Disbudding Our Baby Goats

When one of our goats named Agnes was born, time got away from us and we didn't de-horn (disbud) her.  Never again!  We vowed never to make that mistake again.  Agnes' horns grew, and she is the only critter on the homestead with horns.  It gives her an unfair advantage.  She bosses all the other animals around (including the cows).  She uses those horns as a weapon to force her way in to the feed trough.  She bullies the other animals.  Never again.  No sir-ee.

When out two latest kids were born, we made a mental note to get the clippers out and the disbudding iron and get the job done.  Tonight was the night.  We still haven't named the little kids yet.  We'll get around to it soon, I'd imagine.  The two just love playing with one another.  They were about to get settled in for the night underneath the feed trough, but we threw a monkey wrench on those plans.

Tricia grabbed the black one first.  She's jet black except for 3 strands of white hair on her forehead.  If you look closely, you can make them out.

We plugged in the disbudding tool.  In just a few minutes, it was warmed up, glowing cherry red on the tip.  Tricia donned leather gloves and sat on the little kid and held her firmly.

But before we got to that part of it, let's rewind.  First, you have to get the clippers and cut the hair away from both the horn buds.  This enables your disbudding iron to get down to the area around the horn buds.  The little black doeling has a nice haircut now and that enables you to see the little horn buds.

The tool is applied for about 4 seconds on each side.  Yes, the babies cry at first.  Then we come back a second time for about 3-4 more seconds until a copper-colored ring appears around the horn bud.

Now it's time for the little spotted goat.

It doesn't take long at all.  The babies cry.  The momma goats are concerned about their babies.  But in just a few minutes, we reunite them together and everything goes back to normal.

The heat from the disbudding tool kills the horn roots and they don't grow.  That's a good thing.  No bullying the others.  No getting horns stuck in the fence, either.  By tomorrow these kids will have forgotten all about this experience.

Time to Remove the Horns from the Triplets

Our little Nubian triplets are 4 weeks old and their little horn buds are coming in.  It is high time to do something about it.  Some call it de-horning and some call it disbudding, but the result is the same – you remove the horns of the animal.  The decision to dehorn or not to dehorn is one that many people struggle with.  There are pros and cons to keeping goats with horns. 

I read with interest that goats cannot sweat.  Horns allow them to regulate their body temperature.  Interesting.  Horns also allow goats to protect themselves against predators.  Horns allow the goats to scratch those “hard to reach places.”  Horns give the goats ‘handles’ that humans can hold while working on them.

The cons are that goat horns can be quite dangerous.  Dangerous for other goats.  Dangerous for people/kids.  The horns can grow quite sharp and put out an eye if you aren’t careful.  Then, goats have a habit of squirming and fitting their necks through the fence to eat the green grass on the other side.   If the goat has horns, they could be trapped until you untangle them from the fence and/or they can destroy the fence or strangle themselves.

We like to remove the horns from our goats.  It is not something I look forward to doing.  For Annie, I tried a process using an elastic band you use to castrate a young bull.  The process was successful in removing her horns but scurs (small misshapen horns) grew back.  We wanted to try an electric dehorner, but the one we borrowed to dehorn our bull, Chuck was too big.  Fortunately for us, a friend of ours had all the equipment and offered to help us dehorn Buckwheat, Darla, and Jane.

In addition to bringing the electric dehorning element, he brought a cool box shown below.  You simply put the kid into the box.

And then close the lid.  Just the goat’s head sticks out of the box and you can even tuck their ears inside and out of the way. 

The box has a divider in the bottom so that the kid can’t sit down, but remains upright and erect while the procedure is underway.  One person handles the dehorning and one holds the animal so that it is immobile.

The dehorner is plugged in for 30 minutes to allow it to heat up.

Then it is applied over the little horn buds.  This is the unpleasant part.  Smoke fills the room along with the smell of burning hair.  The goat cries and it is kind of a heart-wrenching thing.  It is essentially like branding an animal with a hot iron.

The heating iron is pressed down until a copper colored ring encircles the little horn buds.  The little horn buds’ tips can be flicked off and then the iron is pressed on the top of the horn buds.  This kills the root of the horns and stops their growth.

We apply some Blue Wound Coat spray to the area to ward off infection, but there is no blood in this process.

Here are all of the little tips of the triplet’s horns that came off.

While they screamed bloody murder during the procedure, they quickly recover and are running around playfully in just a few minutes like nothing happened.  The ‘out-patient’ procedure being finished, we decided to give them a full checkup and weigh them, so I went and got the scale and we placed a big blue molasses tub on top and zeroed it out and then placed each kid into the tub to weigh them.

And here is where we figured out what is going on with the three kids.

• Jane weighs 16 and 3/4 pounds
• Darla weighs 11 and 1/2 pounds
• Buckwheat weighs 14 pounds

The weights of the kids tells the story.  Jane is getting Annie’s left teat and sucking it dry, while Buckwheat and Darla share/fight over the other one.  As a result, Jane grows at a faster pace than her siblings, but Tricia is milking Annie and feeding Darla and Buckwheat with baby bottles filled with Annie’s milk supplemented with some of our cows’ milk.  They’ll all be okay, especially since we’ll be weaning in a couple of months.

So dehorning is done.  Special thanks to our friend and his family in North Louisiana for their expertise and equipment.