Hi Karen, >>Did you say you have the impression that it's an "Icelandic thing" to push
to geld early? Wow, I never heard that at all. In fact, I was sort of surprised to find out how many Icelandic's are gelded "late" by the practices I'm used to. Typically, most people I know of geld their other-breed colts sometime between 6 months and a year, give or take a little. I hear of MANY Icelandic colts who aren't gelded until after they are two, many not until much later. What I have been told from a long time German trainer is that when they are gelded younger they tend to grow taller and left as stallions fill out more because of the hormones. But they weren't talking early by other breed standards but more like at 2 yrs I think >>>I seriously doubt that the age of gelding has anything to do with the spookiness/non-spookiness of the breed. As far as the spookiness we generally geld most of our horses around 2 - earlier if they are a problem but that is rare - and sometimes not until later for various reasons, and I have never seen any tendency that would make a correlation between spooky vs non-spooky and gelding time. Even with full brother/sisters there can be similarities in their response to things, but they can also be quite different even with very similar raising. Just like human families. Robyn Icelandic Horse Farm Robyn Hood & Phil Pretty Vernon BC Canada www.icefarm.com
