At what age do you geld your New Forest Ponies?
I am new to the breed and have 3 New Forest Colts.
2 of them have already dropped their testes, aged 6 and 7 months, and one has not.
I was wondering what age is considered appropriate to consider having them gelded?
Does it make a huge difference to their growth rate, behaviour etc.
I have had my miniature horses gelded at various ages mostly dependent on their behaviour within the herd.
All 3 of my forest foals are colts, and none of them are showing any bad behaviour at all, but I do not intend to keep at least 2 of them intact, and at the moment the one that I might keep entire is the one that hasn't yet produced the equipment!
I would value your input.

Any colts we keep would be gelded in March or April before the flies get about.March would be best if they have reached their first birthday.Hope this helps.

at birth mine was done at the age of 32 . oh sorry your talking about horses lol

jack was done at 11 months but only one had dropped so he had to be sedated to get the other one out, but needed to be done before flies came and wanted to put him in with our mare

murphy was done at 2 yrs due to fact he could not cope.
since being gelded he has grown a hec of alot

frankie was done at 18mths in Oct

ive read somewhere that testosterone causes early closure of the growth plates in the legs so if you want them to grow tall, geld early. not sure if theres any thruth behind it or not, mine had a big growth spurt after gelding

'Tis indeed true in principal: geld early, get leggy or geld late (3/4yrs+), get stocky. However! There are other factors that can influence so no guarantees. Certainly in dogs, it is usually quite noticable that those neutered early (before 1yr in small/medium breeds, 2yrs in giant, slow maturing breeds) are much leggier, but not so muscular as those allowed to finish growing before you remove the hormones that complete the growing process. By which I mean, 'complete' in the sense of finishing all the steps such as growth plate closure, not 'complete' as in achieve maximum height! The endocrine system is a very complex area and if we 'interfere' by removing hormone producing glands then we alter the gentic programming to some degree...

The Peasants Are Revolting...

www.forestuprising.org.uk

forestuprising@live.co.uk

I have a colt too and he is around 16 months and has only just dropped both

I called the vet in my local area and he quoted me around 200 without sedation and around 500 - 600 pound with sedation !!!

So its whenever you want them to get it done but its probaly cheaper to wait for both

Cara
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x(Proud owner of my own nf pony) x

wow cara that is a huge amount of money. getting frankie done cost me £245, sedated, bute for after and his first set of jabs

My new forest was gelded in augest, he was 4 years old,
I did not intend to have him gelded but he got very dangrouse towards my other stallion and geldings, it was keep him on his own or get him gelded....I don't think it would be fair on him to have no horse contact.
I broke him before he was gelded and he has been fantastic, I -1.jpg[/IMG]

Thank you so much for all of your advice. My 3 musketeers are still behaving very well so I intend to let them grow on as they are for a while. My tiny miniature colt is also still being a very good boy, but I shall probably get him gelded in the spring.