Very odd eyes- anyone seen green before?

So this is my horse, Digby, and he has some strange eyes.
I don’t have a lot of information about his genetic background and am wondering if anybody has some insight on what might have made his eyes so different.

He is an 8 year old Rocky Mountain Horse. These are the horses that are sometimes chocolate or chocolaty dappled (technical terms ) in body color with long flaxen manes and tails.
Mine however, got neither the chocolate or the flowy hair! LOL

Because I’m not sure what might be helpful, here are some color things about him-
He’s a buckskin, and if you divide him in half (front/back) there are some coat differences.
While it doesn’t show up well in pictures, if you look in person at his back half you can see all the hairs on barrel, flank, and rump are the same deep dark consistent gold color.

If you look at the front half, from just behind the shoulders forward, the hairs begin to “roan” with medium gold hairs mixing with the dark gold.
The further front you go, the more roaning there is… right up the neck with the cheeks/forehead and uppermost neck being a complete mix of light/pale gold hairs mixed with medium and dark gold.
It is more visible in his winter coat, but is still present in summer sleeknees and his entire head is a shade or two lighter than his body, especially the back half.

On his face the lighter hairs/roaning occurs mostly on the forehead, above the eyes and his cheeks.
Below the eyes, towards the front of his face he is darker gold.

He does have three or four pea sized white spots, but I figured they were little scars since they are sort of scattered around in odd places, but... on his chest and neck, the lighter hairs sometimes group together to form small faint "patches." (not dapples, but he does get those too)

Ok, the actual eyes-
The left eye is brown/amber and blue and is on the non white mark side of his face.
The right eye is icy green at the top and light amber in the middle and the bottom.
It can be hard to see as he doesn't open his eyes fully very much for the camera and in a picture with a strong flash, the icy green part appears to look like polar ice, but to the naked eye it is indeed an icy/minty green color.

Any ideas why he has such odd eyes??

Right eye-








Left Eye-



Shiny summer coat



Face and side of face
(Yes, he really likes to snooze with his round bale as a pillow)







One more side pic in the shade

Green is usually an indicator of champagne.

Chiilaa!!!! Those are the same eyes that the mustang in my thread has.
EXACTLY like that

Everyone by now should now I really suck at color genetics.....all I can say is he is real cute

And for those of us who are modern horse color ignorant, that means.....??

Is he champagne disguised as buckskin? Or is there a champagne gene playing peek-a-boo in there with me?
Does champagne and buckskin genes usually hang out together?
(Sounds goofy, I know but I know nothing of what makes champagne.)

Does this mean I get to tell folks he's incognito?

Thanks Muppetgirl... he's a keeper for sure.

With champagne comes skin freckling, even around the eyes. My boy is Gold Cream Champagne. His eyes are more amber in person but here he is.


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All I know is, his eyes are awesome!
I've only seen one other like him.
Was a horse at a trainers.

Wow, that horse has THE most Beautiful eyes I have ever seen in my whole life!!..This is what I found..
The cream gene (C Cr ) is an incomplete dominant allele with a distinct dosage effect. The DNA sequence responsible for the cream colors is the cream allele, which is at a specific locus on the MATP gene. Its general effect is to lighten the coat, skin and eye colors. When one copy of the allele is present, it dilutes "red" pigment to yellow or gold, with a stronger effect on the mane and tail, but does not dilute black color to any significant degree. When two copies of the allele are present, both red and black pigments are affected; red hairs still become cream, and black hairs become reddish. A single copy of the allele has minimal impact on eye color, but when two copies are present, a horse will be blue-eyed in addition to a light coat color.

I'm also wondering if he has frame and/or splash based on his facial markings and either of those would cause that chunk of blue in his left eye.

And the name of the "chocolate" color with a flaxen mane and tail that's common in RMHs is silver black (also known as silver dapple).

Thank you!
It is fun to look at a horse with such different eyes... it reminds me of looking at a cat with one blue eye and one yellow eye, or a husky with only one blue eye.

As to the bolded above, is it possible that is why my guy has red streaks through his mane and tail?
His tail is primarily black with just red at the bottom and outside of tail (looks sun bleached) but his mane has more red all the way through it and not just the outer hairs or bottom tips.
He does have the light frosting right at the neck where the mane grows with the stray cream or silvery hairs there typical of buckskins, but he has pretty obvious red/bleached looking black streaks in the mane.
He gets flaxseed in his diet and has a healthy mane and tail.

Something else I forgot to mention, his black leg points get silvery tips in the winter. Some cream color, but definite silvery color too.
Not sure if that means anything.