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DP is dense pheomelanin. It turns red pigment into a darker red pigment. It’s what makes a dark chestnut into a liver chestnut, a dark palomino into a Chocolate.

Like the other genes in the game, it can be recessive, Het dominant or Hom dominant. Like sooty, it is incompletely dominant, meaning two copies are stronger than just one. A “normal” liver chestnut has 3 of 4 darkening genes (2 Sooty and 1 DP or 2DP and 1 Sooty) while a “black” liver (like Freaky Friday RS) has all 4.

If you work on it, you can develop an eye to see DP in other coat colors, primarily the various expressions of agouti. It does not affect black horses because they have no red pigment to darken, but black and black based horses can carry DP and pass it to their red based or bay based offspring.

(There was some debate about silver blacks and whether the ones that look reddish are DP but I never heard if anyone was able to prove anything there)

DP is most easily recognized in chestnut, Palomino and red dun horses. Horses of these colors (possibly also palomino dun?) with 3 or 4 darkening genes are eligible for the Liver breeders club. Golden champagnes just barely express the gene, as do cremellos, so even though they are red based they don’t go in the Liver club. DP Agouti based horses also don’t go in the club, but lots of us breed for DP bay, DP wild bay and DP brown.

And just a quick correction to milkyway’s post—DP and Sooty are totally different genes in totally different places. A horse can be Hom DP with no sooty. If they are a chestnut, they will just look like a normal dark chestnut, but when you look at their color test results they will be SS instead of SstySsty, which is your tip off. A lot of us will occasionally skim through the Foundation rescue looking for color tested horses that look dark chestnut but don’t have 2 sooty alleles! Easy way to pick up some DP!

Hom S no DP


Hom S with DP



Hom Sty

Three girls I recently made. Notice how the middle one is closer in coloration to the bottom one, despite not being sty herself? That's the DP she's hiding.