Chubby Poco Chick should have been castrated while he was still a weanling or even a yearling, but life kept getting in the way. At age three, our Quarter Horse colt was good-natured and docile, but we aren’t breeders, and he wasn’t breeding material. We knew just enough to wait for good weather—not too hot, not too cold—to schedule an appointment with our veterinarian to have him castrated. Chubby was castrated while standing up, which turned out to be fortuitous, and we took him home. The next morning we were horrified to discover something long and bloody hanging from his castration site.

A quick call to our veterinarian, Chuck Woodall, DVM, president of Aspen Ridge Equine Hospital in Monument, Colo., and we were loading Chubby into the trailer for the hourlong trip back to the equine clinic. According to Woodall, about 25% of castration patients encounter complications, and, of that number, about 1% end up with Chubby’s condition: omental eventration, which is protrusion of the fatty yellow tissue that surrounds some of the abdominal organs through the incision site.

Need to Know

Castration is one of the most common surgical procedures that equine veterinarians perform day in and day out. Although the procedure is relatively simple, it does come with a high amount of complications.

Become an informed horse owner. You should know what to ask and how to provide follow-up care for your newly castrated horse