So I have had my baby for a couple weeks now. He is now 5 weeks old and he still has little horns. Now I talked to someone else and showed them the pics and they said that he wasn't disbudded right cuz he shouldn't have any horns at all. So now I have a billy which will be a wether when the time is right, that is gonna have horns. The guy I got him from told me that the horns would fall off and that they were dead. So what do you all think?
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Thanks for that link Kim. That was very interesting and I am considering doing something about this one horned doe I have. Just in case, I don't want to take any chance of her hurting any of my NDs. I really like her but I can't let her hurt anyone. It is just not worth the risk. After seeing this, I might just try this on her.
I tried banding the horns of a 4 month old doe. There are some good instructions on the web with lots of pictures. Was it successful? No, but I know what was wrong. The base of my doe's horns were not round like the goat in the how-to pictures. I couldn't get the wire and bands low enough on the base of the horns. One horn fell off after about 1 1/2 month but is growing again. The other horn never did come off. I am going to try again in the fall after fly season. I did a lot of reading before I attempted this. It was harder to do than I thought it would be. My little goat certainly didn't stand still for it! The benefit to this method is that the nerve inside the horn is slowly pinched off so it basically seals itself before it dies and falls off. When the vet saws them off, it's much more invasive and open into the skull. Many recommend waiting until fall/winter when there are no flies. Definitely better to de-bud then try and deal with horns after. Obviously, this was out of Traci's control. My doe was a twin. She had horns and her sister was polled. The breeder never bothered to de-bud her. I would never have a horned goat again. "Blossom" has a great personality but she is hard on my fences and I'm always worried she will get hung up because of her horns. My kids have accidently gotten too close to her head when picking her up or playing with her and have gotten poked.
http://littlecudchewers.com/Dehorning%20Older%20Goats.htm
Thank you, Debbie, for terminology. Without knowing exactly what to call the ugly bumps left I didn't call them anything. I wasn't sure if they were correctly called scabs (seemed too soon for scabs immediately after) or what. What I know for sure is they were quite ugly and took far longer than the two weeks the vet said it would take.
Hmmm. Ginger didn't look like that. Her horns were not much more than buds when hers were done at about two weeks. However, it took well over a month before they "fell off" and left just her fur on the top of her head. It was long enough that I wonder if it "took" but hers were little "buttons" and didn't grow any more after that first week.
Well i thank you for all your advice, I just don't want to cause him any more pain. I don't like seeing animals in pain at all!
There are goat owners who have successfully banded horns on older goats, but I don't know much about it and I'm not certain it's something I'd want to try myself. In my couple of years or so on this forum I don't remember any in-depth discussions about it (although they might have happened), but you can find information online.
There may be a scab of sorts that falls off, but I don't expect that the whole horn is going to be gone.
I went and checked out my guys that I disbudded late and to be honest I did a better job even as late as they were so they have bigger scurs, but not horns. And all they had fall off were scabs after a couple of weeks, not horns.
Personally, I wouldn't want to reburn horns at 8 weeks. Small scurs I might burn, but not horns as seen in your picture. Doing it at 3 weeks like I did was not nice and older would be worse.
I agree with Deborah, you're probably going to have to see a vet to deal with these horns if you decide you want him hornless. An option would be to talk to a vet and find out how much it would be to have them dealt with now and ask if it would cost much more if you waited a few weeks. If the cost difference isn't much then you could wait the couple of weeks to see if the breeder is correct and make a decision then as to whether you want to allow the breeder to reburn them, or take the little guy to the vet.
I don't know that much about this stuff, but I do know that he should not look like that if the man knew what he was doing. I agree with Marin that he must have been done way to late and I personally would be afraid to let this man mess with him again. I am not sure that I would even want him to castrate him. I hope he knows more about how to do that than he does the disbudding. Best to you!
The guy that I got the goat from just wrote me and said that it can take 3-4 weeks for them to "fall" off. He said that if they haven't fallen off in a couple weeks that he will burn them again when I take him to be banded. I am still just so confused! I don't want him to go through pain again. I am just so torn!
Those are REAL horns! The paste would not work, and I wouldn't even try disbudding with them. I'm afraid you'd have to burn so long that you could heat up the brain. If you really want him to be hornless, I'd take him to a vet. They should probably be cut off first then burned, but I'm not a vet and have never done anything with horns that size.
Deborah (changing planes in Denver)
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