Geldings Mounting

[CarolineR]

Can anyone give me some help please

We went away for a few days at the weekend and someone else kindly looked after my 3 boys. And they saw my Charlie, just turned 6 mounting Percy, new arrival, of 18 months, aged 15. Percy did not object and apparantly when Charlie got down he sidled up to him for a nuzzle and he appeared to be completely unpreturbed by the whole thing.

Zak, aged 8 watching the proceedings, then galloped over and split them up and appeared very agitated by this.

We have never seen Charlie mount Percy before and he only tried this once with Zak a couple of years ago to which Zak was not going to allow this to happen.

Now as we weren't there we cannot tell the circumstances. Charlie is a bolshy leader of the herd and was he just being dominent or should I be more worried and investigate the possibility of him being a Rig. Although I very much doubt this is the case as he has no other Stallion like behaviour and we have Mares up the lane from us and he has never tried to get to them and is very gentle to handle and well behaved.

Or is it just Charlie being a young pup still?

[Mehitabel]

mounting isn't always sexual behaviour - it can be dominance-related (although this is more common in mares than geldings) or just playful.
t sounds as if charlie was either playing or asserting his dominance - or a combination of both. many geldings still mount mares (and perform) as well - copper has been enthusiastically covering anything that will stand still long enough for years! i've had him 15 years and no babies yet, so we are presuming he isn't a rig...

[floppy]

ooh we have a gelding who is 11 in the herd and he sometimes passes his time trying to mount the mares and it really pees me off because he tried to mount my mare and left a small gash in the side of her bum. We have 5 geldings in with 8 mares and hes the only one that annoys all the girls

[Wally]

Pants does it, I'm sure, just to get at the other horses and wind them up, it usually ends up in a huge game and a galloping madness.

Fat Cob does it because he thinks he is a big stallion....he can be a PAIN in the summer, he has his ladies and he thinks he can scare all the other geldings away.....but they just laugh at him. Cymro beleives him and runs away, Fat Cob then thinks this is a lovelly power trip. Fat cob just jumps on mares, Pants jumps on everybody just to play the giddy goat!

[Shiny McShine]

At the school I worked at we used to have a 19 year old, 18.2hh Clydesdale gelding who was very possesive of certain mares and often mounting them in the springtime. He never produced any offspring, and the school owner has been around horses a long time and had no qualms about it.

Only problem is he had a favourite mare and one day he didn't come down from the hills with the other horses one morning, we went out on a trail with this mare and next thing a giant horse comes thundering and screaming down the hill straight for us and then he tried to mount her while someone was riding! He got a swift crack on the nose and the poor rider was saved injury and humiliation...after that we always made sure he was well secured during the spring:D.

I think that was just his nature...he was rather dominant. Also the school horses lived out in a large herd and often geldings would pair off with certain mares, sometimes being rather protective of them.