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[shinkunosuna]

First off, sorry to all the boys reading this who think "youch"

Second off, I don't know if this has been suggested, planned, or otherwise posted.  I have to admit I haven't read all suggested material.

I propose some kind of system that allows the dwarves to castrate their (male) animals.  Let me start by saying that I'm not concerned about the smaller animals like cats and dogs and I'm not saying have this applicable to all animals (birds, reptiles).  I'm concerned about the larger farm stock.  I like keeping a bunch of female farm stock (ewes, alpacas, llamas, donkeys, horses, et cetera) for their wool and milk, as well as for their meat.  I find once you introduce a male into the fort all my females breed with said (lucky) male and give birth, which means I have a lot of young stock.  Once one of those male young stock grows up, he breeds with the females again and I get even more young stock.  I've been having to resort to killing off my young male stock before they grow up in order to control the population of my stock.  A castration feature would be incredibly helpful in that I can raise my male stock, get them nice and fat, then butcher them for their tasty meats, without worrying that they will impregnate all my females.

Castration of farm stock is a wide spread occurrence in our world and I think the dwarves are smart enough to figure out "hey if you cut off the male's wingding then he can't mate with the females" (after all dwarves make babies too).  It's a fairly simple procedure involving a sharp knife and a little knowledge of anatomy.  I don't propose this for female stock since that gets to be a little more surgical (although I am open to the idea). 

This procedure can be done by professions already in the game (animal caretaker, animal trainer) using buildings already in the game (kennels).  It can give a token to the animal that designates them as sterile (genderless perhaps, or a third gender value), which can also be used for mules (or is already used for mules, I'm not sure how mules work in game).  It should be able to be done with young stock and adult stock.  There may be a size limit (they can't castrate a cavy boar, but they can a yak bull) and/or an animal type restriction (mammals are castratable but not birds (since they don't have the very obvious wingding for the dwarves to see)).

[miguelsz2]

No! Spayed the chicks... Leave the dudes with thier pride.

 

:Edit:
Never seen the word spayed written funny that.

[Reudh]

Easily enough done. You could make a workshop that takes a male dog and converts it to a new caste with the CE_TRANSFORMATION token or whatever it is.

[Monk321654]

You could do both sexes.

[NW_Kohaku]

Technically, it would be better to tag the females - in the time it takes you to drag the male dog off to get castrated, he will have already spored all the females into being pregnant.  It only takes one male dog to make every single one of the females pregnant.  Tie the tubes on a female, and she's not pregnant for good.

Of course, it's a much easier operation on a male.  Less likely to involve complications, as well. 

[shinkunosuna]

Frankly, it could work for both sexes.  I only suggest the males because it's more realistic.  It's a much simpler operation and I figure the dwarves aren't dumb enough to mess it up too much.  If you can tag the male young (puppies, foals, lambs) before they become adults, then they won't impregnate the females upon reaching adulthood.  And even if an adult male animal impregnates all females before castration, you know the seasons after castration he will be unable to do so. 

For instance, I keep a few large bulls in pastures until my meat stores go low or I need bones.  In keeping the bulls, however, I have to be careful keeping a cow of the same species since she would calve every season.  I can easily run out of pasture waiting for maximum butchering returns.  Even if the imported bull impregnates the cows before castration, I know that there will only be one calving season as opposed to having several calving seasons. 

Sterilizing either sex works for me as long as the stock population can be somewhat more controlled. 

[kaenneth]

That reminds me of the time a pitbull attacked my brother; don't worry she's much better now...

Anyway, my solution is is slaughter all the females to control population growth.

I'm also imagining he'll have to add new ethics tags for it, like for slavery. I can imagine a fort that has a catch/neuter/release policy for Goblins, Kobolds, Elves and Humans...

A diplomat has left unhappy

[Monk321654]

Wait a minute...
Oh no.
Although this brings up whether it would matter...

[alfie275]

An easier alternative would probably be to make it so that creatures have to be adjacent to breed rather than using "spores". Then you could simply seperate animals you don't want breeding.

[Footkerchief]

This was a dev item under the old system:

# Req509, CASTRATING ANIMALS, (Future): Dwarves should be able to castrate male animals. Spaying female animals might be beyond the ability of dwarves to do reliably.

It also came up in DF Talk:

Rainseeker:   [2]So are you going to have cones for the critters, and pet critters?
Toady:   I don't know what people did, there's all kind of stuff ... we're going to be castrating critters sometime because people did that, I guess they just tied a string around it and just cinched it so tight that everything just died in there; so there's no open wound so you don't really have to worry about the cone, because the main thing is is he going to break open his incisions; that's why we were worried about Scamps; and he would, the way he's tearing and biting and scratching and chewing, what are you doing?

And it's been frequently suggested:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=42236.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=32133.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=53021.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=55650.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=22627.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84981.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=3059.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=4793.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=4273.0
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=4988.0

Spoiler: tags (click to show/hide)

castrate castrates castrated castration castrating spay spaying spayed neuter neutering neutered

[shinkunosuna]

@Footkerchief
Oh, okay, I can wait for it to be implemented.   I don't have to worry about it.  I did a crt-find on the voting page, looked briefly on the forum, but I didn't see anything.  Sorry for re-posting a topic.


((@alfie275:  I like the spore method of impregnating females.  It seems to me to be a little realistic.  I mean, what intact male is going to stick to his pasture when there's a female a couple of squares over in another pasture?  Maybe if there were locked doors or gates in the way, or even a distance calculation, that would deter them.))

((@kaenneth:  Females provide the milk that gets crafted into cheese, so I'd rather not kill them.  ^.^)

[IT 000]

Easily enough done. You could make a workshop that takes a male dog and converts it to a new caste with the CE_TRANSFORMATION token or whatever it is.

Kinda, you would need to make a reaction that creates a stone that boils at room temperature. The stone must have a syndrome attached that has the effect CE_ADD_TAG:STERILE:START:0 . This way you don't need to make a sterile caste for every creature in the game.

You should probably add CREATURE_CLASS:ANIMAL to all animals in the game though, and make the syndrome only affect CREATURE_CLASS:ANIMAL or else you'll end up sterilizing your dwarves (not that that's a bad thing)

Of course you'll need to pasture the animals directly on the workshop so that they can become sterilized as there's no way to make a workshop bring an animal yet.

[sockless]

Why don't we instead implement a proper breeding system, so that we can just segregate the males from the females?

[orius]

Well, they're not going to spay the females, they're used for breeding stock, typically only a small number of studs are used for breeding while the other males get chopped or culled.  And of course, female mammal livestock are often raised for milk too, so you want to keep them alive and intact.

Generally, I cage immature non-grazers and inspect the males when they mature.  I look for desirable traits, cull the crappy ones, and keep the better ones around as breeding studs.  Unfortunately, the spore system means there's a risk of spores from a scrawny male knocking up one of your brood females.

[Reudh]

The spore system only applies when they're fully grown; if you have a scrawny male puppy then it's easily dealt with; if you spawn with a scrawny male dog then that's not so good.

Oh, by the way...

Those who post in the suggestions forums, shall Fear The Coming Of The Footkerchief.