A palomino horse or pony must have a body colour of a newly minted gold coin. It may vary to three shades lighter or darker of the colour range prescribed by the society. A palomino must have a mane and tail of white, silver or ivory with no more than 15% of dark or chestnut hair in either the mane or tail. The palomino must not have spots or patches of black, white, brown or chestnut hair exceeding four (4) square centimetres. The body shall be free of imperfections and only white markings are permitted on the face and legs (except of caused by scald or accident). Markings appearing above the knee and hocks must be of a continuous diminishing spear or at the Classifiers discretion. There shall be no dorsal stripe or barring and the basic colour of the skin shall be dark. Eyes shall be dark and the same colour. Full body clipping is allowable but natural coat is preferred and no other interference to the natural coat is permissable.

When being presented for classification the mane must be not less than ten (10) centimetres in length and the horse/pony should be in a clean and tidy condition.

The palomino horse/pony must be a good representative of the Breed it represents and be of a Saddle Type.

Basic genetics relating to Palominos

1. There is no such thing as a 'throwback'.
2. Dominant genes will overrule recessive genes that may remain hidden.
3. All genes and factors exist in pairs.
4. There are two basic colours - Bay and Chestnut.
5. Factors work on these colours to alter them to buckskin, palomino, dunn, grey, tobiano, overo, roan etc
6. Bay is dominant over chestnut. Therefore if a horse carries both bay and chestnut genes it will look bay.
7. Black and brown are variations of bay.
8. The same modifier that alters bay to black works on chestnut to change it to liver chestnut.

If 'B' is the Bay gene and 'b' is the Chestnut gene bb = chestnut Bb = bay (heterozygous ie 2 different genes) BB = bay (homozygous ie 2 identical genes)

(Homozygous bays do not contain 'b' and therefore will never have a chestnut foal).