Dun or buckskin: what is the difference?

They look alike and they aren’t the same thing. Dun and buckskin come from two different genes, and the giveaway is the primitive markings.

Dun is its own dilution. UC Davis’s Veterinary Genetics Laboratory describes the dominant allele as one that lightens the body coat and “dilutes both red and black pigment, leaving the head, lower legs, mane, and tail undiluted, and also produces primitive markings”. Those markings are the dorsal stripe down the back, and often barring on the legs.

Buckskin is the cream gene instead. The VGL puts it plainly: a single copy of cream “produces palominos on a chestnut background and buckskin on a bay background”. No dorsal stripe comes with it. So a golden horse with black points and a stripe down its spine is a dun; the same horse without the stripe is a buckskin.

Buckskin is cream acting on a bay base, so what makes a horse bay sits underneath this question. A horse can carry both, which is where the confusion starts, and appearance alone doesn’t always settle it — the VGL notes that genetic testing exists precisely for phenotypes that are visually ambiguous. Coat colour runs through the breed guides, and a portrait is made from your own photograph.

Written by Craig Fearn, Stable & Hoof. Last updated 25 September 2026.