Cob Jockey

I realize that my turnout post might have been the first time I discussed my thoughts around gelding Disco, so let's get a little deeper into that today, shall we?

Wheee. PC: Austen

The plan is to keep him intact at least until the age of two or potentially forever, as long as he's 1. not a danger to my fellow co-op members, 2. not a danger to the other horses on the property, and 3. able to live a healthy, happy life as a horse.

Why would I keep a stallion? Well, a few reasons.

1. Lisa will use him. I've always wanted to see one of her stallions have a performance as well as a breeding career, but because she mostly only does live cover and for some other reasons I won't get into here, the logistics of that have never worked out. 

We all agreed this is Disco's Tinder profile picture, lol. PC: Austen

2.  He's nice, for a Section D especially, but also just in general. I don't think I realized quite how nice until the Welsh show in October, but when he beat nearly everything else on the showgrounds as a weanling and then the judges asked me his registered name so they could keep an eye on his career, I took note. He has a lot to contribute to the breed, physically and mentally.

Section D folks from around the world have messaged me and Lisa to tell us how nice he is, with some of them calling him the nicest Section D colt they've ever seen. PC: Austen

3. I enjoy riding Cob stallions. I've ridden his uncle Cadence and his grandpa Dundee, and there's just something a little bit "extra" about a stallion. That extra little bit of awareness of their surroundings and an extra bit of biological imperative that geldings don't have. I like it.

Me riding Connor's and Dyma Hi's full brother, Cadence, in May of 2020

4. There's decent evidence that waiting until the age of 2 or later to geld results in a shorter horse with growth plates that close faster. I'm not rushing to ride him or anything, but with that plus the fact that Connor was gelded at 2 and I'm happy with him, it makes me want to wait at least that long. Nature designed them that way for a reason, and I fully understand and support gelding some of them younger for a variety of reasons, but if I have the choice, why not wait?

Two year old Connor, the year he was gelded

5. Disco's baseline personality is easy to deal with, and his super chill stallion half-brother gives me hope that he'll stay that way even after his hormones come in. Obviously I can't count on Disco being exactly the same, but Dyma Hi's 2017 colt Tanner continues to be tractable enough for his owner's Kindergarten-age daughter to ride and handle (with close supervision, of course), even after breeding mares live cover for a couple of years and living out with another fellow Castleberry stallion.

Disco's stallion half brother and his tiny charge

6. I think I can do it safely and still allow him to be a horse. I have a lot of options available to me running a co-op that I wouldn't have at a traditional boarding barn, and as long as I have buy-in from everyone on those options and he continues to be safe to handle, we can do this. It was pre-co-op, but we have successfully kept a stallion on this property in the last few years, which gives me confidence we can do it again.

Such a sweet face and soooooo much hair. PC: Austen

7. This is the least scientific part of this post, but multiple horsewomen and bodyworkers that I respect have talked to me about gelding scars in the last year and how they might cause pain and performance problems later in life. There's no scientific evidence for or against this that I can find, but I have this filed away in the back of my mind as a "huh, that's interesting".

Current status: growth spurt, lol

Of course, none of this matters if he gets difficult to handle or dangerous. He has to be a co-op-safe horse first, and a performance horse second, and if either of those are in question I'll geld him immediately. So, we take it one day at a time!

On Friday morning, Disco saw my vet for the first time. I was crossing my fingers that he would be well-behaved, because he hadn't been turned out since Wednesday evening due to the weather, making this the longest amount of time he'd ever spent in a stall (a few minutes of turnout in the indoor the night before notwithstanding).

He was perfect. Like, I was holding him and I didn't even realize the vet had given the shot because Disco didn't react in the slightest, not even so much as an ear flick.

"This is a good baby," the vet said, "Must've been handled a lot and handled well."

Drug scale or salt measuring operation? You decide.

Disco's mom was vaccinated during pregnancy, so up until this point he's been protected by the antibodies he received from her, but 6 months is around the time that protection begins to wane. So he got his first dose last week and he'll get a booster dose 6 weeks from now, around Christmas.

I also wanted the vet to look at his left front fetlock, which has been puffy and hard since earlier this summer. I was not opposed to x-rays or even a referral if the vet thought it was necessary, but he immediately diagnosed it as physitis, or joint inflammation caused by enlargement of the growth plate. From KER:

Considered a scourge among horse breeders everywhere, physitis is bound to pop up in any horse-breeding population sooner or later, regardless of how conscientious a breeder might be. Loosely defined, physitis is an inflammation of cartilaginous growth plates near the ends of long bones in growing horses.

Treatment for physitis is largely diet changes. My vet asked what he was fed before, and what his concentrate diet would be going forward (a FeedXL-designed diet of 1/2lb of low-starch high-fat Kalm Ultra and 1/2lb of Essential K ration balancer twice a day). 

"Oh, that's perfect, yeah, this should go away within a few months of being on that diet. If it doesn't, we can look at [some medication or supplement I'd never heard of and can't remember], but I don't think we'll need to, this is a pretty minor case. Some young horses, their joints look like boxes it's so bad."

You can see it quite clearly here, the left fore is visibly thicker above the fetlock. I'm glad this is nothing serious. PC: Leah

He also felt his man bits ("Two nuts, tiny, but they're both there, no cryptorchidism here") and agreed with my assessment to wait as long as I can to geld him. "At least the spring, longer if you can."

Finally, he discussed deworming protocols with me, and said he likes to see them wormed every six weeks until they're a year old. That sounded like overkill to me at first, but nope, a bunch of reputable sources agree with him. Young horses are most susceptible to worm infestations and serious side effects caused by worms, so even with all the concerns about resistance and as much as we've backed off on frequent deworming of older horses, the deworming protocol for youngstock is much more aggressive. So I'm still going to do fecals, but he'll be getting wormed a few more times before his first birthday in April. 

Surprise fall rain storm that actually also contained some graupel, which my husband refuses to believe is a real weather phenmenon, but it's true

I think I'm a pretty well-read and educated horse owner, but there's a lot to learn about raising a baby the first time!