Bay

My first real post for horses (other than the introduction) is about solid coat colors. Okay, maybe just shades of brown. But don't abandon this if it sounds boring. Because there are A LOT of shades of brown (or that's what you would call it...). First up, there is the color brown. Easy. This is what it looks like:

This is only one shade of many. Brown in the horse world is called bay. Bay is the most common horse color, but it has a lot of shades, like I said before: light bay, standard bay, blood bay, dark bay, black- bay, seal bay, mohagony bay. I also want to make the point that often one shade of color has different names, such as, in the simpler naming, dark bay. All of the following are the same color: black- bay, seal bay, mohagony bay, and brown (the picture here has that shade). I don't know why they are called different things. I also want to show you a blood bay, because I think that might be my favorite shade of bay:

You might not be able to see it in the picture, but this horse has a hint of red to it's coat. Blood bays are beautiful, especially the darker ones. I will also show you a darker, standard, and light bay (just for feel):

 This is, as you might guess, a dark bay. At first sight I would probably be calling it seal bay, because that is just how I recognize the color as. I think an example of a dark bay horse that I know is Black Caviar (ever heard of her?). She's got the same yellow tinge.

 This is the standard bay, what you would expect a brown horse to be. Well, maybe a little lighter. But you can't complain. I do have to say, though, this is the stereotype for a horse. I don't blame anyone for it, though. A lot of horses are standard bay.

This is the light bay. At first sight you might think it was a palomino. But I don't think palominos have a black mane and dark legs. Palominos are limited to cream manes, I think. But that will come later.
Correction: "Actually the light bay you pictured is in fact a buckskin.
Touch Gold is a really good example of a true light bay.
One of racehorse's is by him and he produces really nice looking foals!"

Thank you! I would have never known (I can never tell the difference between buckskin and bay, I am a MESS)! And just if you haven't realized already, that quote isn't mine, but another person's. She probably knows this stuff better than I do :)
Also: "You could also add in the color, Wild bay. It's really a quit beautiful color and the main color for the Przewalski wild horses."
Thank you for that too, I really had no idea it existed (and I LOVE the coloring on prewazlki's horses as well, I have to draw one sometime!). Here is the color:

Before I end this, I would also like to point out that the color gene that modifies a horse's color to bay (I don't know if I'm wording this right) is called agouti. Basically, all horse colors come from the base of black and red (although some horses don't have those bases, like chestnuts [red horses]... it is complicated). The agouti gene basically restricts the black to the legs, making the red take more control. That is all I can gather from my sources (genetics is very complicated, I guess).Hopefully you guys have liked this post. When I have done (what I think is) all the base colors, then I will move on to patterns like pinto and appaloosa... I think I might even dedicate a little tiny post to dapples (there is not much to say about them) just because they are so funny and I love dapple grey horses. By the way, two of the horses in this post have dapples. I will talk about them later. See you next time!
Bibliography (not official):
 Frizzel, K. (unknown). Equine Genetics. Retrieved from Deviant art: http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&global=1&q=equine+genetics#/d16oj50  (this is where I will get most of my info).

Unknown. (2012, June 4th). Bay (horse). Retrieved from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_%28horse%29 (also will be used).

That bibliography was for my teachers, if they look.

(also, sorry about awkward spaces. Technical dificulties.)