Date: December 2000
Q: Does anyone have experience with perlino horses with blue eyes. My concern is this, do they suffer from the sun and run into health problems?

A: We are not the first ones to be spellbound by the golden horses of Central Asia, the myth of the golden horse is to be found in almost all written sources from Central Asia and the neighbour countries, the Egyptian pharaos, the Chinese Emperors, Alexander the Great, the Persian kings sought after these wonderful creatures.
The golden horses of Nisea have been known since at least 500 BC,Herodotos mentions the wonderful, golden horses of Nisea and later on Strabo wrote "Nisa omnes eqous flavos habet" which means In Nisa they have all golden horses. Nisa is located only kilometres away from the Turkmenistan state stud farm "Niazov". On an Egyptian painting dated to 700 BC there are also teke type horse depicted as golden or chestnuts. The golden chestnut stallion that was found in the Pazyryk burial, dated to 400-300 BC was estimated to have been at least twenty years old when he was killed and buried with his master. So the blue eyed creams must have existed for a very long time. The modern Turkmens do not prefer the "chakan" color, they say that they shy away for the bright sun light and that they also are possessed with evil spirits.
My personal experience with blue eyed creams is that their skin is very
sensitive, even the Swedish sun can cause severe damage, I have not noticed that they have any problems with their sight. They do guarantee golden offspring though!
Our mare and colt get bothered by strong sunlight but they do not seem to have any troubles with their eye sight. I still think that the skin problems bother the perlinos/cremellos more than the blue eyes. I have seen videos of perlinos from Turkmenistan in spring and summer and none of them seem to have skin problems, I guess this matter would be interesting to investigate further.
Regarding her white feet our farrier that alwyas have to sharpen his tools when he comes here as the hooves of the tekes are harder than on other breeds, finds no difference in the quality of the horn in the white feet compared to the black feet.