I think that more than the country, it depends of the breeders and the National Studs (which register all the horses, ponies, donkeys, draft horses etc). In France, the breeders lack information regarding the color genetics and they don't want to take too much time to register the proper color. As well the National Studs still have the old system of color registration with colors like "mouse" (souris, understand grullo), "coffee with milk" (café au lait, understand palomino...). It is then difficult for the breeders, when the National Studs agents come to register the foals, to make them understand that the foal is not "mixed bay" but greying out and has to be registered as grey.MorganLeFay wrote: ↑Thu Dec 26, 2019 10:50 amThere definitely aren't many horses registered as black in Europe. With the bay thing it depends on the country a bit, in UK/Ireland there sometimes register them as brown, but definitely not all. In France brown isn't an option, I think. They only seem to have bay(bai), chestnut(alezan), grey(gris) and black(noir). We have one mare that is very much brown, but in France is listed as black and another one that is brown/almost black is listed as bay.
The problem with bay/brown is also that the horses change colour a lot. We had a foal this year that was definitely a bay at first and I think is also registered as such, but he has gotten a lot darker and would probably be considered brown now rather than bay.
That said, the black color exists in France : Rymska for example is registered as black
