>>> I don't know about horses but I would assume that it would be similar. I >>> doubt that it is a big enough difference for most people to want to keep a >>> potential gelding as a stallion through the obnoxious stallion behavior >>> that often occurs in young, unsaturated male horses (if they want shorter) or geld young, if they want "taller". but people have all kinds of opinion, so who knows. I worry more about fly strike and geld them when the flies disappear in the fall.
I sort of suspect that there's something to the gelding-late/short height (or later growth spurt, whatever) but how on earth would anyone ever get enough data to prove it one way or another in horses? It's not exactly possible to geld the same animal both late and early! It takes a year to get one foal, and not that many mares are always re-bred to the same stallion. And gosh, you can see some surprising height ranges in human full-siblings. How do you know when a gelded-early colt might simply have won the genetic height-lottery anyway, even if he'd been gelded late? As you said, it seems silly to try to change the animals by manipulating the time of gelding - after all, this particular surgery isn't going to be genetically transmitted. :) Karen Thomas, NC No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.19/1257 - Release Date: 2/3/2008 5:49 PM
