Skewbald is a colour pattern of

horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million ...

s. A skewbald horse has a coat made up of white patches on a non-black base coat, such as

chestnut The chestnuts are the deciduous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Castanea'', in the beech family Fagaceae. They are native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The name also refers to the edible nuts they produce. The unrelate ...

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a Gulf (geography), gulf, sea, sound (geography), sound, or bight (geogra ...

, or any colour besides black coat. Skewbald horses which are bay and white (bay is a reddish-brown colour with black mane and tail) are sometimes called tricoloured. These horses usually have pink skin under white markings and dark skin under non-white areas. Other than colour, it is similar in appearance to the

piebald A piebald or pied animal is one that has a pattern of unpigmented spots (white) on a pigmented background of hair, feathers or scales. Thus a piebald black and white dog is a black dog with white spots. The animal's skin under the white backgro ...

pattern. Some animals also exhibit colouration of the irises of the eye that match the surrounding skin (blue eyes for white skin, brown for dark). The underlying genetic cause is related to a condition known as

leucism Leucism () is a wide variety of conditions that result in the partial loss of pigmentation in an animal—causing white, pale, or patchy coloration of the skin, hair, feathers, scales, or cuticles, but not the eyes. It is occasionally spelled ' ...

. The term is also used to describe spotting patterns in various other animals, such as goats.

Horses

Terminology

In British equestrian use, ''skewbald'' and ''

'' (black-and-white) are together known as ''coloured'', and the white markings are called ''patches''. In North American equestrian usage, the term for all large-spotted colouring is ''

pinto Pinto is a Portuguese, Spanish, Jewish (Sephardic), and Italian