Gelding - especially doing so early on - leads to soundness in the legs?

[Calzone Lord]

Originally Posted by Conrad

Don't you think a lot of these runners stick around because they're geldings (and can't be bred) rather than having them gelded so they will race for a long time?

I had always assumed exactly that.

The reason I posted this was because I found the case made by Vosburgh to be very interesting.

I had always assumed the only benefits of gelding were to make horses more manageable and easier to train.

[outofthebox]

Just finished gelding three today..next monday the final three..it's really a no brainer with the homebreds that come my way. Some of these 2 yo's are already getting thick around the neck and shoulder..Gelding them will help thin them out a bit upfront..

[_ed_]

It's done a lot in this part of the world - well over 50% of the male horses racing in NZ are gelded.

Of course, that's partly because the good colts are retired earlier, but the majority are geldings even from a young age. The NZ Derby this year, for example, had four colts, four fillies and 10 geldings.

[Merlinsky]

Originally Posted by Calzone Lord

I had always assumed exactly that.

The reason I posted this was because I found the case made by Vosburgh to be very interesting.

I had always assumed the only benefits of gelding were to make horses more manageable and easier to train.

Don't stallions start to fill out particularly in front? That'd put more weight on their forelegs and possibly increase risk of injury. If you've got a horse that might have soundness issues with those legs, might make sense to geld them to support a future racing career, esp. when you don't want to pass that conformation issue on to foals anyway. Even if there's not a conformation problem, if the horse is gonna be fairly big and his breeding isn't very commercial, you can just opt to have a racing career rather than risk having nothing at all.