'silvery' and 'beige' looking highlights to her color.... no hint of red whatsoever."
	8 months old. Here she is at 8 months, still in her winter coat. She is basically black, but sort of an 'off' shade of black, with a hint of chocolate in it, on her body. She has faint golden highlights around the eyes and inside the ears. The reddish tips on her mane and forelock are from the sun bleaching them. Her legs are jet black. Her eyes are a normal shade of brown now.
	11 mos. Her owner, Julia Lord, writes "What else could it be? She just has to be smoky..... but, no way to prove it for sure, until the day comes when they invent a test for the gene, or she produces a "golden" foal from a non-dilute stallion (or a cremello/perlino from a dilute, I suppose!)."

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