Although many donkeys are the familiar gray-dun colour, there are many other coat shades. Most donkeys, regardless of coat color, will have dorsal stripes and shoulder crosses, dark ear marks, as well as the "light points" - white muzzle and eye rings, and white belly and inner leg. Leg barring ("garters" or "zebra stripes") may be present as well. Small dark spots right at the throatlatch, called "collar buttons" are a good identifying marking and occur occasionally. These typical donkey markings may be passed on, in part or whole, to Mule or Hinny offspring.
Colors in the donkey range from the gray shades of gray-dun to brown, a rare bay (though not as red-toned as in horses) , black, light-faced roan (both red and gray), variants of sorrel, the blue-eyed Ivory (also called cream or white-phase), frosted/spotted white, and a unique spotted pattern. True horse pinto, horse aging gray, horse appaloosa, palomino and buckskin do not occur in the donkey.
The more unusual colors are the dappled roan, where the face and legs are light and the body is marked with "reverse" dapples (dark spots on a light background, as opposed to the horse dapple where the dapples themselves are light on dark), frosted gray (with light faces and legs and some white hairs in the coat) the pink-skinned, blue-eyed Ivory white, and the frosted spotted white. The frosted spotted is an apparent combination of a graying or roan with the spotted pattern, and can throw either more FSW, spotted, or frosty roan colts. The animals are best defined as a spotted animal where the skin is spotted but the color does not necessarily show through on the coat (it has roaned or "grayed"; out) . Frosted spotted white (FSW) can be identified from Ivory white by checking the skin around the eyes and muzzle. Ivory (creams) will have blue eyes and true pink skin, while FSW will have dark eyes, dark "eyeliner" and dark spotting on the skin.
Eeyore - an interesting dapple-grey colour.