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BDaY

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and I'll be all for disbudding one minute and all for horns the next. The crunchy/naturalist side of me says they're supposed to have horns and if they were born with them blah blah blah then my "I want prize winning adga/ndga/jklmnop goats and they say dairy goats have no horns" kicks in and I'm all for disbudding. I'm naturalist/traditionalist bipolar! :frow
 

Goat Whisperer

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LOL

If I weren't showing I'd still take off the horns, but that is me. Especially with bottle babies- they are all over you and want to be in your face… and run under/through your legs at feeding time.

To keep it simple- goats in the wild don't go to the vet anyways soooooo :lol:

Do what you are comfortable with. I can tell you that we had horned goats and after time it was NOT good. One goat actually butted a goose and tore it's throat open :eek:

Something to remember- Nigerian Dwarfs can get HUGE horns that stick straight up. If you have young kids I'd definitely take the horns off. We won't sell a horned dairy goat to anyone who has young children. It only takes a second to for something to go bad.
 

BDaY

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No kids but I do have an in your face and anything livings face dog and I have chickens. So the duck story definitely sways me towards getting her disbudded. My only wish was that the breeder did it when she was a few days old rather than me having to do it now that she's 6 weeks old. But I guess when the goats are free you can't ask for a whole lot! Lol. Luckily it's the doe who has the horns and not my little buck since the girls grow slower.
 

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My only wish was that the breeder did it when she was a few days old rather than me having to do it now that she's 6 weeks old.
She might not have been ready at a few days old. Generally they are done at a few days, but we have some that don't follow the rules ;) Both of them are extremely tiny anyway, so it might actually be a GOOD thing that it hasn't been done yet. If you do decide to have her disbudded- would you mind snapping a few pics of the area before they burn? I'd curious of the size. We had a kid that we needed to burn LATE. She was tiny and a quad, I think she was around 6 weeks (but still bigger than your guys) and was fine. I'm glad we were able to wait.... some kids we just won't burn until they have more size.
 

BDaY

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You still can't see them even poking out of the skin. I can only feel them and she has the swirls of hair. They're maybe 1/4 inch long from what I can feel. Mama was polled so you're probably right they were probably so small she thought she was polled. Still worried a little about them being so tiny. They seem to be growing though! My neighbors who saw them when I first got them came and visited this weekend noted they looked bigger. Which made me feel better since it can be tough when you're with them everyday to tell if they're growing! They were so tiny when I brought them home I couldn't believe it! Of course weighing them by weighing myself and then holding them probably isn't the most accurate either.
 

BDaY

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As for the heart check, and this is just an interest question, do baby goats have similar heart sounds if they have murmurs as humans?
 
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