Skip to main content

Another Day With the Goats Pt. 6: Disbudding

As any goat-keeper who has disbudded kids knows, disbudding is one of the most disagreeable parts of raising goats.  It is a traumatic experience for everyone involved.  But the benefits outweigh the trauma and pain, at least, in my opinion.  

I have owned goats with and without horns, and the ones with horns are much harder to deal with.  They pose a threat to themselves and others, and quickly become the herd bully, with the result that they are often left by themselves and become lonely.  Horns get caught in fences, tangled in hay string, or can be broken off by a hard blow, causing the goat to bleed to death.  This is without counting the dangers to the handler and other goats!  In my herd, the only horned goat was also the only one who could wear a collar, as her horns may have been caught in collars on the other goats.  This led to more difficulty handling them.  She also controlled the only shelter, leading to the other goats shivering in the rain, or hiding under the mineral feeder.  I once saw her butt one of my doelings, and actually lift her off the ground and toss her several feet because she caught her on her horns.
Kids with partially grown horns are possibly at the most risk.  One doeling I bought at several months of age (too late to disbud) spent a large part of her time stuck in the fence.  She could get her head with 3-4" long horns through the fence, but couldn't pull it back in.  We would release her from this predicament an average of 8-12 times a day for a week before she finally learned not to always be putting her silly head through the fence.  Even after that she still would occasionally.  This was extremely dangerous, because in the hot Florida summer a little goat can overheat and become dehydrated very quickly when stuck in a fence.  I have also heard tales of pieces of coyote-eaten goats, found on the remote fencelines of larger pastures.

For all the above reasons, I disbud my kids at an early age.  The kids in the video are 2 or 3 days old.  I could barely feel a bump where the horns would be.  The reason I do them so young is because they recover much quicker, and there is virtually no risk of scurs (small, deformed horns) if you do them early and thoroughly.  At a young age, a smaller tip may be used, reducing the size of the burn.

The first three kids I did were 10 days old.  They lay around most of the day in obvious discomfort, and their heads were still very tender the next day.  All three wound up with scurs.

The next set of kids were twins, and were disbudded at two days old.  Both recovered within about half an hour, and were bouncy and happy later that day.  The buckling did get small scurs (my tip was too small, and he had unusually large horn buds at birth), but I later heard from the doeling's owner that it was hard to tell she was not naturally polled.  (She definitely wasn't- I felt a horn bud before disbudding.  It would be horrible to try and disbud a polled (naturally hornless) kid!  Always check for horns before disbudding!)

So, in fine, disbudding goats is not cruel, when done properly at the right age, and may save the goat from a lot of future discomfort and misery.



The video below is very helpful, and shows more details of the actual process than mine.  This was the primary instruction I had in learning to disbud.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Natural cure (and prevention) for foot rot in goats and other animals

Several years ago, I began learning about the benefits of copper as a supplement.  I learned that it is actually a necessary mineral for goats, cows and sheep, and is best absorbed in sulphate form.      What prompted the research was a case of foot rot in one of my goats.  I was unaware that it was foot rot until someone diagnosed it for me over the phone.  I had noticed that his foot had been swollen for a couple days, but didn't pay much attention to it, thinking that a bug might have bitten or stung him.  After about three days from the time that I initially noticed the swelling he was limping badly.  I mentioned this to a man who was interested in buying him, and he said that it might be foot rot.  He said to check and see if it smelled bad, and that if so, it was probably foot rot.      I checked, and sure enough there was a strong putrid smell to it.  So I started researching  a natural, and speedy, cure for foot rot online.  There was very little information to be found

Another Day with the Goats: Pt. 5- Contracted Tendons in Newborn Kids

Have you ever seen a kid with legs so bent that it is walking on it's knuckles?  This is usually a condition known as contracted tendons.  Bent legs in newborns are not uncommon, and are not such a very bad thing.  Usually, this condition caused either by improper nutrition (deficiency in vitamins A & D, or selenium) or by crowding in utero , sometimes by both.  This buckling is one of Nelly's triplets .  He and one of his sisters had badly bent legs, the other one also had slightly bent legs.  Good news:  the legs straightened out in just a few days (3 if I remember correctly).  In the video below, I show the kids legs and the treatment.  I hope this helps someone!

Marvelous Seeds- Natural Dewormer for Dogs and Others

Naturally de-worming animals can be challenging, and some people will say that you are just better off going with the chemicals.  There are several problems with chemical wormers however.  You see, a chemical wormer is actually a poison, which is fed to the animal in large enough doses to kill, or expel the worms, but in small enough amounts that it hopefully will not injure the animal.  Trouble is, worms have an ability to build up resistance to the chemical poisons used in these wormers.  For example:  A few years ago, when I first started with dairy goats, I had major trouble with worms.  In fact, I lost quite a few goats to them.  I tried using the chemical wormers- SafeGuard (at 4 times the dosage for horses, for 3 days straight), and Ivermectin.  The goats' hair remained curly (a sign of a heavy worm load), and their gums and eyelids were pale.  Finally, most of them died- including three beautiful purebred, registrable Nubians.  I was heartbroken.      Several years later,