Adventures in Disbudding Goats

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I love homesteading, I really do. It is my dream to do this full time eventually. I love gardening and working with animals. I love experimenting with what works in our homestead and sharing that with my readers and friends. But there are some things that I have come to hate about it. Unfortunately those things are absolutely necessary. One of those things is disbudding the adorable little baby goats.

(Nothing is cuter than kids: human and goat. This is little Alisa, the peanut of the group)

For those of you that don’t know what disbudding is, it is using a hot iron designed to keep the horns from growing by burning off the horn buds before they begin to take root. Both males and females will develop horns and, while they are part of the natural growth of goats, they can be very dangerous to humans, other goats, and the goat itself. Our buck, Clive, was only partially disbudded and developed scurs. Meaning, when the procedure was done it didn’t get rid of the entire horn bud and his horns continued to grow (though not to full size). One day we noticed that one of his horns were missing and the right side of his face was a bloody mess. After some treatment and care he quickly recovered and was soon back to his rambunctious self. Needless to say this unfortunate event solidified our decision to maintain a hornless herd.

(Clive with scurs or partial horn growth)

Please note: If you are going to show goats, there are certain breeds that MUST be dehorned and other breeds that are shown with horns.

Pros and Cons of Disbudding
Onion Creek Ranch
Our Mountain Hearth

There is a lot of information about disbudding, some of it is informative, and some of it is not helpful at all. Waiting too long will be harder on the goat, and while there are procedures to dehorn (horns are already grown in) a goat, they are costly, and much more unpleasant than disbudding. A goat healing from a dehorning could take months whereas a disbudding takes only a week or so. The best time to disbud is when the kid is between seven and fourteen days old and you can feel the “nubs” of the horns rising up from the skull (some breeds are slower than others). According to the literature we read, males typically grow faster than females, and we found this to be true as well.

This was NOT an easy decision, by any stretch of the imagination, and after watching some videos of the procedure we REALLY did not want to do this. Some of you will decide not to disbud, and that is an entirely personal decision (see pros and cons from other websites above). We read, and reread. We watched videos of it being done, but nothing can prepare you for when you actually do the disbudding. We really thought we could do this so we purchased a proper disbudding iron designed for goats (DO NOT use one designed for calves as it will be too large) and built a box to hold them in while it was being done.

(Horn buds photo courtesy of the Great Goat Adventure)

Micaiah (aka Mickey) was the oldest (and biggest) of the four and his horns were growing first, so we decided to do him before the others. He was about ten days old. To prepare, we let the iron heat up for about 15 minutes. It has to be red hot (I mean this literally). We shaved the top of his head in order to clearly see the horn buds. We placed him in the box (we found dimensions on line) that was made for disbudding. This didn’t go well, as the box was too long and he kept slipping down and his ears got in the way. There will be some sites that say the box is an absolute must, however, we found that just holding the kid worked best in our situation. Once he was in the box, I proceeded to place the iron on the bud while my partner held his ears and his head (the day before we practiced on a baseball and piece of wood to get the feel of it). It was from a top angle sitting on top of the box (as seen in the picture below, not me, courtesy of this website). NOT the best position.

I was not able to clearly see what I was doing and missed some spots as I rotated the iron. The instructions that came from a site we read said “slowly rotate the pressure around in a clock-wise manner, for 3-4 seconds. For males, burn for 5 seconds.” The instruction manual for the iron said no more than 3-4 seconds at a time and alternate. We found many different recommendations for how long to apply the iron. One video we watched even said to hold for ten seconds. The goal is to get a “copper” colored ring around the bud to show that the procedure was a success.

(The copper ring courtesy of New to Farm Life)

We had also read that male goats that were not to be castrated needed to have an extra step added to help reduce scurs and have odor control (mature, male bucks have a very strong scent especially during rut).
We decided to follow the instructions that came with the iron, and to err on the side of less time. As soon as the 1000 degree piece of metal touched his skin Mickey began to scream. There was a copper crescent and not the desired ring present, so I moved to the next horn, did that one, and then moved back to the first horn to try and get a better ring and hit the spots I missed. It was becoming difficult as he was continuing to slip down into the box and it seemed to be taking too long. We took him out and I held him between my legs while my partner took the iron and tried to get a more even application, since we felt that standing in front may be a better angle from which to work. Micaiah was clearly starting to get severely stressed and I was starting to panic. There was too much back and forth trying to get the coveted copper ring. We decided that was enough and as I picked him up to console him, he fainted. I thought for sure we had severely hurt him (there is supposedly a risk of brain damage from too much heat on the brain, I did search for some studies on brain damage to goats [there is research on brain damage in calves] after incorrect disbudding but was only able to find anecdotal stories on forums here and here.). He was immediately reunited with his worried mother and appeared to be fine. Within a few minutes he was back to playing with his brother and sisters and seemed no worse for the wear. We both breathed a huge sigh of relief as we watched him play.

(Micaiah-notice some of the copper ring, we are not sure at this point if he will have scurs)

After this experience, we decided that we were going to search for a vet to disbud the rest of the kids. I highly recommend this so that you can watch it being done and ask questions. There are some vets that don’t do this, typically small animal vets, but a livestock vet will for the most part have experience. This vet only charged $15/per goat, and while we had to drive about 40 minutes to get to their location, it was well worth it. The vet we used had done the dams and the other goats from the farm we bought the dams from, so we felt comfortable with him performing the procedure.

Lessons we learned from the vet:

1. Position and angle of the disbudding iron is important. Some videos and sites showed that the person was sitting on top of the box or held the kid between their legs and disbudding from the top (like I did). Some videos even showed one person doing the procedure.  It appears that a more suitable angle is from directly in front while someone holds the kid. This is the position the vet chose as well.
2. The vet told me that he would generally hold the iron on for a period of up to 15 second while speaking with him. I was worried about the length of time but he assured me that the skull was quite thick and the sinus cavity differed from that of cattle so the chances of brain damage are slim (he did say that there was still a risk). He did each horn for approximately 10-15 seconds, checked to see how it looked and then went back and did it for slightly shorter period of time on each horn. He then used his fingernail to scrape the little horn bud and it crumbled. He stated that it wasn’t necessary to remove the charred remains of the bud as we had seen others do. A full copper ring had been achieved. This whole procedure went quickly and none of the goats fainted (We had the three others done. Mickey was not done again as to spare him from repeating the procedure).
3.  I asked the goat about the extra step required for the males. He said that was not necessary since we were doing this early on. If we had waited any longer we would need to do the extra step as stated in the link above. He then told me that he just had to perform this step a few days ago on an older male.
4. Most of the sites we read said not to put any ointment on the horn after disbudding. The vet placed Furazon ointment on their heads to help cool and sooth.
5. We were asked about giving a CDT shot (tetanus). Some sites will tell you that you need to give your kid this shot before the procedure if the dam had not received it before freshening. We opted out as the vet told us it was not necessary unless you were doing a more invasive horn removal procedure.
6. They will scream, and scream A LOT, and you will feel bad….VERY BAD (the vet even mentioned feeling badly about it), but each one bounced back quickly. We were very pleased with the results and the goats were out playing on a downed sweetgum tree soon after.

We hope that our experiences will help those who come to visit and that some can learn from what we share. We now feel comfortable that if we find ourselves in a situation where we don’t have much other choice we can do the disbudding ourselves. Until that time comes we will leave this unpleasant job to the professionals.

 

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