Certain farmers, particularly biodynamic farmers, leave the horns on their goats, but horned goats can hurt each other while playing
When you raise animals, you have to do some nasty things. Much as you try to provide the best living environment and reduce pain and discomfort, there are certain tasks that neither you nor your animals will like but are beneficial in the long run. Castration is one of these chores. Another one is disbudding goat kids.
Disbudding (or debudding) is the process of destroying the horn bud cells that will grow into
A young kid that will be disbudded in a couple days
horns. With cautery disbudding, a hot cautery iron (which is somewhat like a very hot curling iron) burns the flesh and the bud cells below the skin. The procedure is carried out on kids usually between three to seven days old and often without any pain relief.
Dr. Melissa Hempstead, a New Zealand scientist (now in Iowa), is looking at refinements to cautery disbudding of goat kids, such as pain relief. As she describes (Hempstead et al, 2018a), “complications associated with cautery disbudding include second or third-degree burns, inflammation and the potential for thermal injury to the skull and brain (causing necrosis), infection and an increased risk of mortality.” It is also painful.
Why disbud?
Not all goat owners disbud their kids. Biodynamic farmers, for example, believe that horns of all species are a vital link between the cosmos and the animal. They let the horns grow. Horns are said to play a role in thermoregulation by acting as a cooling mechanism. Horns can also help protect animals against predators, such as wild dogs or coyotes.
Many goat farmers however, believe that horns are dangerous for the goat itself, other goats and the farmer. Goats can injure each other while playing or fighting, or get their horns caught in fences and mangers.
I chose to disbud my goats after visiting a farm with a small flock of horned goats. One had been blinded after getting a horn in the eye, and another needed stitches after another goat’s horn ripped the corner of its mouth. It was only anecdotal evidence but it convinced me.
The nature of a goat is to be playful and curious, and this can create problems when they are horned. I had several horned sheep in my flock and never had a problem, but they behaved quite differently than the goats. With sheep and cows, farmers can choose polled (naturally hornless) breeds. All of the major goat breeds, however, are horned. Polled individuals are sometimes born and occasionally, these are fertile. But the gene for being polled is loosely linked to the gene for being a sterile hermaphrodite (intersex). When two polled goats are bred, the offspring are often either horned or sterile.
For non-farmers, the timing might seem cruel. The procedure is done when the kids are less than a week old. It is more difficult if the procedure is done later. The process of dehorning, removing the actual horn, is difficult, dangerous and painful.
Options
- Cautery disbudding as described above, removing the horn bud.
- Cautery disbudding but without removing the horn bud. Instead a ring of tissue around the horn bud is burned.
- Clove oil injection: clove oil is injected into the horn bud. Clove oil can destroy cells, including horn bud cells.
- Caustic paste: the application of a substance, usually containing sodium or calcium hydroxide, that burns the horn bud cells.
- Cryosurgical disbudding: pressurized liquid nitrogen is sprayed onto the horn buds.
The results
Using caustic paste (option 4) and cryosurgical disbudding (5) appeared to cause more pain than the common method of cautery disbudding. For this reason, the scientists did not investigate the efficacy of these methods, although they did observe scurs (partial horn regrowth) in 6/10 caustic paste disbudded kids and 8/10 cryosurgically disbudded kids. With caustic paste, there is also a risk that the paste can reach the eye and blind the kid, or that kids rub the paste on themselves or other animals.
The common method of using a cautery iron to completely remove the horn bud (method 1) was the most effective method. Using an iron without removing the horn bud (2) and the clove oil injection (3) often prevented horns from developing but there was a greater chance of the kids growing scurs or scorns (partially developed horns) (Hempstead et al, 2018b).
The injection of clove oil, which is considered a topical painkiller and is sometimes used in holistic dentistry, seemed to be at least as painful or more painful than cautery disbudding, although the wound created was smaller and healed more quickly. Dr. Hempstead (pers. comm, 2019) states that she wouldn’t recommend this method. Not only is the injection of clove oil painful and ineffective, but she has also seen serious complications following the procedure (e.g., skull damage/necrosis if injected down into the horn bud).
To reduce pain, Hempstead et al (2018c) recommends using the general anesthesia isoflurane, with or without the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, meloxicam. In Canada, isoflurane can only be administered by a vet (McKenna, pers. comm).
In Ontario in 2014, 97 per cent of the veterinarians surveyed by Winder et al (2016) in a study of disbudding of dairy calves, “reported using local anesthetic, 62 per cent used sedation, and 48 per cent used a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug. Producer use of local anesthetic was 62 per cent, 38 per cent used sedation and 24 per cent used a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug.”
At the Atlantic Vet College in Charlottetown, PEI, vets “disbud goats under four weeks of age with sedation with xylazine, nerve block with lidocaine, and also give meloxicam which is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory which also provides some post procedure pain mitigation,” according to Dr. McKenna (pers. comm).
When my friend who was skilled at disbudding moved away, I decided that I didn’t want my goats or me to go through a challenging learning curve. Instead I took the kids to a vet and came home with sleepy, disbudded kids. This has a financial cost. For example, at the Atlantic Vet College in PEI, the cost is $30-$50/kid (depending on size of the goat) plus the farm call fee. If farmers want to do the procedure on their own, many vets, according to Ontario Goat, are willing to teach farmers how to safely and effectively disbud kids.
A pain control option available for Canadian farmers is lidocaine and meloxicam. These can often be bought from your vet at a cost of about fifty cents a goat for both medications (assuming you’re using a full bottle of each). Vets can explain how to use these medications. Keep in mind that the lidocaine must be carefully diluted, as goats are very sensitive to an overdose of lidocaine, and that you should wait five to ten minutes between blocking and disbudding.
Cautery disbudding remains the most effective option to disbud goats. Fortunately, there are ways to reduce the pain by using medication and ensuring proper techniques are used.
— Janet Wallace
Sources:
--Hempstead, Melissa N, Postdoctoral Research Associate, College of Veterinary Medicine, Veterinary Diagnostic and Production Animal Medicine, Ames, IA. Pers. comm. May 23-27, 2019.
--Hempstead, Melissa N., Joseph R. Waas, Mairi Stewart, Vanessa M. Cave, Mhairi A. Sutherland. 2018a. Evaluation of alternatives to cautery disbudding of dairy goat kids using behavioural measures of post-treatment pain. Applied Animal Behaviour Science. Volume 206. Pages 32–38.
--Hempstead, Melissa N., Joseph R. Waas, Mairi Stewart, Vanessa M. Cave, Mhairi A. Sutherland. 2018b. The effectiveness of clove oil and two different cautery disbudding methods on preventing horn growth in dairy goat kids. PLoS ONE. Volume 13. Issue 11. e0198229.
--Hempstead, M. N., J. R. Waas, M. Stewart, S. K. Dowling, V. M. Cave, G. L. Lowe, and M. A. Sutherland. 2018c. Effect of isoflurane alone or in combination with meloxicam on the behavior and physiology of goat kids following cautery disbudding. Journal of Dairy Science. 101:3193–3204.
--McKenna, Shawn, Associate Professor/Farm Service Chief, Dept of Health Management, Atlantic Veterinary College. Charlottetown PEI. Pers. comm. May 27, 2019.
--Ontario Goat. Make disbudding less painful for everyone. ontariogoat.ca/goat-gazette/make-disbudding-less-painful-for-everyone. Accessed May 26, 2019.
--Winder, Charlotte B. et al. 2016. Practices for the disbudding and dehorning of dairy calves by veterinarians and dairy producers in Ontario, Canada. Journal of Dairy Science. Volume 99. Issue 12. Pages 10161 – 10173.