Can you tell me your experiences with gelding?

[drmatthewtaylor]

Normal is 2 testicles in the scrotum at birth, anything shy of that is abnormal and should be considered to carry the genetics for cryptorchidism.

I think decisions about every breeding animal needs to be based on the totality of the animal and not on just one defect (or positive).

I no longer palpate miniatures prior to gelding. Between the size of the testicle, the sub-q fat, and awkwardness of feeling; I do not think it is particularly useful. I choose to sedate and anesthetize, roll them on their backs and then decide. Sometimes what I thought was fat turns out to be a teste and vice/versa. If I discover I can't find a teste and apparently have an abdominal testicle then we allow the colt to recover and heal and then I can schedule/prepare for an abdominal exploratory.

I encourage horse owners to ask their Vet to try and if it can't be done normally then no pressure, just quit and pay for a cryptorchid surgery done correctly. The risk of paying more for 2 surgeries will be far outweighed by the reward of seldom needing abdominal surgery and the risk to the animal is no more than the geld you already wanted performed.

Dr. Taylor

 

[rabbitsfizz]

The problem with that Dr Taylor, would be the unscrupulous people who would have one testes removed and sell the animal as a gelding (and yes I have had this happen!, the other one arrived after a while so I was "lucky")

 

[drmatthewtaylor]

The problem with that Dr Taylor, would be the unscrupulous people who would have one testes removed and sell the animal as a gelding (and yes I have had this happen!, the other one arrived after a while so I was "lucky")

I have seen it also, but there's not much we can do about the unscrupulous.

Being under full anesthesia and doing an abdominal exploratory does not guarantee the retained teste is found. So, every geld that gets performed, regardless of how, should be done retained teste first and if it is not found then the un-retained teste should not be removed thus marking the horse as a stallion. As bilateral cryptorchidism is pretty rare (I have seen 1 in my career), this procedure works pretty well in preventing 1 teste horses.

Dr. Taylor

 

[Minimor]

I would say that anyone that wants to be unscrupulous about removing only one testicle and then marketing the horse as a gelding will do so no matter what procedure they use to look for the missing one--they are simply going to do it!

 

[rabbitsfizz]

MM you are probably right- on the other side of the coin, our Vet once removed the available testicle form a colt we had bought in (as he knew us, he said!) and we waited. Sure enough, when the testosterone went to the other one only, it arrived, and was duly removed. It meant he had two geldings, but at least they were normal straight forward ones.