De-Horning Little Besty

Back about 50 years ago growing up, my younger brother fashioned himself as a train conductor or something.  He had an affinity for trains.  One day my parents were notified that my brother had hopped on a Missouri Pacific Lines train heading south out of town, riding on it like a hobo.  Another time, he found a railroad flare and lit it.  He was waving it above his head and some of the molten substance dripped out of it and landed on his head.  That must have hurt something fierce as it burned his hair off.  He jumped in the car afterward and the scent of burning hair filled the car.  To this day, he still has a bald spot about the size of a nickel to remind him.

Tonight we'll show you someone else who got their head burned, but not by a railroad flare, and this time it was intentional.  It's time to de-horn Betsy.  We don't want horns on animals.  Those horns can be used as weapons, or they can cause them to get their heads stuck in the fence.  When a calf is between 2 and six weeks old, it's time to get it done.  When we separated LuLu from Betsy last night, we put the breaking halter on Betsy and told her that she wasn't going to like us much after tonight's events.

If you look in her hair right above where her ear is, you can see a tiny horn bud.  I took some clippers and clipped the hair away from both horn buds to fully expose them in order for me to see better to get the dehorning iron placed where it needed to be.

Here's the tool we use to get the job done.  It's called a dehorning iron and you plug it in until the end of it glows cherry red.

I held Betsy's head down securely while Tricia held her legs so she wouldn't kick.  Then we hold the hot iron on her horn and count the time.  You hold it for a period of 10-12 seconds, slightly rotating so that the entire area around the horn bud is burned.  Then I use the iron to burn the tip of the horn off.  Betsy was not happy.  The trick is doing this while holding a thrashing animal and not burning myself in the process!

What you are looking for is a copper-colored ring around the horn bud.  That's an indicator of success - that you've killed the roots of the horn and it won't grow.

This process is repeated on either side.  Then Betsy is left to rest.

She was glad to see us go.  This is not an enjoyable task for any of us involved, but it is necessary, and we reluctantly do it so that we don't have animals with horns.