Gelding procedures

[swmorse]

Has anyone ever seen a vet do a gelding using a power tool? Just saw one done where the vet used an attachment on a drill. I’ve never seen it done that way before. The attachment attached to the testicle, then they started the drill spinning, slowly, then they pulled it back increasing the speed until the cord holding the testicle snapped. There was no swelling and bleeding only where the sack(s) were slit to get to the testicle, it’s been a week and the horse is doing OK.

The vet said that the BLM started using this procedure because they were losing too many horses (by bleeding to death, I guess) castrating the ‘old, regular’ way.

[elizabeth_Callahan]

It is the Henderson castration tool. Less bleeding, but other complications still occur and not the best on very young( less than 1) or smaller testicles. Quicker than emasculators.

[swmorse]

Thanks, this was a 6 year old, who’d bred once. It was an ‘interesting’ process.

[eventingVOL]

We used in in school on cattle and it worked beautifully for bigger bull calves; definitely much less bleeding. I’ve heard of it being used in horses but haven’t personally seen it.

[TheHunterKid90]

Yes. Had 4 gelded that way this spring…had never heard of it being done this way and it wasn’t our regular vet who did it. After the deed and talking to our regular vet he said he doesn’t recommend that method to anyone for horses.
We had two 2 year olds, a 3 year old and a 5 year old done. All except the 5 year old healed fine. The poor guy had a piece of carnage that ended up hanging from where is what nots used to be and he wouldn’t let us try to remove it. He also got extremely sore and it took almost a month for him to return to full work.
Not sure i will go that route again, maybe just go the traditional route and lay them down and snip snip

[Rhymes_W_Orange]

We had it done on a Belgian colt and it went very well. I thought my husband was going to faint but it was very tidy afterwards with minimal swelling or trauma for the colt. It was done at a clinic that has closed since. For my warmblood colt we took him to an equine hospital since we were concerned about infection with traditional methods (more due to friend’s bad experiences).