11/21/07, 09:05 PM
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Join Date: May 2005
Location: Idaho
Posts: 4,124
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I have banded entire crops of kids...and I simply will not do it anymore. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but the bottom line for me was that I rarely ever wound up keeping a doe that had had her horns banded, because they were nearly always headshy afterwards. They lost weight due to being nervous about inserting their heads into feeders, and there were lots of adrenaline provoking bleeding incidents (cayene pepper is a great make-shift bloodstop powder).
And the whole thing is, the results were highly variable. A lot of the does were not show worthy without additional trimming of their horn stubs, and sometimes the horns grew back. The buck's horns didn't fall off at all, too large for the bands.
In my opinion, it is a lot easier to simply butcher them all and wait to do it right the next year, or if there is an especially irreplaceable doe, use a saws-all tool to saw and cauterize in one very brief, controlled operation that will be all over with reliable results within 5 minutes or less and no weight loss.
One thing I have found over the years is that I wasted an awful lot of money on goats that just weren't worth it- the time, the money, the space, the disease risk.... Get good registered stock that has been disbudded already, paying what will seem like an exorbitant price, and save yourself loads of dough in the long run. Send the horned nannies to the sale barn. My .02 !
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