Just curious what the going rates are for gelding a yearling colt these days?
I am calling around and getting quotes of $800 to geld a 17 month old colt 
…so are these prices a little high or is it just me? Both testicles were palpated at time of purchase, so not dealing with a cryptorchid. I am located in southern Ontario.
Costs of any vet care from minor to major run the gamut depending on where you live and the vet themselves. I can guarantee it costs a fraction of that here in my area.
I’m also in Southern Ontario. I believe that my horse’s last corneal ulcer cost me about 5 or 6 hundred bucks (granted it was an after hours call) so …
And last time I had a colt gelded, on farm, no complications, straight forward procedure, was early 90s and iirc it was well over a couple hundred bucks back then. So factor in the prices of everything having gone up astronomically and there you are, easily at $800 for an uncomplicated gelding surgery.
Depends on the vet. Shop around. Our racetrack vets will geld “standing”. It takes about 20 minutes from start to finish. Costs about $200 to $250. “Show horse” vets want to do a lay them down, general anesthetic, which is considered “safer” for the vet, but harder on the horse, and more expensive for the owner. After a general anesthetic and/or after gelding surgery, the horse SHOULD NOT be shipped until the next day, so an overnight at a clinic is usual. Laying them down at the farm is an option, but also a risk. If you can find a vet who knows how to geld them standing, this is the best option IMO. Can be hard to find. The last one I had gelded, I shipped him 5 hours to get to the vet I wanted to use, done standing, we stayed overnight at my friend’s farm (for free), and shipped home the next day. Bill was $250. And nice to see my friends, including the vet, a “quality” vet who has now retired. I made this trip after being “horrified” by local vets and the gelding practices observed. Apparently, the vet school is no longer teaching vets HOW to geld horses standing. Good luck.
Some of us know how to do a standing castration, but would rather not take unnecessary risks with our safety.
I was taught how to do them standing in school, but after I became friends with a LA surgery tech, I never did another one standing.
i had two older bulls (age 9) castrated…was an ordeal for both of them! and the price was 600 each, incl general anesthesia, and two weeks observation at the vet’s facility, with an addt’l opening of the sac on one of them and a couple rounds of antibiotics. (but rural Missouri and…cattle not horses)
I brought in my own hay and i cleaned their stalls too…because i’m a hovering mum lol.
Castrations performed under GA aren’t just “considered safer” for veterinarians than a standing castration, they actually are ARE safer. Healthy young horses tolerate quick IV general anesthesia very nicely and recover quickly. They are ready to haul within a few hours at most. Happens everyday. The very small risk that IV GA poses to the horse is far more acceptable than the very real risk that standing castration poses to the veterinarian. The risk of getting kicked in the head is real, serious, and very deadly. With the development of modern anesthetic drugs that are so safe and easy to use in horses, I totally understand why the standing technique is rarely performed or even taught now.
Not much consideration for the vet’s safety here. Heating kicked on the head is career, if not life threatening.
In addition to being safer for the DVM, GA makes it easier to deal with complications that may arise during the procedure.
I recently had a yearling (17 months) gelded in Europe (so can’t comment re cost in parts of the US). I opted for GA at the clinic. His breeder brought him and another colt there together and both did really well. She always brings them to the clinic and has them done under GA. She’d witnessed a few standing castration at her stable and that made up her mind!
If I really had to have a colt gelded for some reason and had no other option, then I’d go with the standing, but if I have other options, then I wouldn’t.
Neither colt was all that stressed by the ordeal.
$640 in April, although it was an unusual case.
I had to book a double cryptorchid surgery because I couldn’t locate even one testicle on my semi feral 2yo. Once he was under, they found both (tiny and very high) externally so it became a standard gelding. That price included antibiotics and an overnight stay (already booked due to the surgical nature), including hay provided.
I’m sure I could’ve found a cheaper option to do him in the field, but this vet’s expertise and the quality of the clinic was worth it. He healed faster and more easily than the standing geldings I’ve seen.
I always had a vet castrate my cattle. Banding is awful. They holler for days. And fly strike is a terrible risk in hotter climates. Vet was closer to $250, but we didn’t have a big herd, so it was fine. We sold most as registered bulls so the castrated ones were just from cull cows
Since it is always the vet’s decision whether to do the job standing or laying the horse down, and the senior, skilled and experienced vets who are confident in their extensive experience in making this determination, and prefer to do the job standing, choose to do them standing about 95% of the time, unless there is a REAL reason why they decide it is better to lay them down for the surgery… how is it MY “lack of consideration for the vet’s safety” that you are concerned about?
I choose the vet I employ, THEY choose how they want to do the job. And those who choose standing are aware of the risks, and how to best avoid injury to both themselves and the horse. Being a horse vet has it’s risks. Those who are too frightened of horses, or of the risks of the job, tend to not last in the job for long.
Just curious where you are drawing these statistics from.
From a number of decades of holding colts while getting gelded by a variety of vets who preferred to do the job standing rather than laying them down. Yearling colts coming in to be broke in the fall, coming from the yearling sale, or homebred colts. Practically all done standing every year. Vets decision, always. Several different vets, mostly vets who serviced the racing industry, but not all… A couple who did work for non racing owners too.
So 95% of “several vets”, then.
OK.
No, 95% of colts gelded by all local vets we dealt with. A couple were laid down, either at the farm or at the clinic, because they had issues that made doing them standing problematical. That’s real vets, not just “vets on the internet”.
The only animals i’ve had anesthetized for castration were two older bulls (quite mature) and …they were well over 1 ton with large horns so couldn’t get through a chute to a headgate, a Morgan stallion that sucked one up!!! She literally had to go in to her elbow to retrieve that testicle, and he had had both fully dropped…that was a weird one.
In my experience vet’s tend to have their preferences regarding standing vs lying down and that is the way they do all of them. If for some reason this particular horse needs to be done a different way they refer them elsewhere. My vet practice at the track had several vets, some who did them all standing and one who will only do them lying down so we had options based upon what they felt was best for the horse.
My vet does them standing for about $250 each. I had one that he couldn’t get the other testicle standing so we dropped him and retrieved the other. That one cost $400.
He prefers standing sedation using R.A.T. on young sometimes unpredictable colts because you don’t have to get them out of GA. They just slowly come to and stay quiet.
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