<p><strong>NOTE! For some reason the industry standard is a lowercase e to signify the red gene and a capital E to signify a black gene. Getting your mind around this fact will help you immensely when looking at color genetics. Remember lowercase e means red based. Capital E means black based. Black is dominant so if there is a capital E the horse is black based even if you see a lowercase e too.<br /><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>All</strong> horses are born with <strong>only one of three color combinations</strong> for their base color: </p>
<p>1. ) They are red based without any black - this is coded as ee - the two lower case e's mean the horse inherited one e (red gene) from each parent. </p>
<p>2.) They have inherited one red gene and one black gene from either parent - this is coded as eE or Ee. Both mean the same thing, the horse has one red and one black.</p>
<p> 3.) They have inherited 2 black genes. This is coded as EE. The two capital E's denote that his individual inherited one black gene from each parent.</p>
<p>An ee horse cannot contribute a black gene to any offspring and an EE horse cannot contribute a red gene to any offspring.<br /><br /></p>
<p> Every single horse has one of these above three combinations - and every color of horse is one of these with a bunch of other genetic modifiers to those base colors. You can not tell the difference between an eE or an EE by looking at the horse, the only way to tell them apart is with genetic testing or with a breeding track record.</p>
<p> <strong>Next- after knowing the horse's base color we move onto genes that dilute.</strong></p>
Base Colors
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