HGG Community Forums

Welcome! This is definitely the place to learn about colors and color genetics!

Welcome to the game, Bret. This game is a great way to learn about horse colors. Ammit, its creator, keeps up to date on the current scientific knowledge of horse color genetics and works the updates into the game as quickly as she is able.

We are a very friendly and helpful group, so please ask any questions you may have, and we'll try to answer them.

I don't know if you've had any discussions about genetics in your science classes yet, but if not, you will find that the handiest tool for getting to understand how it works is the Punnet Square. It gets complicated if you're considering more than one gene, but for one gene at a time, it's an easy way to tell what the chance is that a foal will get that particular gene, especially if both the stallion and the mare have it.

Here's an example.



The stallion's copies of the Kit gene are at the top and the mare's copies are on the left side. The four other squares show the possible combinations that a foal might inherit. If the foal gets two copies of the mutated Kit gene (Kit W*), it will not be able to develop properly and will never be born.