Markings

Chrome is white patches on the Sulphur's legs. White markings usually occur as a by-product of domestication and inbreeding. Many of the Sulphur Horse owners like to see less chrome of captured the newly captured Wild Native Horses. In regard to a preservation of the gene pool effort, the question is: If you want to preserve a species, would you select the odd-colored ones for that purpose? Or would you—as in the case of the threatened Sulphur Horse, wouldn't you —rather try to preserve what is typical? The body of the horses should be one color, with dun-factor dark grey markings and NO WHITE on the horse.

Some new and interesting info has been found about America's native horses. People are suppose to know these markings about dunfactor horses, say that grulla (mousey-grey) was the original color of the wild equines and the grulla color works as camouflage, especially if the landscape has grey boulders, found over much of the land particularly in the HMAs. Additional marking are cobwebbing on their forehead, dark muzzle, bi-colored mane and tail, leg stripes in addition to the dorsal stripe, and sometimes stripes on the neck, over the back, and on the head and the back of its ears.

When horse owners are unable to sell their adopted horses or they can't take care of them because of no money, some owners just turn them loose aka dump them on the public rangelands. The people will also dump their mixed breed domestic mares, some horses have a lot of "Chrome" akd white, (knee high stocking, socks, white around the ankles is called a "coronet", blazes, etc.) this would explain the new occurrence of white markings. "Chrome" looks good on cars, not on horses!

If an owner is touting how great this horse looks with the "chrome" up to its knees, it simply shows his or her ignorance or the person wants to get rid of the white gene carrier. With the Sulphur Horses, most owners do not like the white. The coronet isn't liked that much either, but it seems to be an old fashion trait in the senior horses. (see horses below). To me, white sock on a horse would hinder its attempt to hide. A mountain lion could single out the white socked horse out of the band, chase it down and kill it. White colored legs and feet just isn't a good thing for a wild animal to have. The dark dun-factor body stripes hide the horse in the trees, looks like shadows, but the white on the legs and feet is a BIG fat no - no.

The Sulphur Horse below is name Sundance Desert Cielo - she has a cornet white hair with tiny dark grey spots in the anklet.

The Sulphur horse below is named Tia, she has no white on her at all. She has a nice wide dorsal stripe and dark grey markings