My little triplets are going to be a week old in 2 days and I'm gonna try my hand at disbudding, but I have a few questions.
I have two boys and one girl. I've been paying close attention to the boys' buds and they seem to be relatively unchanged since birth. Both boys were born normal weights(3.2lb and 2.4 lbs) so I'm wondering when I should disbud them? and is it possible to disbud too early?
Last year I had 4 bucklings born and had them disbudded by a lady I know who bred Oberhaslis. She told me that I needed to wait until the horns actually start to pop out of the buds(between 10 and 14 days old) . So the first boys were disbudded at 10 days old and the both got scurs one was even done twice and still got scurs. The second 2 boys were disbudded at 14 days. One had really small scurs, while the other had scurs so bad that we had to take him to get his horns removed surgically, and he still somehow managed to grow tiny scurs back after recovering.
So I understand just how bad disbudding too late can be. so naturally I don't want to have that happen again.
I know bucks tend to need disbudding sooner than does, but how much sooner?
My little girl is sooooo tiny(born at 1.6lbs) I can just barely feel her horn buds. Should I wait for her and her horn budlets(tiny buds) to get bigger?
My iron is a rhinehart X30 with a .55" tip. I'm told it's very good.
Other question:
How much pressure do you apply with the iron?
What are the limitations? i.e. how much pressure and how long can the iron be in contact without causing serious problems or death?
Any tips and tricks from you experienced disbudders out there would be greatly appreciated!
Replies
This is by far the best tutorial I've found. http://goat-info.com/disbudding%20baby.htm
Emily said:
HI Myra
I thought I might try to help you out with your questions.
I think you'd be best off with a 1/2"(approx) tipped iron. This is what was recommended to me by a friend of mine who has disbudded many goats. I even loaned out my iron to her when her iron broke and she needed to disbud many kids of different sizes. She said it worked great on all of them.
Here's a link to where I bought mine http://www.valleyvet.com/ct_detail.html?pgguid=30e07ae6-7b6a-11d5-a...
My Friend also said that the smaller tip don't work as well cuz they don't cover the whole area of growth and the copper ring ends up being more of a clover shape or the olympics logo so you can cover the whole area. This requires a lot more burning as you can probably imagine.
hope this helps!!
Myra Isaac said:
Deborah Niemann-Boehle said:
Actually I hope you did NOT order the disbudding iron with the pygmy tip. It's not big enough. You need the regular goat tip.
Myra Isaac said:
That should be fine, Myra.
Wow! If she was 1.6 pounds at birth, I'm not surprised that you are still having trouble finding horn buds. That is one TINY baby! The horn buds are there, especially if you see the hair swirls. Because of her tiny size, it just takes a little longer for them to be obvious. On the other hand, we had a buck born at 4 pounds last month, and we disbudded him at two days because his horn buds were quite large already.
I've been wondering about that. My Doeling is 15 days old and still has no horn buds. She's still quite small(3.4 lbs). I can kind of feel where her horn buds will be, but I have to feel around quite a bit to find them. She also has the little hair swirls. I keep checking her every day and they don't seem to change.
Is she just too small to have horn buds yet?
or, Is it possible she could be polled?
Neither of her parents are polled and from what I've read it should be impossible for her to be polled.
The only thing I would add, is that in my experience, my doelings didn't start getting buds as early as my boys, so I waited to be sure I could see where they were going to be, to make sure I hit the right spot. That said, it was only a difference of a few days tops, wait wise, and still under a week old.
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