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.