I disbudded my two bucklings today...kind of last minute uh oh they will be a week old tomorrow so I had better just do it...
We used a Rhinehart X30, I shaved them first & we aimed for 10 sec but not all at one time. We stopped after 4 or so seconds, blew on the head, and so on. In between sides we took a little break and I let the kid suckle on my finger a little to calm down.
Tonight they each have 1 slightly swollen eye. Only 1 of the two eyes on each kid is swollen so it must have been to do with the angle I was doing the iron at?
Will they be okay? Do they normall have some swelling or did I overdo it? I don't have any banamine...well I do but it's paste for horses so I don't think I could figure out a tiny enough dose of it for them.
Replies
I actually never really thought about the weight until this discussion. When we have tiny little 2# kids, we usually wait until two weeks to do them, but I've never weighed them. I happen to have three little kids that were born at 2# last week, so I will weigh them when I think they're big enough to disbud. Typically all bucks are done by a week of age though.
Rachel, I am relieved I'm not the only one who had some swollen kids. Their eyes were normal by the next morning, possibly still a bit puffy on the head around the burns but hard to say...at any rate they are just as bouncy and happy as they could be so I can't imagine there's anything wrong with them.
But...what weight would be considered appropriate if weight is a better judge than age, Deborah- do you have a # you go by?
I rechecked my dates and the babies were 9days old when she first came out...they are 3 weeks old today...Going to try and get her to do them Tuesday...I will check out the info and fw'd it to her...Thnx.
Being a big animal vet out here most of her patience are cows and the larger boer sized breeds...We had to get our ND from a few counties over because no one in the area is raising them...at least not registered ones.
Yikes! I didn't realize your kids were getting so old, Kelsie. Can you suggest that your vet check out the disbudding info in "Goat Medicine" by Smith and Sherman? It's a veterinary text on goats. The authors say standard kids should be disbudded within the first week and "pygmy kids" by two weeks. Waiting until five weeks is a very bad idea. I'm a little surprised your kids are only 3 pounds at 2 weeks. Is this a first freshener?
As for the lidocaine, I don't personally know of any vets who use a local. Breeders obviously don't because we can't legally get it. Kids recover from disbudding very quickly, provided it is done correctly.
Both of my girls got swollen. It went away, and they are fine. :)
Yes she did say that in response to my questions and panic about my vet being out of town when my babies were born...but since that post, I had my vet come out to debud the babies the day she came back...but as she (the vet) could not feel any buds at that time and the babies were so little she told me to wait...they are growing like weeds now and I can feel the buds...so going to try and get her to do them Tuesday.
I had read a post somewhere by Deborah I think that said not to wait any longer than a week on a buckling, which they both are. Will have to do more research...weighing...whatever before I do this again.
Our vet was reluctant to do ours at 2weeks because they were so little..just about 3lb each..not only could she not feel the buds but she was concerned about the Lidocaine (sp?) toxicity on such little ones...she asked me to wait 3 more weeks or until I could easily feel the buds on them both, then call her...The bulk of her goat clients have larger breeds and therefore thicker sculls at an earlier age.
Seems Deborah that you and her are sharing the thinking about weight/size vs age.
Deborah Niemann-Boehle said:
hmm...okay....
well- my husband kept saying you aren't getting the front enough, you need to tip it forward....guessing I shouldn't have done that. Hope they are okay :( At least they were bouncing around like normal, they both nursed immediately afterward and did not seem particularly fazed by the disbudding.
Maybe they were too small to disbud. I did not have an easy way to weigh them at birth & have not had a weight on them yet.
The only flat out mistake I know I made was that one of them squirmed bad in the middle of one burn and managed to turn his head and I nicked him with the iron right between his two horn buds, like smack in the middle. But I was in the process of pulling it back when it happened & it was just a nick, did not look like a big deal to me.
I was afraid to take them to my vet because I doubt they've ever seen a ND baby and I have read so many horror stories of vets doing worse than the owners themselves, plus frankly my horse just colicked and I can't afford another vet bill!
There's "some woman" out in the swamp who will do it for $5 a goat but that kinda gave me the heebie jeebies too. So I watched all the videos on youtube and did my best :(
It's not normal, but I doubt it's fatal either. You probably just got too close to the eye. When the vet did our first kids, he accidentally burned one kid's eyelid, and it didn't grow quite normally. He was using a calf disbudder, which was way too large. So, my guess is that you just moved the iron a little too far forward on the kid's head. I've been thinking that rather than talk about age at disbudding, we should probably be talking about weight. We just disbudded a 3-day old buck last week, but he was almost 5 pound at birth, so BIG difference between him and a 2 pound kid!
-
1
-
2
of 2 Next