An unpleasant task

Today began the rather distasteful, odorous task of dehorning the new babies. Four down, ten to go.

There are a variety of ways to dehorn an animal, however none are particularly pleasant. Wheywards method is the quickest and hopefully the least painful and least barbaric.

Let me first describe the methods we do not do:

Caustic Paste: Seriously, not an option that would be considered by anyone that has been around children of any species-try dabbing peanut butter on a two year old child and then tell them to be careful, don't touch it and leave it there..come back in 30 minutes and look at all the places the peanut butter is but not where you put it. Right. Cuz baby goats listen as well as human kids. Right.

Rubber bands: Not effective and often leave deformed horns. However, very effective on testicles. But we'll talk about that later.

Sawing: Who's sawed wood? Not always easy, not quick and now factor in a squirming, screaming animal that is strong. Right.

Gouging: OMG. A left over torture device from the middle ages. No No No No No.

The vet: which can apply anesthesia but as you may not be aware of, vets are expensive and I'm not sure that's covered under pet insurance. hmmm, can I insure goats? I may have to look into this. They are kids, they have names..why not? Blue Cross dependents?

Which leads us to Susanne's method of choice...

Burning: Yep, a goat dehorner is a hot iron that is placed on the horn bud when the goats are somewhere around 2 weeks old. Too early, they can grow back and too late, the horns are tough to get off. Not to mention that goats are strong animals. The little two week old wee ones are tough enough to pin down. I'd also speculate that the earlier this is done, the less likely they'll remember. I'm sure there is a great correlation between men and well..I'll stop there. Our mother's are reading this and I'm blushing. I'll address it later when the banding begins. heh heh.

So, what happens is: the selected little goat is placed in a wooden box that secures them and leaves their heads free to be, well... tormented. One person holds the head secure and the other sits atop the box and on goes the iron over the horn buds for around 10 seconds or so. Twice on each bud and a top cross to finish it off. The babies scream and cry and squirm and the whole thing is just unpleasant. No question. Did I mention the smell? Singed hair, cauterized bone and skin. I'll say no more.

The thing is, that within seconds the little goat shakes its head and is generally just peeved to be stuck in a box. Once let loose, the kid looks at you and proceeds to want to be fed. No hard feelings. whew.

One of the original two woman to take on the task was happily replaced last kidding season. Alicia found the whole event not to her liking and the stress level of all escalated. She was ousted from the job as luckily, her replacement moved back to town. She is more than okay with this as Alicia is the most squeamish of us. We still love her. Ask her about Louis's abscess sometime, she would love to tell you about it.

You may ask the question as to why remove the horns to begin with? Goats have horns so the most humane thing would be to just leave them right? Well, horns create a whole mess of issues for the humans and the goats themselves. A goat is keenly aware of it's weapons and very intent at times on using them, if not necessarily on the humans that feed them but on each other.

Wheyward had two goats that had their horns. Two beautiful animals that provided a lot of milk and some very cute daughters. The ladies Spot and Silly, became increasingly aware of the power they wielded amongst the non horned herd. They became bullies with increasing incidences of naughtiness and outright bad goat behavior. They were moved off the farm to spend time with just themselves. Two spinster sisters munching on someone's petunias. Peace out girls.