Having a "why are we doing this" kind of day. Our kids are 10 weeks old tomorrow. Momma is polled, and has the big round hard bumps where horns would be. When the kids were born we could tell some had horn buds and swirls right off the bat and some did not have anything at all. Within a couple of weeks the polled ones got the round hard knots, still no swirl and absolutely no point to the bumb, and the bump was fixed within the skull and not moveable. The horn buds on the others kept becomimg more apparent until disbudded. We could absolutely tell a difference at that point.
Today, at ten weeks, I swear I feel a tip on the bump. If you run your finger across it, it snags you a bit. These are bottle babies and handled a lot every day, so I am certain today is the first day we can feel this. I haven't shaved them to get a visual of it yet.
So now what? :( Did I just let kids grow horns and get too big to disbud? Plus I already sold one of these girls as polled, and she is at her new home. Her knots were never as prominent as the ones in question, though. Praying she is polled.
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The fact that you could shave off hair says a lot. Horns do not have hair growing on them. I just sold an 11-week-old horned buckling to someone with a horned herd, and I took a pic of his horns just for this very reason. Unfortunately the pic is on my husband's phone or I'd post it for you. His horns were about 3 inches long!
Deborah you are making me feel better. I took these pics - what do you guys think? Looking at them without the hair, I do believe they are polled. Both goats in question feel the same. When shaving this guy, I nicked the little hard bump just a tiny bit, and it peeled off a little callous that is the texture of fingernail, pretty thin. The hard point is gone now on that one ( you can see it in the pics, the one on his left is still there - the dark little dot, and the little light/bloody dot where the right one peeled off.)
The underlying bump now feels just like it did before - just a very round solid hard knot. So what do you guys think? Could it be a little collagen formation from headbutting each other?
Forgive the view of the posterior head shot - his head is in a container of raisins, trying to get the last one. :) It was the only way we could get the shot, lol.
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You do not hear much talk of this in goats at all, but there is such a thing as a scurred polled. It is much more common in sheep. Kids do NOT grow horns at 10 weeks.
Do you have pics?