Hmmm, I'm confused. I'm not sure how they would do a reverse vasectomy on a horse. When they geld them, they cut their balls off. It's more than a snip, snip.

It confused me too. Apparently with rare breeds in the zoos, they do "vasectomies" as opposed to castration as a means of behavior control and localized population control (i.e. if that stud had to many foals at that particular zoo). They don't do the full geld in case they need that stud for breeding down the road. Apparently....

I can't imagine a zoo would ever geld a Przewalski. They're highly endangered, so they'd want to keep "the boys" around and in good working order.

The only part that confuses me is this... if you're going to perform a vasectomy on an endangered species, only to reverse it when he's near the end of his life, wouldn't it just have been easier all around to remove some semen, cold store it, and perform artificial insemination?

Agreed. I just didn't word it properly. I didn't know you could do just a vasectomy, but why do one if you're going to possibly reverse it later? There is a chance something could go wrong that would permanently sterilize the male. Or, the animal could become too ill and wouldn't be able to breed anyway. Sperm count does go down as they get older. So, why not do a collection and freeze the semen to begin with???

Yeah. That's the point of the story. Why?


Because they could.


This was one of the earliest vasectomies done on an animal. I think it was a matter of opportunism. The MD happened to find a DVM who would cooperate in the surgery.

Also, they originally didn't know how valuable this horse's semen would be. Guess they didn't do any DNA test before they looped em up.

Zoo's are like prisons. Got captive animals to experiment on.