Sooty Chestnut Horses and Silver Gene

[larissar]

I've been a busy little artist over the weekend working on all the layers needed to add in the different manes, tails and feathers.
I've switched back to programmer mode today to add these in but there is one sticking point regarding silver horses.

Quick background on Silver:
Silver is a gene which turns black (and black on bays) into a chocolate colour on the body, and creates a flaxen colouring to the mane and tail. However, it doesn't affect red hairs so the silver gene is hidden on chestnuts.

So a horse requires both the gene for black, and the gene for silver to have any silver effect.

My sticking point relates to Sooty. Sooty is a gene which dumps a lot of dark hairs into the coat of a horse. It can have such a strong effect as to actually turn a Palomino horse into a (nearly) black horse.

Th big question is: Should silver affect sooty, regardless if a horse has the gene for black?

From a programming point of view it's much easier for me to allow silver to affect sooty, and I think it could result in some pretty neat looking horses. From a realistic point of view, I haven't been able to find any conclusive evidence that silver does not react on sooty.

So what are your thoughts?

[Argent]

This horse is apparently silver sooty buckskin, and I would say that sooty was diluted by silver in his case. I'm not sure how chestnuts should be handled since they don't display silver, but by extension, if silver dilutes sooty on black-based horses, it should probably do the same on red-based, unless you want to make sooty black pigmentation a different "type" of eumelanin that silver cannot influence. But that would complicate sooty on black-based horses, because technically it shouldn't be influenced by silver there either if that was the case.

[Alaina]

For simplicity's sake I would say the silver would dilute the sooty on both black and red based horses. Without some sort of genetic survey done on real red based sooty horses no one can know for sure anyway what would and wouldn't be correct.

[Nate]

Sooty hairs are truly black, even on a chestnut horse, right? If that's the case, then silver should definitely affect them.

[Valkyriea]

I always thought that silver does have an effect on sooty.

[larissar]

I'm glad to hear we are all of the same opinion
Okay, then in HWO Silver will affect Sooty.
Can't wait to see the adoption center once the new genes are added. I'll keep you all posted on the progress.