Epona, the best time is now, in winter, before it gets too warm for flies. The wound remains open in order to drain it correctly and you can imagine how much harder it will be with flies buzzing around it-the threat of infection is greater.

Hi Epona,

Best time is winter in the highveld areas of the country as it is dry, and relatively fly less, slush and mud are also not conducive to geldings as you need to exercise and or lunge to keep the wound draining and reduce swelling.

Western Cape is another story as we are supposed to have wet winters, not saying we do at the moment, but if I were gelding here would do it in September, October before the horrible heat hit home.

Having said that I have gelded horses throughout the year, just make sure I put something like Exit on the wound to keep the flies off - don;t know if you can get Exit here but it is a miracle wound healer with unbelievable fly repelling qualities, mercifully have a large supply.

Good luck, know how hard it is to co-ordinate things with vets, normally the bane of my life, can't live with them and can't live without them.

Hi Epona, mmmm, all the geldings bar one were absolutely painless (not for the horse I should imagine), and easy. All of them had both testicles descended, so were straight forward uncomplicated geldings, all done standing.

One went horribly wrong, through no fault of the vet, he got an infection which turned into abscesses, which then burst, but one went into the intestine and burst on the operating table, so he had to be euthanased - horrible.

I have a wonderful fact sheet on geldings, how to treat them, what to watch out for etc -all the things that can go wrong and right - if you would like it, can fax it to you, or e-mail me on martynandcarole@telkomsa.net and am sure I can type it all out for you, well worth having it on hand. Be warned reading what goes wrong makes your hair stand on end, try not to dwell on it.

The yukkiest part of the gelding for me, is hosing out all the gore and pulling out the blood clots so that it can drain properly.

Was just thinking that it would also make a lot of sense to make sure the horse stands quietly to be hosed before the time.

A bit OT, but by what age should both testicles have dropped? Is there any treatment to get testicles to drop if by the age of 18 months they haven't yet? What is involved in gelding a cryptorchid, in terms of cost and aftercare?

LL I am quite happy if thread becomes a general discussion around the practicalities of gelding. Then we all learn.

N3, was paddock turnout not enough?

Has anyone tried chemical gelding?

So what would people consider the optimum age to geld?

N3, maybe I need to consider letting him sleep out if we do it now. He is rising 9 months so very baby still so lunging/riding is not really an option.

As long as both testicles have descended you can actually geld a horse from as young as 6-9 months. In some cases the younger ones actually take it better. Winter is the better time as there will be less fly strike. We once gelded a youngster and while we were sitting on the paddock fence waiting for him to wake up we were puzzled by a group of large birds circling overhead. When one of us went in to get the binoculars we saw they were vultures, most likely thinking that this horse was dead and waiting for us to leave so they could come in for the clean up.

Epona, yes most racehorses are gelded standing, but some horses are left running in the veldt for two years before being brought in for gelding and no sane vet will take the chance of standing under a horse like that.

Regarding turnout, what happened when my youngster was gelded at age 3 (came off the track entire) was that he simply lived out for a few nights in a smallish paddock. This allowed him to move around 24/7 even though he was usually stabled at night. He had very little swelling and no complications.

I must say I wish he had been gelded earlier in his life though, as it was scarey how stallion-like he became the minute he got off the horsebox and smelled all the nice mares!