Banding goats horns

[CochinBrahmaLover=)]

Anyone else ever do this?

Got a little doeling today. She's still being bottle fed, horns less than 2" I'd say but I'll measure.

Anyone ever band their goats horns? Everything I'm reading online is from, "it's easy and quick" to "it's awful and Inhumane and will kill your goat", only focusing in adult goats.

While I do have an adult goat I'd like to band, I want this doeling to be showable. Is it too risky you'd say? They're pretty small, but so is she..

If it's too risky for her, what about the other goat? She's a bit over a year, but has fairly small horns. Even if we can't fully dehorn her, can we put a band over the tip of her horns so they won't be so sharp?

 

[Pearce Pastures]

Haven't done it. We did do a late dehorning that involved cutting first and that I would not want to do again. It worked but was not fun to put it lightly. Those who have done the bang thing say it works pretty well IF you get the band low enough to actually cut into the base of the horn. I think I read of one member who first file a ridge into the horn all the way around so the band would sit in the right spot.

 

[CochinBrahmaLover=)]

Have you ever used paste? Might wanna try it for our doeling

 

[Pearce Pastures]

No and I don't know anyone who has actually. We had a 4H speaker come once to teach kids about basic care and one of the the things she said was to use the paste when they were little---the second she left, one of the other goat supervisors said DO NOT USE THAT STUFF! I don't know if they were speaking from experience but just given the nature of goats, I can't imagine it not being possibly dangerous unless you were able to somehow restrain them for a good hour to let it work and keep it only on their buds. Not sure if that would work on big horns either?

 

[mikiz]

@Southern by choice has a file in her sig about horns