I have a brand new baby...she is one week old today and I want to get her disbudded. Problem is that there are virtually no vets in the area that work with goats. I am going to have to drive at least an hour and they want to sedate her and give her CD/T at the same time.
Should I let them sedate and vaccinate her, I wasn't planning on it. They want to charge $60-75 to disbud one goat and I have to drive to them. Is this reasonable?
Replies
Oh, I would never have done it myself without seeing it done first. I'm going to take all our babies this year but next year we may try it ourselves. I agree that seeing it done is well worth the money, especially when the vet talks you through it and explains everything. I would have someone do it for me always if I could find someone experienced closer by and could avoid the extra "office fees". At least now I know how much this vet will charge and how much I would need to set aside for next year's babies.
New goat owner here and took new baby and mom in at two weeks. The entire bill was $125.30 which included baby's first shots and disbudding. Total of that bill was for baby totaling $70.30 with $32.88 of that specifically for dehorning with the balance being for sedation and her shot(s). The entire bill included a $10.50 discount for multiple visit. The $55 for mom was okay I guess since it verified her bleeding was normal and had stopped and her milk was normal/good. Regarding the disbudding, I would again take baby to the vet. He was doing a disbudding on twins when I got there so I had a good introduction to it before Ginger was the patient. For this novice, it was worth the fee. After having watched it, I would not want to do it myself and especially without sedation. I had actually considered it but was too much of a coward to experiment on my first kid.
Just my thoughts.
I agree with Debbie. We are very new in all of this and have been reading books, researching online etc. and although we are planning on disbudding ourselves in the future felt we we should at least watch someone who has experience. The lady we got our does from disbudded our babies and even castrated the boys for us. She is an angel! She has been doing this for a good while and probably has more experience than most vets. The babies recover from the pain of disbudding quickly and it seems a lot safer to me not to have them sedated.
Debbie Lynn said:
well...technically she only charged me $24 for the disbudding...it was the $25 office fee that got me irritated. We didn't even do anything in the office we did it all on the back of the truck in the parking lot of the office. That is the only thing that I kind of disagree with. Had she met us somewhere then I could see paying her a travel fee but since we came to her it was kind of a pain to have to pay the office fee. Other than that I was very happy with her. She just has to charge the office fee cause the owner of the vet service requires it (she is one of 2 livestock vets employed there). They don't even have an examination table in the office or anything...it's just a desk and computer and supply storage...95% of their work is done in the field or on the back of the truck since they are livestock vets. Makes sense but I still hate paying an "office visit fee". I don't have much choice...the only other goat vet never returned my call and is an hour in the other direction. She (the vet we used) also told us that we have another vet going back into visit that has been in Africa for the last year that will be 2 counties over and she is very good with goats as well so she said in a pinch we could probably get her out to see us or meet her halfway.
We had a similar problem getting the brand of goat feed at the local TSC even though there were several people that requested it. Took us over a month of calling the feed company reps and the TSC reps about it every other day but they carry it now. Even though they sell a lot of it they still threaten to take it out of the store. It's stupid.
We have a local vet disbud our goats they do sedate them and charges us $15.00 per goat so the price has not changed I know another local vet charges $23.00 for disbudding. So $65.00 is very high price.
I wonder if it's like my photography prices... I HATE shooting weddings... so I charge way more for those than I would if I enjoyed it. I figure if people are willing to pay that much, I'm willing to shoot them... even though I dislike the pressure of wedding shoots so much. lol I wonder if some vets don't like doing that sort of thing, so they charge a higher price, and figure if someone will pay that, then they'll buck up and do it.
Deborah Niemann-Boehle said:
Super News Lori, and the most important thing I notice about your opinion of the vet is that you seem very happy and comfortable with her. That says a great deal about any professional relationship. If she puts you at ease and you feel confident in her abilities then you really can't ask for anymore than that. Hang on to her number. Only time will tell if your faith in her really pays off. Best of Blessings to you!
Glad to hear it all went well! Sounds like you have a vet worth keeping on your call list! :)
Oh, she was good and yes she used the bigger iron. It was definitely 1/2 inch. She is one of the few goat vets in the area so she has quite a bit of experience being one of the only 2 for about a 4 county radius and she explained the whole process from start to finish and answered our questions and talked my 5 and 7 yr olds through the whole process and then showed them everything she had preserved in jars in the office. She only gave her enough to sedate for about an hour at the most and only gave her .2 cc of the pain meds to take the edge off for the night and recommended we give no further pain meds except a bit of baby aspirin crushed up on her tongue if she really seemed in pain but to call her before we did anything. She was fine today, I left her in with mom last night and didn't milk this morning so she could just have her there for comfort with the trauma but she has been back to normal all day....pip popping around the pasture like crazy!
Well, it went well, she sedated her and gave her a shot of mild pain reliever that she said should last her through the night and did the disbudding. She was very good...cost me $55 without the CD/T. I don't know if hubby could have handled it without the sedative. They look pretty good to me and she was very nice. She said that next time she could probably meet us halfway. It ended up being $25 for the office visit, $24 for disbudding, $3 for sedative, and $3 for Flunixin meglumine (pain relief).
I probably wouldn't have an issue doing it next year myself but hubby just couldn't take it if she wasn't sedated and screaming her head off.
-
1
-
2
-
3
of 3 Next