Since here, it costs over $1000 for a gelding of a horse that has not dropped, I prefer not to keep a stallion who has dropped late. I like to sell my babies at birth, and will guarantee them dropped. I have never had a big horse that dropped successfully if he was not dropped at birth.
There are way too many stallions out there, IMO for me to bother with one that does not produce babies that drop early.
Our younger stallion, had me REALLY worried til he was 2, I could feel the one from day one, but the second one, I could feel SOMETHING behind the 1st one, but was never sure if it was the testicle or the part of the upper penis (sorry for the language). I worried and worried. The gal that sold him to me, assured me and had the vet check him, that they were there. Now his babies the colts) have both been born with them down, and they have never retracted them, so I am very happy.
I just have too many worries, about the babies and selling them without having to worry about them dropping.
The first stallion we bought, we bought as a weanling and didnt know enough to have him checked, come 2 year old year, he had NO sign of ANYTHING, he was slicker then a gelding, in fact when we took him in to geld him (no testes, no stallion, after waiting 2 years, very dissapointing) the vet took 2 hours on the table to find his second testes, that was way up pretty well against his backbone, or so the vet exagerated by saying, and only as big as his thumb, when this was a full sized horse, 15.2 hands tall! The vet when he palpated him, said, are you sure he was never gelded?
So now when buying a stallion, I ask, and even have them send me pictures of them, I usually ship stallions in, and would not want to spend the trucking on a horse that was not dropped. Even if I were buying as a gelding, with the high cost of chryptorchid gelding, I would never even consider a colt that was not descended.
