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[IndigoFenix]

Neutering animals has been around for a long time - an ox, for instance, is a neutered bull.  Most animals were kept because they were useful, and if you had enough work for some animals but couldn't afford to feed more, you wouldn't want them making babies.  It also makes male animals more docile, and their meat more tender.

[SixOfSpades]

On a related note, the #1 most common way to train doctors to work on humans was to have them work on animals. You want to learn how to set a broken arm? Here, take this stick, break that sheep's leg, and then set it. Similarly, a "Neuter animal" job queued from a Kennel would give experience in Surgery, Suturing, Wound Dressing, and Animal Caretaking.

[MDFification]

While this would be a very convenient feature, I'm not sure if it would be genre appropriate.  Does anyone know if neutering being performed in medieval times?  I guess there were castratti sometime around the renaissance, so maybe it would be appropriate?  Presumably if its possible to neuter humans, its also possible to neuter animals. 

Honestly, I just don't think it was done though.  I know that my grandfather (who grew up on a farm) had to drown kittens to kill off excess cats.  He did not do this to be cruel - people at that time simply didn't consider killing animals to be cruel.  He drowned them so they wouldn't starve to death, which would have been much more painful to them.

Anyhow, I'm definitely not opposed to this idea, just curious is anyone knows if it would be appropriate for the setting of Dwarf fortress.

Also, as has already been mentioned, the simplest way to deal with this without modding is to put any females you don't want to breed in a cage.  They won't have babies in a cage.  Putting the males in a cage has no effect.  This of course doesn't work for pets, so then you have to get creative...

I imagine people during the Middle Ages would be able to neuter their livestock. It's not that hard of a concept to grasp, surely even the most uneducated serf could understand that the ol' hanky-panky makes beh-behs. That, and I'm sure they understand that if you cut off the "pipe section" you get no more (at least from that screw pump).   

They'd cut off the 'ole thing. Medieval serfs believed that pregnancy was caused by both partners orgasming.

[Vyro]

Ever see that old Star Trek episode, "The Trouble With Tribbles"?  I do what Scotty did, except instead of beaming the cats to the Klingons, I trade them to the elves when I get too many.  I do butcher puppies when I get puppysplosion and need the meat, but I don't do the Cruelty for !!Science!!.

Double that. I always stuff the excessive puppies/kitties into a pair of cages. Dogs, I do tend to keep to sustain the ablative meatshield early warning packs on sufficient numbers. They also make okay meat/leather/tallow when it's needed. Cats, I sell off to the elves when the cage gets full (purely subjective), which also nets me their entire caravan of cloth. Without pissing off the pansies, yes. Not until their forest retreat gets overrun by dozens of my mewling little bastards, that is.

[Tacomagic]

Back to the topic of neutering, you can actually do it with DFHack if you don't mind tweaking flags.

If you use gui\gm-editor on a cat/dog/creature, you can find the orientation flags in status>current_soul>orientation_flags

If you marry_male and marry_female to false, that will sterile the creature. (Note: you only actually need to set the opposite gender, but doing both is faster if you don't want to have to look up the gender first).  It works for any creature.

Somebody with better Lua skills than me could probably write a script that would accomplish that in a single hotkey combo.  I attempted to do it myself in the opposite direction (make sterile animals breed) but could never make it work.  Apparently I'm Lua-disabled.

[Pirate Bob]

So I did some reading.  As suggested by several people, castration has been around since prehistory.  As also suggested, they would just "cut off the 'ole thing", which is about 90% fatal (due to large blood loss).  This is not something you would do to your pets.  This was used, as also pointed out, for large draft animals (bulls, horses) to create more docile working animals.  The fact that most of them died was seen as an acceptable loss, as males were too difficult to use as working animals without sterilization. 

Also, castration alone would be fairly useless for controlling animal populations in dwarf fortress.  As soon as those filthy elves show up with one caged male cat, all of your female cats will become pregnant anyway.  If castration was 90% fatal with medieval practices, I have to assume that spaying, which is much more complicated, would be 100% fatal.

All that being said, I still think neutering would be a nice feature.  "Dwarven medicine" is clearly far superior to average medieval medicine, as it can miraculously cure almost any battle wound, so maybe we could argue that it would also allow safe neutering of animals? 

[TheHossofMoss]

So I did some reading.  As suggested by several people, castration has been around since prehistory.  As also suggested, they would just "cut off the 'ole thing", which is about 90% fatal (due to large blood loss).  This is not something you would do to your pets.  This was used, as also pointed out, for large draft animals (bulls, horses) to create more docile working animals.  The fact that most of them died was seen as an acceptable loss, as males were too difficult to use as working animals without sterilization. 

Also, castration alone would be fairly useless for controlling animal populations in dwarf fortress.  As soon as those filthy elves show up with one caged male cat, all of your female cats will become pregnant anyway.  If castration was 90% fatal with medieval practices, I have to assume that spaying, which is much more complicated, would be 100% fatal.

All that being said, I still think neutering would be a nice feature.  "Dwarven medicine" is clearly far superior to average medieval medicine, as it can miraculously cure almost any battle wound, so maybe we could argue that it would also allow safe neutering of animals?

But the question remains.... what do we do with the "pipe section?" Butcher it?

[Tacomagic]

Created a DFHack script that, among other things, allows you to sterilize animals.  This might be pertinent to your interest in neutering.

http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=9637

[Snaake]

While this would be a very convenient feature, I'm not sure if it would be genre appropriate.  Does anyone know if neutering being performed in medieval times?  I guess there were castratti sometime around the renaissance, so maybe it would be appropriate?  Presumably if its possible to neuter humans, its also possible to neuter animals. 

Honestly, I just don't think it was done though.  I know that my grandfather (who grew up on a farm) had to drown kittens to kill off excess cats.  He did not do this to be cruel - people at that time simply didn't consider killing animals to be cruel.  He drowned them so they wouldn't starve to death, which would have been much more painful to them.

Anyhow, I'm definitely not opposed to this idea, just curious is anyone knows if it would be appropriate for the setting of Dwarf fortress.

Also, as has already been mentioned, the simplest way to deal with this without modding is to put any females you don't want to breed in a cage.  They won't have babies in a cage.  Putting the males in a cage has no effect.  This of course doesn't work for pets, so then you have to get creative...

Yea, no, castration was a fairly well-known procedure from prehistorical times.

• Eunuchs: purposefully "created" since at least Sumeria in the 21st century BCE, still common in several places around the world in the 19th and plenty at least lived in the 20th century, although I think it died off quite quickly in the 20th century between/after the world wars. Well, except for as "treatment" of homosexuals like Alan Turing, inmates at mental institutions etc. Still sees some use, and not just in voluntary contexts (treatment for prostrate cancer); chemical castration can be used as part of criminal punishment in a few U.S. states and other countries as well. Fun fact: The last (Chinese) imperial eunuch died in 1996! And studies on the aforementioned inmates & on Korean court eunuchs show they lived on average 14 years longer than uncastrated men from/in similar circumstances. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunuch
• Capons (castrated roosters, grow to be twice the size that they usually would): probably existed in ancient China and Greece, written mentions exist from the Roman empire. Very popular among the nobility in medieval Europe, regular chickens were for peasants. A rarity nowadays, but may be available at well-stocked markets/butchers/wherever you buy your meat.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capon
• Oxen: castrated bulls, makes them more easily controllable; 1 bull can be used for breeding a *lot* of cows, and you get to do selective breeding (which would be useful in DF too, for larger war dogs and other exotic trainables, and bigger food animals). Probably from around 4000 BCE (compare that cattle are thought to have been domesticated ca. 8000 BCE). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ox
• Gelding: castrated horse/other equine (usually donkey): again, better behaved, also the selective breeding aspect. "The Scythians [Iranian equestrian tribes, 7th century BCE to 4th century CE, so in the same time frame as ancient Greece & Rome] are thought to have been the first people to geld their horses." Even male mules, who are sterile to begin with, may be castrated for behavioural reasons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelding
• Pigs, sheep and goats are also often castrated, due to the previous behaviour + fattening/growth boosting issues already mentioned for draft animals and capons respectively, as well as for selective breeding reasons, but also because at least with pigs and goats, the flesh of adult males acquires a distinctive and unpleasant taste. I remember reading about some herders where the traditional method of castrating a goat was for the shepherd to bite off the testes. Goats were domesticated ca. 6000-8000 BCE, pigs ca. 9000 BCE, and sheep ca. 9000-11000 BCE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castration#Veterinary_practice

Final fun fact: the tool used to castrate livestock (at least horses) is called an emasculator. I kid you not.

Also, I only found a mention of cutting off the whole thing and 90% mortality rates on the methods used in Ottoman times, or when it's used as a method of execution (on it's own or as part of hanging, drawing & quartering). Certainly just removing the testes (of animals, usually) doesn't/didn't carry such high mortality rates even in ancient times, or they'd just slaughter them instead of attempting castration.

[Borge]

So I did some reading.  As suggested by several people, castration has been around since prehistory.  As also suggested, they would just "cut off the 'ole thing", which is about 90% fatal (due to large blood loss).  This is not something you would do to your pets.  This was used, as also pointed out, for large draft animals (bulls, horses) to create more docile working animals.  The fact that most of them died was seen as an acceptable loss, as males were too difficult to use as working animals without sterilization. 

Also, castration alone would be fairly useless for controlling animal populations in dwarf fortress.  As soon as those filthy elves show up with one caged male cat, all of your female cats will become pregnant anyway.  If castration was 90% fatal with medieval practices, I have to assume that spaying, which is much more complicated, would be 100% fatal.

All that being said, I still think neutering would be a nice feature.  "Dwarven medicine" is clearly far superior to average medieval medicine, as it can miraculously cure almost any battle wound, so maybe we could argue that it would also allow safe neutering of animals?

But the question remains.... what do we do with the "pipe section?" Butcher it?

+Dog Penis Roast+

This is a finely prepared dog penis roast. The ingredients are well-minced dog penis, exceptionally minced dog penis, minced dog penis, and superiorly minced rock nut. It menaces with spikes of dog penis.

[Os Q]

Piglets are very easy to neuter surgically, but I'll spare the squeamish the details. They are usually fine an hour afterword. Sheep, goats, and some cattle are usually banded, meaning they use a band to atrophy the testes off. Stuff well within Dwarf tech.

[Borge]

Piglets are very easy to neuter surgically, but I'll spare the squeamish the details. They are usually fine an hour afterword. Sheep, goats, and some cattle are usually banded, meaning they use a band to atrophy the testes off. Stuff well within Dwarf tech.

I watched my agriculture teacher in seventh grade cut the the testicles off a lamb with a pocket knife, rub a small amount of cream on it and it ran off as if nothing had happened.

[Os Q]

That works too, though I prefer banding (with an sterile and insecticide sprayed band) since there is less skill to it and I don't have to worry as much about blood loss. I've also seen goat kids being disbudded, meaning having their horns burned off before they can grow. Young animals recover absurdly fast, they are usually much more upset about being held down rather than what painful procedure they are going through at the time.