Do you give genders to your animals?

Like I mean, a lioness and a cow with an udder is clearly a female, but what about other animals who look the same regardless of gender? Do you give them a confirmed gender of your own, or leave them as is?

I call them "he" if they are not obviously a "she"

Perhaps it is an inheritance from the region where my Mom grew up ( Western Vendsyssel ). There all animals are a "he".

Yes, I do :) I am busy with cataloging all my animals and I gave gender in it as well.
So I have to look at every animal I have (600+) to see what the gender is. CollectA made most males, so those are clearly too see XD But if they don't have male parts, then I call it a female.

All of my horses have to have a gender for showing Although most of them are quite obvious what they are anyway

Thanks guys for your interesting responses .

Draggin'Yale (my 1983 Imperial Dragon Horse) is female. With various materials, I made companions for her, which have genders.

Dear Sts Friends:

Okay, so, the title of this topic asks a question, and here's my answer:

I do give genders to my animals, and name, of course, none of my animals are gay, just saying. Yeah, I know some of you might think that's okay, but personally, animals being gay, that's just going too far. But I guess at this point, you can do this, if you want to, but as for me, I won't have any hand in it. I guess it all comes down to what you want your stories to be about. For example, when my ostrich family first began, I had only one chick. It was only over time that Sebastian (That's the father of the family) got to have 5 daughters. Anyway, I think you all understand the point I'm trying to make, right? So, you can make your animals gay, if you want, but as far as my collection is concerned, I'm doing things the old fashioned way. I guess it all comes down to what you want your animals to be doing. I hope my contribution to this topic helps, at least a little.

Aschuck

As my collection is very strictly synoptic, I only can have 1 individual of each species and I chose almost always a male or genderless. I would chose a female only in species with reverted sexual dimorphism (painted snipe). Of course my green spoon worm (Bonellia viridis) is female, the male is a tiny almost-nothing inside her body.
I think my Papo gharial is also female due to lack of the bulgue in the snout. My CollectA hippo is also a female.
I don't put genus in genderless figures. Many feline figures are genderless.

Model horses are almost always sculpted distinctly male (entire or neutered), or female, so I don't have to guess or choose for them

Julip models are quite simplified sculpts and don't always have that much anatomical detail, and some don't have the word 'mare' or 'stallion' in the mould name. So in those cases I pick a sex depending on what I want to name the model, or how I want to dress it - stallions wear different tack for showing than mares or geldings. Or if it's one bought as a portrait of a real horse naturally it comes with a name and sex built in.
I don't mind the whole 'if there's a baby it's got to be a girl' issue with them, either - if I name one male, and later have opportunity to buy a foal of the same breed, well then that's just a baby he'd sired, he doesn't have to become a mum instead.

I don't anthropomorphize my animal figures so they don't have genders as a result, either sex based on phenotypes or simply nothing.
Sometimes I like to have a female phenotype, a male phenotype and a juvenile, for example on my elephant shelf but that doesn't necessarily mean they are a family, in the case of elephants the bulls don't take care of the offspring anyway, during musth an elephant bull may even kill its own offspring.
Due to this there also aren't any pairings on my shelves unless I start to build dioramas but if you pair them or how depends entirely on the collector's choice, I just don't care for mine as I don't treat them as characters.
If one chooses however to pair their animals, I would never say that gay animals would go too far, female and female or male and male pairings have been observed frequently in nature (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_displaying_homosexual_behavior), intersex animals exist, animals that change their sex over time exist, it's all natural and part of nature and none of it is new nor old-fashioned, it simply has existed in nature from the beginning.
But again what one does with their own figures is none of my concern, just know that it is absolutely okay if others decide to go for gay pairings and there is nothing weird about it.