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Brindle isn't a gene, and as such isn't heritable.

If you look at your color tested brindle horses, you will notice they say Chimeric Positive at the end of their test results. The Chimera in Greek mythology is a strange hybrid of different animals (often lion, goat and snake). In genetics, the simplest form of chimerism happens when two eggs are fertilized (resulting in twins) but some time very early in the pregnancy (often still at the single cell stage or when there are still an easily countable number of cells) they fuse into one baby. That baby has cells from both fetuses. This may result in certain internal organs being formed by one set of genes and others by the other or in patches of stripes of coat color difference, or in the sex organs of both sexes being present or a whole host of other possibilities. This happens in animals and humans.

The one thing that does affect brindle being inherited is the likelihood of twinning--of the female releasing two eggs at the same time. Chimerism is more common in IVF babies in humans because of the fertility methods used that raise the rate of multiple births anyway... In horses twinning is quite rare--horses aren't physically designed for multiple births so twins don't survive very often. It can be quite dangerous to the mare (remember that getting pregnant is still one of the most physically dangerous things any female of any species can do, even with all of the advances in healthcare we've made) and she will often reject one or both of the twin foals if they are born alive. But the inclination to ovulate 2 eggs at the same time does seem to be at least partially controlled by your genetics, so a mare who produces twins is more likely to pass this inclination to her female offspring (obviously the males have nothing to do with this since they deliver lots of viable sperm every time in theory). So a chimeric female is slightly more likely in real life to produce twins (if she's fertile in the first place) and then those twins might fuse and give you another brindle....

The production of viable twins doesn't seem to be an option in the game. I'm honestly not sure if brindle foals are more common from brindle parents but my personal observation (with 40 some odd brindle foundation breeding horses I think) is that brindle does seem more common with at least one brindle parent of either sex. I have I think 8 or 9 gen 2 brindle foals, all with at least one brindle parent. One of those is an intact stallion and he has yet to throw me a brindle gen 3, but he's only had one season at stud.

I suspect that was much too long....thanks for wading through it!

Actually, Cheers is more correct for real life than the game. In the game, it is inheritable, however, it's not the normal 50/50 shot of getting a gene. I don't know the exact odds, but from my own personal experience, I would bet lower than 1 in 50.

So yes, buying brindle breeding stock is a better way to get brindle (there's a miniscule chance of a random brindle being born), however, breeding for brindle is a long shot and if you don't have a lot of money to play with it, I wouldn't recommend it since you're going to have a lot more failures than successes.

Which is why brindle is expensive - it's hard to get.