When you add up how much money goes into the owning and keeping of a pleasure horse today - everything from purchase price to upkeep, vet, farrier, training, etc. you have quite a sizable investment. Darn tootin’ most people are going to go to great lengths to keep that expensive toy as healthy and happy as possible.
If you people would all get your male horses circumcised, you wouldn’t be having this argument.
gd&r
See, Hello, the thing is, I need a cite for this.
I have yet to see any kind of research that shows that horses need to have their penises washed. I’ve seen research that shows that they need to have immunizations, I’ve seen research that shows what their dietary requirements are, I’ve seen research that shows what kind of hoof care they require, I’ve seen research on equine dentistry, I’ve seen research on founder and laminitis, on azoturia, on equine encephalitis, on reproduction. I’ve seen all kinds of research on virtually every aspect of equine health care.
Except for washing their penises.
And acupuncture.
And magnet therapy.
And acidophilus culture.
And, since I see that research on washing penises is included on this list of dubious medical and health treatments that have not as yet been actually proved to be of any help whatsoever to horses, I therefore come to the not totally illogical conclusion that the washing of horses’ penises is unnecessary.
Again, a cite, please, for the “fact” that the bean is a distraction and/or an impediment to performance.
I come by my opinions the same way I come by my opinions on every other unnecessary, unproven, quack medical or health treatment for either horses or people–by using my common sense. Common sense says that it doesn’t make sense that horses should need to have their penises washed. Not only horses, but all the other kinds of four-legged herbivores that are out there in the world, and all of them–all–have survived tens of millions of years of evolution without having their penises washed. Doesn’t that tell you anything?
We don’t wash sheep penises, or dog or cat penises–why should we wash horse penises?
This is the Straight Dope Message Board, a website devoted to Fighting Ignorance. I dunno about you, but I’m not here tell Doug, vaguely, “Well, I couldn’t find anything for it, but then I couldn’t find anything against it, so it must be a legitimate procedure.” I have to see something that says definitely “For it” before I’m going to tell him, “Yes, it’s a legitimate procedure”, because my common sense is telling me, strongly, “Against it.”
You can look all over the web for information on remote viewing, and you won’t find anything that’s “for it”, but then, you won’t find anything that’s “against it”, either. It hasn’t been debunked yet like Uri Geller’s spoon-bending, or other kinds of psychic phenomena. So does that mean remote viewing is a legitimate procedure? Not here at the SDMB, it doesn’t.
The OP is not asking about demonstrably valuable procedures like dentistry or hoof care, nor is he asking about health care issues like colic and founder–he’s asking about a procedure whose value has not even been researched, let alone “proven”. Therefore, The Duck’s answer to the OP’s question–“How necessary is it?”–is, “Not at all.”
Jill: Domestic horses differ hardly at all from their “wild” cousins, and I might point out that the only truly “wild” horses left are the Przewalski horses of Asia. All those American mustangs are feral horses, and they got along just fine out on the Great Plains without anybody washing their penises for 200 years. In domestication terms, horses just came out of the jungle, so to speak, being among the last of the world’s farm animals to be domesticated, long after sheep, goats, and cattle had joined homo sapiens out in the barn. And they turn feral with surprising speed.
Also, horses and donkeys are different species. And, do you really need me to tell you that you can’t generalize “horse behavior” and “donkey behavior” on the basis of a single instance? When we apply this to people, it’s called “stereotyping”. 
[[Also, horses and donkeys are different species. And, do you really need me to tell you that you can’t generalize “horse behavior” and “donkey behavior” on the basis of a single instance?]]
Based on my observations and experience, the donkey is a much hardier species than the horse. I’m also basing my generalizations on having worked as a veterinary technician and seeing how medically fragile horses - especially inbred thoroughbreds and quarterhorses - seem to be.
I also think donkeys are more intelligent and perceptive than horses are, but I have the feeling I shouldn’t go there in this thread. I think you can generalize about behaviors of donkeys and mules vs horses. You won’t see horses on steep trails in the Grand Canyon, for example, you’ll only see donkeys and mules.
My editorializing highjacks aside, here are my theories:
-
Keeping bodies of any kind clean can often prevent certain bacterial infections. Domestic and other animals kept in captivity benefit from a cleaner environment and so often live longer, healthier lives than wild animals do. Yes, wild horses have been around for thousands of years, but they live shorter, less-healthy lives than most domestic horses do.
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It is also possible that over-washing under the penile sheath can make a horse more susceptible to bacterial infections. I wouldn’t doubt that. I don’t think a once-a-year cleaning would be risky, though.
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Stallions’ penises are kept fairly clean by regular mating with mares. I am wondering if this sheath-washing procedure is more important for geldings who don’t get any action (and therefore can’t be compared to wild horses, either)?
This website tends to support this theory:
http://www.vetcentric.com/magazine/magazineArticle.cfm?ARTICLEID=1316
[[In an intact breeding stallion, smegma rarely causes any problems because… well, let’s just say his penis lives a more active lifestyle. But in geldings, smegma can often build up and cause irritation, especially when it accumulates within a sac of skin at the tip of the penis, surrounding the urethra.]]
[Edited by JillGat on 12-01-2001 at 10:36 PM]
I didn’t say you couldn’t generalize about the behavior of donkeys and horses–I said you couldn’t generalize about their behavior based on a single example. If you had one horse and one donkey in the swimming pool, and the horse was able to climb the ladder to get out of the pool but the donkey wasn’t, it would be wrong to say, “Horses can climb pool ladders and donkeys can’t.” You would have to have a much larger statistical sampling, in which many donkeys and many horses proved over and over again that horses were better at getting out of the pool using the ladder than donkeys were.
So you can’t say, “A donkey would never have gotten stuck in a roll of barbed wire and slashed itself badly getting out”, based simply on your observations of your uncle’s horse and your own donkey. Somewhere, sometime, a donkey probably did get itself stuck in a roll of barbed wire and slashed itself badly getting out, just as somewhere, sometime, a horse probably got stuck in a roll of barbed wire and simply stood there and waited for someone to untangle it.
Jill, that article is still just someone’s opinion, specifically Dr. Novick’s opinion. It’s not supported by any research. There’s nothing that says, “Go here to find the results of such-and-such a study that was done on this.”
The article isn’t discussing, “Is this necessary?” It’s operating on the assumption that it IS necessary, and is merely a hobbyist how-to article.
Jill, let me ask you this. Do you believe that acupuncture and homeopathy work? Here’s a whole LIST of veterinarians whose opinion it is that acupuncture and/or homeopathy work for horses.
http://www.ovcnet.uoguelph.ca/Associations/cvmc/xternshp.htm
Just because a vet thinks something works doesn’t make it so.
“Wilbur do you have any baby oil in the house?”
“Yes Ed, I think we do. Why?”
“Well… I’ve got a favor to ask.”
No, I don’t believe that homeopathy works for anybody, human or animal. That’s not what we’re talking about here.
I thought I made it clear that those were my theories. If you’d like some cites for general research supporting the fact that cleansing can prevent certain bacterial infections, I’d be happy to present those. If you want cites that smegma can grow nasty stuff in it, I can provide those, too. I don’t know that anyone has done a case/control study on horse penis sheath cleaning, but if anyone can find it, you can.
I also thought I made it clear that the barbed wire thing was ONE example. I didn’t think it necessary to back up my point statistically there. It wasn’t that relevant to the conversation. Suffice it to say that I have a lot of experience with animals, just like you do.
DDG, you haven’t responded to the possibility that it is reasonable to think that geldings may have this problem while stallions don’t… and that thoroughbred gelding have little in common with wild stallions. I think it is very reasonable to clean out smegma that has built up over a year’s time without any mating occurring.
I would move this to GD, but I think David and Gaudere would agree that they’ve debated equine smegma to death over there.
Jill
So is this where the phrase “beating a dead horse” actually came from?
…I’ll shut up now.
I’m going to have to weigh in with DDG here - I worked on a horse farm in my younger years, we had about 80 animals at any given time, about half of them geldings. I worked there about 8 years. I have NEVER heard of this “penis sheath cleaning” until about two weeks ago.
I also have to agree that the average pet - cat, dog, or horse - is also over medicalized these days. I don’t know why that should surprise anyone, the humans in charge of them are frequently overmedicalized, too.
As I said, we had around 80 animals, in age from yearling to 32. They were fed a diet of the highest quality hay and grain we could afford. They did not need constant “dietary supplementation”, except for Rico, who’s prior owner had nearly starved him to death. Unfortunately for Rico, the damage caused by his near death experience was too severe to heal and he eventually had to be put down (He kept passing out. It sacred the tourists, the other horses, and him. The fainting episodes were because his internal organs such as kidney and liver had been damaged, could not clean his bloodstream anymore, and were slowly failing leading to a state much like permanent intoxication accompanied by chronic pain.)
We did have one horse who suffered from hayfever (really – we had to buy hay that was free of some particular plant, I forget which exactly, it’s been awhile). When the poor dear was having an attack, with buckets of snot running out of her nose and watering eyes yes, she got her face and nostrils washed out. Kind of hard to say no when she brings you a rag herself. Nobody else got their face washed, except when the whole horse got a bath, and certainly no one’s nostrils got swabbed without reason.
We had a couple other horses with problems, such as one with club feet requiring special shoes, and the usual cuts and scrapes and animal can acquire, and legitimate medical needs were taken care of, but most of them were just fed well and exercised a lot. They were, for the most part, very healthy animals, about a dozen of them over 20 years old but still active used for trail rides and instruction.
Now, there may be some poor, unfortunate male horses out there who do, in fact, need their penis sheaths cleaned from time to time but I find it very hard to believe that they ALL require this. Yes, there are fragile, inbred horses. There are a lot of horses subjected to unnecessary procedures as well.
Agreeing with JillGat - yes, I think donkeys ARE hardier than horses. I don’t know about smarter, but they seem to be more sensible in some areas. But donkeys aren’t horses, and vice versa.
And domestic horses do live longer, healthier lives than wild horses - but that has more to do with a steady, healthy diet, vaccinations, and protection from predators than with inbreeding because, as was also pointed out, “wild” horses are actually escaped domestic horses or their immediate descendants.
As for horses running back into burning barns – why do people jump from the windows of a burning building when they knowthe fall will kill them? When confronted with fire critters are seldom rational. The horses associate the barn with safety. The fire scares them. They want to go someplace safe and secure. Makes perfect sense to a horse.
All of these websites advocate removing stallions’ beans as well as geldings’. Obviously, they don’t think that ejaculation makes a difference in whether or not the procedure has to be done.
http://www.morab.com/teller/tellerstal&geld.html
http://www.nwhorsesource.com/askthevet2.htm
Link that won’t make by itself.
http://members.aol.com/HorsePwr24/horse.breeding.html
If ejaculation is supposed to keep the sheath clean and bean-free, then why do the websites dealing with breeding say “remove the bean before breeding the stallion”? If he’s been breeding right along, and ejaculation is supposed to keep the smegma from accumulating, then why tell people to check for it?
http://www.equi-sense.com/articles/sheathcleaning.html
There is also this:
Which proves my point about wild horses not needing to have their penises washed. Assuming that there is an equal sex ratio upon birth, that the same number of males and females are born in every mustang generation, then by the time a stallion is ready to have a harem, and he’s got, say, five mares in his harem, that means that there are four other stallions in his generation (the “losers”) who are stuck in the bachelor herd and who never ejaculate, and so, according to the “ejaculation cleans the penis” theory, they never have their penises cleaned. How in the world have they managed to survive 50 million years of evolution, then? If the bean really did block the urethra in a certain percentage of “losers”, causing life-threatening kidney and bladder trouble, and if ejaculating really did protect male horses from dying from kidney and bladder trouble caused by a dangerous accumulation of smegma, then that would “up the natural selection ante” quite a bit, wouldn’t it? “Ejaculate or die”. So, evolution would have long ago removed the “losers” who couldn’t handle walking around with a bean in their penises from the gene pool, leaving us with “losers” (i.e. non-breeding male horses) who don’t have any serious life-threatening problems with smegma accumulation. Which IMO is what we have today.
I submit that ejaculation has nothing to do with keeping the bean removed and the sheath and penis clean, that both geldings and stallions can walk around all their lives perfectly happily with beans in their penises.
Thoroughbred geldings have a great deal in common with, say, four out of five wild stallions, in that they don’t get to ejaculate, at all.
[[Thoroughbred geldings have a great deal in common with, say, four out of five wild stallions, in that they don’t get to ejaculate, at all.]] Hey, that sounds like an opinion. We can’t have that! Cites?!
I have an equine veterinary journal here that makes the point that overcleaning can screw up the normal bacterial flora and that when it is done, soap shouldn’t be used, or rinsing should be done well. It sounds like the important thing to watch for is symptoms of discomfort or pain (and apparently you can even hear these “beans” rattling around sometimes when the horse is trotting… wow). It also shows pictures of some pretty nasty infections caused by bad bacteria that grew in the sheath. Those beans are something. Who’d a known.
Sorry this isn’t from the internet. I’m sure if you spend some time online looking up “equine smegma,” you’ll find pictures yourself. Me, I’m going rollerblading.
This is starting to sound more and more like douching to me - not commonly necessary, done in the name of cleanliness, with the potential to screw up the native microflora.
“Sheathdouching” - who woulda guessed
DDG, I see your points (and you know I don’t ever have personal beefs with wise you), but I think you’re being a mite too condescending to the other horse people on the boards. You seem overly exasperated given that some vets and horse owners, whether or not they can cite peer-reviewed objective empirical veterinary research studies, choose to do it. I don’t think it rises to the level of quackery, yet you seem to be regarding your fellow Dopers who practice it as half-wits.
I have to admit as a pet owner (not a horse owner) when my vet suggests I do something like clean my basset’s ear canals, I do not insist she show me a foot-high stack of research proving it is necessary. Maybe that research exists; maybe it doesn’t. All I know is, in the experience of my vet (and of other basset owners) this is something that makes a positive contribution to the health of my dog. So I do it, using the procedure she showed us (I swear she went into that ear up to her elbow. I wish I had video). Anyway, I suspect I’d do the same thing with sheath cleaning, if my vet said to do it.
Now, there is something to the argument that all animals are overmedicated and overcared for, and perhaps we’d all be wise to revisit this and clean his ears a little less often or never clean the penile shaft or immunize against rabies so often. Perhaps I ought to be more of a skeptic. But lack of skepticism about a practice that is, to some people, pretty standard, hardly makes Hello Again or Deb or myself a moron who is contributing to the ignorance of the world! Er, at least I hope not.
And lordy oh lordy I hate to throw more fuel on this fire, but is veterinary acupuncture really as quackish as animal homeopathy? I’ve never heard of anyone using animal homeopathy, but alas I know many basset owners who have tried acupuncture. Yipes!
FWIW, somehow I find it hard to imagine that some veterinary researcher is going to make penile-sheath-cleaning his/her research opus. I can’t help but think this is one of those things that will be up for debate for some time. 
Yeah, I know, Cranky, this just happens to be one of my pet peeves–not the sheath cleaning thing specifically, but the whole mindset, that “Nature is frequently wrong, that only the pet industry knows what’s best for the 21st Century Pet”. Don’t get me started on certain types of dog food, either. (Pasta? Peas and carrots? Allergy rice diets? Good heavens, how on earth did wild canines ever survive in the wild with all those allergies… :rolleyes: )
I don’t think that people who clean their horses’ penises are half-wits–only that they’re making a lot of extra, unnecessary, extremely nasty, and I might point out rather dangerous work for themselves. Any procedure whose instructions start out, “You might want to consider having your horse sedated for this…” sets off alarm bells in my Skeptical Consumer brain center. I suspect I am being sold a bill of goods. Horses generally need to be sedated for big important stuff, like surgery, not for something that is supposedly “routine”. And like I said, it just goes against my common sense.
Also, as an Alert Skeptical Consumer, I am baffled by the whole “The vet is God” mindset. I don’t even believe my family doctor is God; I certainly don’t believe my dog’s vet is God. I see this whole sheath-cleaning thing as an outgrowth of the “well, the Vet says…” mindset. If the vet says to do it, then you HAVE to do it, because God knows what ghastly thing might happen to Snowfire if you didn’t. And the really weird thing is sometimes the very same people who wouldn’t dream of accepting a doctor’s diagnosis and prescription without at least looking it up on the Internet, will accept health care advice like this from their vet at face value, unquestioningly.
Does your basset hound need to be sedated to have her ears cleaned out? I doubt it.
But, let’s bear in mind that we’re not here to debate various aspects of horse care, but to answer Doug’s question. I personally consider that the OP has been answered. IMO, Doug, the answer to your question is, “No, it’s not necessary.”
So I’ll let it alone now, and get on with my life. 
I also detest the whole idea of douching, too, FWIW. “Leave it alone,” is what I say.
This is actually worthy of a pit rant (I agree 100%, and think companies are making a lot of money convincing women–especially lower-class women and women in certain ethnic groups–that they aren’t “clean” unless they douche, even though it’s actually BAD for them…). But I digress, and as you noted, it ain’t part of the OP.
But I get what you are saying, above.
I was just thinking that I couldn’t recall the term “Smegma” used legitimately so many times in one thread. And in GQ to boot!
Uh, they didn’t…isn’t that the whole point of natural selection? If they turned out to be allergic to something, and it was bad enough, they’d die before they could pass it on (hopefully). I agree with you that modern pet owners want to interfere too much with animal life, but half the idea of owning a pet is to keep it alive for longer than it would normally live for in the wild. One of my three dogs has arthritis…if she was in the wild, she would have been eaten long ago. She wouldn’t have survived in the wild, yet since she’s not in the wild, she did survive.
If one of my dogs suddendly developed a strange allergy (which they have), I thank the gods that specialized food exists for them.
Just my $23.34
Well, and don’t forget humans have lived “in the wild” for thousands and thousands of years. Their teeth fell out in their thirties, women died in childbirth, 40% of children died from bacterial infections and the majority of those who survived that, died before they reached 50. I’m sure DDG doesn’t wash her children (or clean under their penile sheaths if they are uncircumsized), either.
Cleaning such parts once a year or so in a gelding, which is a castrated horse (which doesn’t exist in the wild, btw), doesn’t seem akin to a “quack remedy” to me.
In fact I have an uncircumsized son and I’m always trying to get him to clean under his foreskin. Maybe sedation would help. - Jill
(ftr, DDG… I agree that one shouldn’t take sedation lightly, for animals either.)
From: mlowder@vet.uga.edu
Reply-to: health@horsecity.com
To: JILLGAT@aol.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Jill,
You are correct. Wild horses keep theirs clean by mating. Gelding do need help. It is just good horsemanship. Don’t waste time with you friend. Thanks,
Dr. Lowder
[Edited by JillGat on 12-03-2001 at 11:11 PM]
My horse needs to be sedated twice a year for teeth floating. She’s nineteen years old, so it is a routine procedure. If I don’t get her teeth floated, she can’t chew her feed properly and the bit hurts her, she tries to avoid it. So sedation is necessary sometimes even for routine stuff.
Sheath cleaning is necessary in today’s horse ownership because many owners keep their horses in stalls bedded with sawdust (fine or thick). The problem with this is that the horse kicks the dust and feces up while in the stall and some of it goes into the horses sheath. Not cleaning the horses sheath can lead to infection, swelling, and discomfort for the animal. If you have pasture kept horses, it isn’t that much of a worry. It is easy to do, you simply use baby oil or baby soap and lather it up and use your fingers to find the “clumps” of stuff that have lodged themselves right inside the sheath and possibly up a bit farther…depending on the horses activity in the stall. Most horses will stand still for this to be done if they trust you, sedation is sometimes needed in extreme cases. In any way, this is a very important thing to do especially for geldings who do not “get proud moments” and therefore it is harder for them to expel things from their sheaths because they cannot produce a full erection and the skin is never taught enough for stuck on dirt to be “popped” off. I hope this clears some of the controversy up.