In humans, we don’t usually castrate them because it throws their hormones out of whack, and causes all kinds of issues, but wouldn’t that also be the case for some animals, since their hormones systems are fairly similar?
Why is it that that we remove the testicles entirely, rather than giving them vasectomies like we do for humans?
I mean, the process of a vasectomy is basically cutting the vas deferens in the testes. It’s arguably less complicated than removing them completely, since you have a smaller wound, and less bleeding because you’re not severing very many blood vessels in the process. If nothing else, recovery should be faster.
You’re still cutting into tissue, introducing a potential infection vector, and then need to delicately cut and clamp small vessels before stitching it back up vs stretching a rubber band with a special tool and then waiting a while. The skill level involved isn’t anywhere near the same.
Wouldn’t doing that just provide a massively increased risk of necrosis/infection, since you’ve now got dead tissue just hanging about?
At least for small animals, they usually go the surgical route with surgical removal of the gonads, rather than using a rubber band.
I know they use the rubber band method for large animals, although that could easily be due to risks associated with anaesthesia/surgery than anything else, since it’s a lot harder to operate on something like a horse compared to a cat.
For a cat that you are personally paying to have neutered, they will do anything you want. There are options to just surgically sterilize and leave everything intact. But that’s not only much more expensive, it also leaves their behavior the same which isn’t always desirable. Unless you enjoy a male spraying all over your house, that is.
But for a farmer that has to sterilize a herd, they aren’t spending the time and money on a vet to come and surgically neuter every animal they have. A rubber band is cheap and can be done by the farmer, and a vet only has to be called if an infection happens. It’s been done for centuries. No one is going to spend 50 times the amount of money if they don’t have to.