By Cathryn Christie Veterinary Practice Manager PG Dip MgSt (Dist) King Country Vets
THE blokes reading this, I’m sure will be shuddering in their boots, when they read the words ‘chemical castration’ — fear not lads, I’m talking about our canine mates. You may not know that we have an option for a reversible, chemical castration for male dogs. Suprelorin® is like a little microchip that you insert between the shoulder blades and it slow releases a drug called deslorelin which acts to reduce testosterone levels in the dog. This results in them becoming infertile within about six weeks. The effects last for six months and are reversed once the six months is up. You can continue by injecting another chip at the end of the six months. This can be useful for the following situations:
- you want to trial the effects of castration prior to surgery;
- you would like to test the behavioural response to lowered testosterone;
- you want the benefits of low testosterone but may want to breed in the future;
- you would like to rest a stud dog;
- you want the benefits of castration without surgery, general anaesthesia, or testes removal;
- Better managing of working dog teams. My experience of the drug Suprelorin® has been positive; we had a team on the farm of only bitches, with one male dog. He is a young dog and has good bloodlines but we are yet to decide whether he is worth breeding from. Obviously with all these females, it was a headache having the one entire dog. We started using Suprelorin® on the dog a year ago and it has removed all of the issues we used to get with accidental mismatings (yes, we all know they happen!) and the extra costs/problems that come with those. Should we want to breed from him in the future we can just let the Suprelorin run out. If you think Suprelorin® could work for your team or if you have any questions, please contact one of our vets for further information.
