From: Dana Lee
Dear Jessica, after reading your wonderfully encouraging message in last week's HORSE-SENSE, the one you wrote to the woman whose young stallion wouldn't breed, I am now brave enough to write to you with my question. I am also a shy person who doesn't feel comfortable asking her (male) veterinarian about some things. I loved the idea of talking to the vet's wife, and I plan to do that to sort of get ready to talk to the vet himself, but I wanted to write to you first. Here is what is bothering me. I have a colt that is now eight months old, and I had planned to have him gelded before he is a yearling. I probably should have had it done when he was just a couple of weeks old! The problem is that I think he was a normal colt when he was very young, but he may be a cryptorchid now. I've been told that this is the term for a male horse that has only one testicle. Is that correct? Do you think my colt could have been normal to start with and now have somehow lost one of his testicles? I know that he had both of them when he was just a week or two old, but now that I am planning to geld him, he seems to have just one. My friend who also has a colt says that their testicles go up and down in their bodies, but that doesn't make much sense to me. Please give me some of your wise advice. I need it to be brave enough to talk to my vet! Your fan, Dana Lee
Stop worrying and have a nice long talk with your vet. He'll be able to reassure you that your colt is far too young for anyone to officially pronounce him a cryptorchid. The term doesn't mean that the horse is actually missing a testicle, it just means that one of the testicles is up inside the horse's body rather than down in the scrotum. Young colts can be "down" one day, "up" a week later, and "one down, one up" the next week. Growth rate, general health, stress levels - all sorts of things can affect a young colt. This is normal and it's almost always temporary.
In general, as a colt matures from birth to two years, their testicles get larger (right along with the rest of their bodies) and the inguinal ring - that's the ring that the testicles drop through on their way down into the scrotum - becomes smaller. As the colt matures and becomes a stallion, there eventually comes a day when the testicles cannot be retracted into his body, but this often doesn't happen until the horse is two years old or sometimes even older. Different colts, like different children, grow and develop at different rates, and there's a wide range of "normal".
As you've realized, deciding to geld a colt isn't just a matter of scheduling the vet! Your colt has to have both testicles down when the vet arrives. If this isn't the case, the vet can come back at another time. The term "cryptorchid" just means "hidden testicle" - and is used to describe mature stallions with ONE testicle that is undescended, permanently "stuck" up in the body cavity, so to speak. It's not a desirable condition, for several reasons. Ones is that although the visible testicle can be removed, this will leave the horse with all of its stallion instincts in place. It will effectively be a sterile stallion (sterile because the remaining testicle, within the body cavity, is kept at too warm a temperature to create viable sperm). It will also be a stallion at risk, because there is a relatively high incidence of tumours in retained testicles. Surgical removal of the second testicle may require extensive and costly surgery, depending on where the testicle is located in the body cavity.
Having said that, though, please remember that you shouldn't use the term "cryptorchid" for your youngster. Right now, it's a safe bet that he's just a normal colt with the usual "ups and downs". ;-)
Jessica
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