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[Chimerat]

I didn't even realize there was a difference from animal to animal genetically.

I hadn't until a few weeks/months ago when someone made a passing comment about how I seemed like the sort who would be focused on selective breeding programs. I asked if that was possible in DF and apparently it involved the descriptive lines. So far I think my animals are always "gigantic" but some dogs are more muscular than others, and so on. The other problem is that you might accidentally geld your only hetero-/bisexual male and thus have no chance to breed...

[smeeprocket]

The thing that excites me most about this change is I will be able to geld male pets that come in, which has always been a problem. Someone always brings a tomcat or a ram or a boar or something with them.

My farm animals are female for the milk. So one male animal can result in a lot of micromanaging where I have to slaughter the young on a regular basis.

I'd like to be able to slaughter peoples' pets anyway, tbh, but I probably wouldn't do it. Killing kittens that nobody is attached to is as far as I'll go.

[taptap]

I hadn't until a few weeks/months ago when someone made a passing comment about how I seemed like the sort who would be focused on selective breeding programs. I asked if that was possible in DF and apparently it involved the descriptive lines. So far I think my animals are always "gigantic" but some dogs are more muscular than others, and so on. The other problem is that you might accidentally geld your only hetero-/bisexual male and thus have no chance to breed...

You need Dwarf Therapist, as sad as it is. I didn't use it until I got into animal husbandry.

[vjmdhzgr]

I think the main thing is that really gelding is pretty much pointless, especially since breeding requires being within touch range is also going to be added. I tried for a long time and the only point I could really imagine is if you want your military to depend solely on war animals so you want to get as many of the biggest war animals you can get so you use the worst of the animals genetically as war animals and keep the rest, but since there's a cap on how many of one animal type you can have you don't want to waste it on the children of the ones actually being used for war so you sterilize them. Before the change to breeding requiring being in touch range sterilizing males animals would be pretty much pointless except for selective breeding, but sterilizing female animals would be more useful. Because with male animals there was no difference between having one and having fifty as far as breeding worked. Sterilizing females would be more useful since you would actually be able to lessen the amount of animals born without reducing it to zero. The problem is though why not just butcher the animal? I can imagine maybe doing it while the animal is still growing up so it can grow to full size and you make sure it doesn't have any children accidentally, but then you could just butcher those... I'm really having trouble finding a use for this feature. If you could sterilize female animals then I guess you would be able to milk them without needing to worry about children, but you could still butcher them and I think in real life most animals only produce milk after having children so after sterilizing them it would no longer be a safe assumption that they're having children at every opportunity as they would before. Yeah, I really can't imagine much use for sterilization even if it was possible on female animals. I suppose role playing?

DF does not have the "must be pregnant for milk" restriction in place. Also, males also give wool, or can be in an area guarding with females you also don't want to produce offpspring.


I still think the biggest issues (as in my original post) is that it's nearly impossible to keep track of animals currently. If you could nickname them it would be a different matter, even if I just used shorthand for size and such.

When I mentioned the milk thing I was talking about how I think it's okay that animals in Dwarf Fortress don't have that requirement since as long as there's a male and female animal of the same type anywhere on the map pretty much immediately as the female gives birth she would become pregnant again. Normally people keep farm animals for breeding so it's a safe assumption that there's another male animal on the map somewhere. I then mention that it wouldn't be a safe assumption that the animal is having children as fast as possible if it was impossible for them to have children. I also took the guard animals into consideration. The only reason I could imagine you wouldn't want to have your war animal giving birth is if you wanted to depend entirely on them and as such put effort into making sure that every one of those animals is at their maximum power which would require selective breeding. Then the reason I didn't think it would be useful for pets is because now that breeding requires being within touch range you could just lock the pets up somewhere and their spores would no longer fly through the walls. Basically I'm saying sterilizing male animals would have a small amount of use before the removal of the magic spores, sterilizing female animals would be more useful though still of kind of questionable use if you have a good enough butcher, and sterilizing any animals at all after the removal of magic spores is pretty much useless.

[Chimerat]

You need Dwarf Therapist, as sad as it is. I didn't use it until I got into animal husbandry.

That doesn't, unfortunately, give you a way to identify the male in question in game either. You can "nickname" the animals, but that doesn't seem to show up in game...

[wuphonsreach]

The thing that excites me most about this change is I will be able to geld male pets that come in, which has always been a problem. Someone always brings a tomcat or a ram or a boar or something with them.

With the upcoming changes to breeding only being via touch - you can just keep that male migrant critter away from the females.  Whether that means 1 tile away, or 5+ tiles away is unclear to me.

Historically, gelding was done to make the animal better behaved and easier to control.  Especially when around males of the same species (stallions tend to be territorial against other stallions if mares are around).   

So in-game, Toady would have to make males of the same species more likely to pick fights with other males in the same pasture unless they are gelded.  That would provide an in-game incentive for either pasturing males separately or to butcher them or to geld them (in the case of work animals).  There probably needs to be a "territorial" tag along with a size value (i.e. a female alligator might want a very large area to herself, while a female chicken is fine with a 1x1 pasture with no other animals in it).  Plus some sort of "degree of territorial behavior" ranging from only against same-sex/same-species up to "anything living".

We definitely need the ability to nickname animals...

[locustgate]

Historically, gelding was done to make the animal better behaved and easier to control.  Especially when around males of the same species (stallions tend to be territorial against other stallions if mares are around).   

It's done in bulls to make them produce better meat, otherwise they mostly focus on bulking up and have very little marbling.

[wierd]

they also have unpleasant meat texture, and taste "Gamey".

[Urist Tilaturist]

Gelding should makes male animals less violent, and improve the quality of their meat. There are other reasons for doing it than stopping reproduction.

[Duuvian]

Why bother neutering mountain gnomes? Just kill them; they're useless.

Gnome mercy

[smeeprocket]

Why bother neutering mountain gnomes? Just kill them; they're useless.

Gnome mercy

I think female sterilization would be beyond the scope of dwarven civs, we don't even have the ability for animal caretakers to actually do veterinary care, much less a tubal litigation or removal of the ovaries entirely. That's a hardcore surgical procedure. Whereas gelding is basically crushing the top of the scrotum pouch so tightly the entire scrotum can be removed.

It's quite brutal. I've watched my share of videos espousing the evils of animals kept for meat production. Regardless of if you are okay with it or not, it is very unpleasant to watch. (unless you've done it a lot yourself, then it sort of becomes business as usual, I'm sure.)

Gelding doesn't need increased animal aggression, herd animals have to be micromanaged enough. I would use gelding liberally to get the best possible stock for meat production and to make sure beloved pets don't impregnate my milking pigs (and animals will produce milk without having been pregnant or having a male in the vicinity from what I can tell. I usually just bring a couple sows with me, no need for a grazing spot and they can be milked.)

I'm very excited about this addition.

As for mountain gnomes, you can breed them for meat production. Therefore, you'd want to geld the gnomes that are the least... gnomey? So that you could breed a superior stock of mountain gnomes for their delicious gnomey meat products.

[Urist Tilaturist]

I maintain my position on animal violence. Male animals kept together should sometimes fight if they are not gelded.

Female sterilisation is far beyond the capabilities of dwarves and would just result in grisly torture and death for the animal. Dwarves should not even attempt it.

[Khym Chanur]

...Which would be fantastic, if it wasn't for the fact that you still have difficulty knowing which pet you're flagging for slaughter (you can only tell male or female on the Z menu).

You could edit the raws to give different caste-names to males and females: "stallion" and "mare" for horses, for example.

[Broseph Stalin]

Gelding changes the gender icon so Toady apparently considered this.

[Thisfox]

In the real world, gelding a rooster (or cockerel) creates a capon, a fat and delicious source of chicken meat very different to that of the ungelded young fowl. This was done a lot in medieval times, and is done to this day.

My question is this though: Does a capon have more food (and more flavour) generated in DF, or is it totally a method for making them unable to cause a baby chick explosion? Does anyone know? Because if it's just for baby-explosion-prevention, and not for Norman/French Cooking, I don't think I'll worry too much about gelding my roosters, I'll just do what I do now, and slaughter them the moment I purchase them.

It is good for role playing I guess.