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Animal / Livestock Castration

Timble2

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NOTE: This thread was spun off from the Cow Tipping thread.

chockfullahate said:
i asked a friend who grew up on a farm which had cows about this, and he has never heard of it, so maybe it is a ul, but then he said something mysterious about "pig bricking" and wandered off laughing...

I was told about a technique for castrating boars with a pair of half bricks, it is quite possible that the person who told me (who grew up on a farm) was just spinning a yarn for gullible non-farmers...
 
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I was told about a technique for castrating boars with a pair of half bricks, it is quite possible that the person who told me (who grew up on a farm) was just spinning a yarn for gullible non-farmers...

Yup, I've heard that lambs used to be castrated by having their testicles crushed between two bricks. Dunno if it's true, though it's very like the casual routine cruelty of the past when, say, newborn puppies' tails were bitten off. I know the puppies' tails one is true because when I worked at the Courts I saw an RSPCS prosecution of a woman who'd done it, soon after docking became illegal. In the light of this, the 'two bricks' story rings true.

Whatever, it's part of folklore. Years ago when the council would replace tenants' fireplaces they'd also supply new firebricks and we female tenants would gleefully wave them at our partners, who'd laugh and pretend to panic. Happy days!
 
Details are mercifully scant but it is written that "the teenage Sultan Osman II, who in May 1622 suffered an excruciating death by “compression of the testicles”–as contemporary chronicles put it–at the hands of an assassin known as Pehlivan the Oil Wrestler."

Every boys' school has its budding Pehlivans!

More Ottoman fun in this article by Mike Dash on the Smithsonian site!

More graphically, there are lots of barbaric animal-castration videos on Youtube, many of them oddly-labelled "pig-circumcision!" Once the balls are located and pulled out for inspection, it is common practice to slice them through, before brute force is applied to tug them free. Stones are certainly employed in parts of India, though the technique is more hammer-and-anvil with a stick between to sever the spermatic cords and blood-supply. It is obvious from the videos that these occasions are high-points of the social calendar in some villages, children allowed a ringside seat! :jugg:
 
Yup, I've heard that lambs used to be castrated by having their testicles crushed between two bricks. Dunno if it's true, though it's very like the casual routine cruelty of the past when, say, newborn puppies' tails were bitten off. I know the puppies' tails one is true because when I worked at the Courts I saw an RSPCS prosecution of a woman who'd done it, soon after docking became illegal. In the light of this, the 'two bricks' story rings true.

Whatever, it's part of folklore. Years ago when the council would replace tenants' fireplaces they'd also supply new firebricks and we female tenants would gleefully wave them at our partners, who'd laugh and pretend to panic. Happy days!
I believe that the two bricks method was some sort of joke. It went along the lines of a farmer explaining to a townie how they use two bricks to castrate a sheep. When said townie asks the farmer if that hurts the response is “only if you catch your thumbs between the bricks”.
 
I believe that the two bricks method was some sort of joke. It went along the lines of a farmer explaining to a townie how they use two bricks to castrate a sheep. When said townie asks the farmer if that hurts the response is “only if you catch your thumbs between the bricks”.

Haha, yup, I'd forgotten that detail!
 
I believe that the two bricks method was some sort of joke. It went along the lines of a farmer explaining to a townie how they use two bricks to castrate a sheep. When said townie asks the farmer if that hurts the response is “only if you catch your thumbs between the bricks”.

Using a pair of bricks to castrate camels is another common trope for jokes and tall tales (including the bit about there being no pain unless you catch your thumbs between the bricks).
 
When our cat was neutered, the vet said it was local anaesthetic, quick slit, pop them out, send him on his way. Not even a stitch.
 
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