Imagyne, a question for you

I was reading your post on the thread about the Manx/Mix kittens, and spaying and neutering. In that post, you said something about it being harmful to get your kittens spayed or neutered at too young of an age.

Here is my situation. Last summer I purchased a pedigreed Bengal. (I have several of his pictures up on the forums. His name is Simba). Anyway, I got him neutered at 4 1/2 months of age. Do you think I caused him any harm? I will tell you, that he's very small. He will be 1 year old at the end of April, and I don't think he's much larger than a 6 month old kitten. Other than his size, he's healthy, and hearty, and full of energy, in fact too full of energy. Do you think I stunted his growth by getting him such an early neuter?

Probably....
Bengals tend to be very muscular, sorta on the large size cats. In order for that to happen they need all the hormones they can get for them to grow.

With females it's not all that important, but for males it is. I'm surprised the breeder didn't offer up any info about that for you.
Regardless, if your not planning on showing him then, no harm, no foul. As long as he's healthy and happy then there ya go...

My breeder actually wanted my boy to be neutered before I even got him, at 12 weeks. Then for reasons unknown* she never had the operation done. She said she was concerned that he was too small still. I got him a couple of days before he was 12 weeks.
I got him neutered at 6 months. He grew rather slowly. How much does Simba weigh right now?
In any case, I don't think I'd go along with a neuter at 12 weeks anyways. But there's quite a bit of information about it on the internet. According to a study they did it didn't really effect the weight of the test kitties. But they only had 11 kittens in each test group, with three groups total.
http://www.winnfelinehealth.org/repo...ly-neuter.html


* reasons unknown meaning when I took him to a vet a couple of weeks after I got him the vet found ear mites and a small heart murmer. I don't know if she knew about this or not but she offered to pay for the vet bills. She was a Vet Tech too.