Spirits color has been debited for as long as the movie has been around, it is not helped by the differences in marketing , some dvd call him dun others call him buckskin , in books he is often called buckskin.

I am here to say hes not dun. How ever hes not as simple as it appears. Yes Spirit was modeled off a kiger mustang how ever we cant use this to say hes dun as hes just used as a ref , that would be like calling movie balto a black husky because the real balto was a black husky.

Spirit is a non-dun buckskin. Nd1 was found a few years ago but it helps with some confusion about some colors. ND1 is not dun its self but can show some of the markings often seen with dun, including the dorsal stripe. Sometimes they won't show up at all.

ND2 is what most horses today have, so they show no primitive markings but as said before sometimes a ND1 will look not have the markings (atleast to my understanding) the main differences between dun and ND1/nd2 is dun will have body dilution.

Spirit is a ND1 horse. But how would he get ND1. i think it came from Strider. ND1 is very hard to see on a black horse, it is more clear on a foal Coat but is very hard to see on an adult. I don’t think Esperanza would have ND1 as we don't see any primitive markings on her and Alma isnt said to have any as well . Striders Black coat could be hiding them , where he got ND1 from, he might have gotten it from both parents ,Cedar is a grulla stallion and so has D but due to strider not showing dun he has to be ND1 or ND2, Striders mother is solid black as well, so i think it would be safe to say he got it from on of them and for his dun factor we could put strider as ND1? As we don't know if he would have nd1nd1 or nd1nd2.

I have talked alot about spirits dun factor so far so lets take a look at the rest of him, ignoring the dun factor. Spirit is a Buckskin with no markings. So what is buckskin. If we break it down it is a black horse with the agouti gene and with the cream gene. You might be asking , what is agouti?

The agouti gene is very common in animals ,in fact if you own a Dog ,cat or rabbit you may have one. The gene disrupts the black hairs placement on the animal , it appears differently on different animals but from what i have seen all forms of agouti end up with the animals having black ear tips. Agouti in dogs is the cause of sable colored dogs but also black and tan and a few others.In cats it causes the common tabby cat markings and in rabbits its the wild type pattern, and in horses it gives us bay. Bay is when a horses black is restricted to the mane,tail ,legs, eartips and muzzle.

Bay only effects horses that are black , or EE / Ee horses a red horse (ee) can ‘hide’ bay and so spirit gets his bay gene from Esperanza , she shows no black on her so we know she is likley ee this is also included with the fact we know shes palomino , Palomino is Red(Chestnut) cream. This is also supported by Alma, who is described as looking like her daughter but with black mane and tail, this points to her being buckskin.

So whats this all mean for Spirit?

Spirit as far as we can tell is EeAaCcNd1Nd2

For a quick recap from Strider Spirit gets E a c Nd1 (Strider being EEaaccND1?) And from Esperanza Spirit gets e A C nd2 (Her being eeA?C?Nd2Nd2)

In short hes a Buckskin.

Now what i've done before is look to what children genetics could be, but this time i won’t to much but ill cover a few real quick. Rain and Spirit could have black, bay or Chestnut , with or without cream, nd1 or nd2 with white markings.

I may edit this in the future going into more details.