Disbudding
Most dairy goats do not have horns. My goats don't have horns. The way this comes about is to have your goats disbudded. Disbudding is usually done around a few days old when you can feel the baby goats horn nubs starting to grow. Disbudding is better for a dairy goat as dairy goats are handled quite a bit by humans and there is less of a chance of a person or even another goat getting hurt by a horn if they are removed.
Billie Sue Hallman of Stoney Heights Farm was gracious enough to show me how to disbud and tattoo the baby goats. Hailey and I took Carter, Cole & Chloe to her house last Saturday.
To disbud you need to use a dehorner or a disbudding iron. You plug the iron in and it will get really hot. One end is the handle and the other end is shaped as a hollow circle which fits over the area of the horn growth.
The first thing we did was to shave the hair off around the horn nubs, essentially the disbudding iron will be burning and cauterizing the horn area. The less hair there is to burn the less smell there will be of burnt hair.
Once you have the iron heated up, you need to hold or have someone hold the baby goat and then you place the disbudder over the horn nub and slowly move the iron around like a hand moving on a clock to make sure you get a full circle. You want to make sure not to do this too fast or too slow. What you are looking for is a copper ring encircling the horn nub. Once done to both horn nubs, the burns will heal and any horn nubs will fall off within a few weeks. If you did it right you won't have any horns grow ever.
The little babies cry and it was so hard to have it done but it is a necessity in my eyes to have it done. Kinda like when you have to have your children get their vaccinations. You don't like it but it has to be done.
Thankfully the babies are super resilient and were fine after a short nap. Even as much as running around and playing again.
Here are a few pictures of the baby goats head after disbudding.
Carter's head
Chloe's head
Cole's head
Tattooing
American Dairy Goat Association (ADGA) requires you to tattoo your kid goats for identification purposes. The goats right ear holds the herd tattoo. A herd tattoo is make up of 4 letters/digits. Russell's Ridge herd tattoo is RR81. All future goats born here will have RR81 tattooed into their right ear. This way the goat will be identified as a Russell's Ridge Nubian's goat for the rest of their lives.
Each goat also gets a tattoo in their left ear. This tattoo will vary from each goat. ADGA assigns a letter for each year. This year, 2012, the letter C, hence all the C names of the babies, was designated. When you tattoo each goat you start with C and then the number of the babies birth. So we have C1, C2 & C4 for our first goats. Billie Sue couldn't find her 3. The next goats that are born will be C5, C6 and so forth.
The numbering doesn't make too much of a difference just as long as the correct number matches the correct goat when your putting the information down on their registration application.
Tattooing also makes the baby cry just a bit. They way I think of it though is its like getting your ears pierced. There are spring loaded clamp pliers that you put in the correct letters/digits. These letters/digits are small and each letter/digit is made up of little needles. You have someone hold the baby goat and you turn the ear over so the inside is exposed and you spread a little green, preferably or black ink along the inside of the ear. Then you position the pliers over the ink making sure not to get any of the blood vessels or ribs of the ears in the pliers and then squeeze. Once the pliers release you then rub some more ink into the tattoo so it will hold its color.
This is done for both ears, for the herd tattoo and the individual tattoo.
Here are some pictures of the baby goats ears a few days later. It's very hard to see the actual tattoo but you can still see some ink and get an idea of where the tattoo is placed.
Carter's ear
Chloe's ears
Carter's ear
I am not looking forward to having to do this in the future but I know it is necessary and will just have to take it one baby goat at a time.
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