... and Buckskins.

At some point in your life, if you are kind of lucky, you find yourself asking 'why can't I have what I like just because I like it?'.

I say 'kind of' lucky because there are some people who spend their whole lives going after what they want simply because they want it and nobody tells them they can't have it.

I also say kind of 'lucky' because some people never find themselves in a position to do something just because they like it and want to. Other more pressing matters get in the way.

Horse colour is a funny thing. They say a good horse is never a bad colour, but some colours are way cooler than others. It's human nature to be a sucker for a pretty horse, and what we each find pretty is a big, broad spectrum. I'm not into spotty horses or patchy horses so much, and I don't get the big deal about palominos. But I do love the range of dilute bays and blacks, from perlino through the shades of buckskin and into smoky blacks.

I was intrigued by double cream dilutes long before I understood the mechanisms behind their striking appearance. The icy blue eyes, salmon pink skin and pale custard coat colour are so different to the shades of everyday browns and bays that I was used to. The lone cremello mare in the throng of palominos at the place we used to go trail riding was my mount of choice. When my funny chocolate coloured mare of unknown parentage gave birth to a buckskin filly after producing three bay colts I was surprised and delighted, and finally figured out that my mare was in fact a smoky black.

That buckskin filly is back in my hands at the age of 20 and she has bloomed into a magnificent pony, with a sea of dapples on a burnt yellow coat, two-tone mane, nearly black legs and amber eyes. I'd love a foal from her to continue this family that I have worked with since I was 15 years old, but the chance of another buckskin is only 50/50 with breeding her to a New Forest stallion.

Of course, the golden goose would be a buckskin purebred New Forest Pony, but currently there are only two of those in the entire country. I imported some frozen semen from a German New Forest Pony stallion who is buckskin, and we recently pushed all our chips forward and used both doses in my bay purebred mare, Ava. If the breeding gods have favoured us and she is in foal there will be a 50/50 chance of the foal being buckskin.

If you don't like those odds there is another way. You start with a double cream dilute, use a bay stallion with no hidden red gene, and all your foals will be buckskin.

When I set about rebuilding my breeding herd I wanted 2-3 purebred mares and something else. An Arabian mare? A small Thoroughbred? A double cream dilute? I hadn't entirely decided, but I did have a budget and I quietly scouted around for something that would fit the bill, not really expecting to find it.

A lot of breeders with cream dilutes in their herd are aiming for high percentages of single cream offspring - palominos and buckskins. The rumour has always been that the majority of double cream foals are culled by their breeders, and not in a good way. I've never seen hard evidence of this myself, but the rarity of double cream dilutes out in the real world certainly begs the question.

I was poking around, as I do, on an online horse auction page. At the top of the listings were eight ponies, weanlings through to two year olds. They were mostly a mix of colts in palomino and buckskin, with two 'cremello' fillies at the end.

The older of the two fillies caught my eye. Advertised as 13hh, which she will probably get to one day, and in fairly light condition, she was shown being led around and over obstacles and onto a float. I delved into her pedigree and found a solid Welsh B background with fancy Riding Pony lines through her sire line. She appeared to have decent structure and to be basically domesticated. I placed a fairly lowball bid and when the auction ended I was the proud owner of a double dilute filly.

I'm not going to go into all the details, but by the time she arrived home I had spent nearly three times her purchase price on transport and agistment and only just gone over my budget. She was a pretty upset little pony, in dire need of a wash and a good feed, but she did her best and I managed to get her safely contained in my 7m roundyard. After a few days she graduated to a small paddock, and after another week I was able to take her halter off. A month down the track she has had a bath and a hoof trim.

The filly came with the name Opal, but that hardly rolls off the tongue, so in honour of her being my first 'double cream' I renamed her Brie. She is a bit of a Plain Jane, but she as long legs, a long elegant neck, a strong topline and pale blue eyes that stare right into your soul. She has natural lift in the trot and floats like a magical sea creature. Online auction photos are rarely flattering, but pedigrees don't lie.

As for her colour, she could be cremello or perlino by breeding, and her grandmother was roan so she could be concealing roan in her pale coat. I will have her DNA tested to be sure, but I am leaning towards perlino at this stage.

So the hope is that in the next couple of years Elcarim Farm New Forest Ponies will become Elcarim Farm New Forest Ponies and Buckskins, with my buckskins being a minimum of 50% New Forest Pony breeding.

Why? Because I like buckskins, that's why.