horns or not...ours are horned...you?

dosthouhavemilk · #61 04/05/12, 08:24 PM

We don't push the grain to them for growth, so our meat kids go from 8-12 months before being shipped. We prefer to grow them out on pasture and momma's milk, so they take longer.
The years we left them intact ("for a better price") was when we only had 8 does kidding. Could you imagine now? We would be force weaning bucklings at 3 months and our does would just be eating and getting fat rather than raising kids for 8 months (too high dairy to cycle year round). We own three does that dry up at 3 months...everyone else dries up when we ship their kids.

stanb999 · #62 04/06/12, 03:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dosthouhavemilk

I believe you are in PA, right? (Or did you move?)
Our goats are shipped to Eighty-Four in PA. We castrate everything and disbud them as well. We get the same price as the school does for their horned (and castrated) kids of similar breeding. That price is close to/or over $2 a pound depending on how many buyers are there. $50 is for a poor Select 3 pygmy generally at the auction we ship to. When comparing our check to the prices posted to the website, we easily have the top of the select 1 kids sold. So they do not discriminate where we ship to.
Disbudding and castrating does not affect the price we receive for good meat goats...But this is the western part of PA.

Yeah, I was kinda shocked at the big difference in price. To me a nice goat, is a nice goat and should bring something. But if it looks very dairy (thin, high back, disbudded, drooping bag) they just don't bring the same. They want them high in flesh, flat back, barrel chest, With big horns and big... Well intact. Course I see hens that are ... OLD (slow cook?). Go for 5-6 dollars as well. So most of these folks bring them to the kitchen.

Here when you bring in nice intact goats folks crowd around the back of the truck.. Last time I was there I had 15 people complement them including the auctioneer. They were around 8 weeks and I got 70 dollars a piece average. Really they were just old enough to be away from momma and eating grain and hay. They didn't yet weigh much. Nice. What was cute is the auctioneer didn't want to put the sticky numbers on them.. So she went and used some ribbon to attach it to them.

Wanna see good prices for goats? Take them over to Jersey. But you need a vet. cert $$$. Kinda keeps the market tight.

dosthouhavemilk · #63 04/06/12, 08:45 AM

Adult does (especially dairy) are definitely a whole other ballgame. Though ours, again, tend to bring close to top dollar at the market the rare times we ship them.
What is fascinating is that our full dairy wethers bring as much (and sometimes more) than our Boer stock at 84. We definitely found a gem there for us...as long as there is more than one buyer!
We've considered getting the equipment together to take them to New Holland because they generally get a better price there...but we don't have the time, nor the money, to do so.
As it is we pay someone to haul our goats to 84 for us.

KrisD · #64 04/06/12, 10:17 AM

Okay so for those of you who disbud who do you get over the guilt. It tears me up to have to do that to the goats I love so much. I use ice packs, pain killers and 2% lidocaine on them and I still feel terrible for days afterwards. I am deliberately hurting my animals that are completely innocent. I will be breeding for polled next year. I just can't keep doing this.

Oat Bucket Farm · #65 04/06/12, 11:55 AM

I don't feel any guilt over it. No more than when they get a shot of Bo-Se, which I'm sure hurts, or when I band a buckling. We use cloths soaked in ice water to cool the head after each burn and then we turn them loose. They suck down a bottle, bounce around like wild indians (like they normally do) for a while, then take a nap, wake up and go back to playing and sucking down bottles.

lonelyfarmgirl · #66 04/06/12, 12:20 PM

I always disbud the doelings. Doesn't seem anyone wants to buy a doe to milk if she has horns, and don't prefer to deal with a milker with horns either. With bucks I don't bother. For one, meat wethers, who cares? They'll be butchered soon anyway. For intact bucks, horns make them easier to control. I also, because of the difference in base shape, have never had much luck achieving a 'total disbud' on a buck. 99% of the time, I end up with a scur or a partial horn. Then they look stupid and run the risk of the horn growing around into their face.

So, does have none, bucks keep theirs.

dosthouhavemilk · #67 04/06/12, 01:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KrisD

Okay so for those of you who disbud who do you get over the guilt. It tears me up to have to do that to the goats I love so much. I use ice packs, pain killers and 2% lidocaine on them and I still feel terrible for days afterwards. I am deliberately hurting my animals that are completely innocent. I will be breeding for polled next year. I just can't keep doing this.

I think about watching full grown goats being dehorned with a wire (not ours) and realize that if I disbud this kid now, that is never a possibility in its future. I think back to finding a dead horned goat hung in the fence.
I think about the fact that the kid is up and bouncing around a whole lot sooner after disbudding then a lot of the things I do to them.
Mostly I think about their potential future. By disbudding, I open doors for them that would be otherwise be closed. I close a few doors at the same time, but because of how we raise our goats and what we sell for, I open more than the few I close.
I disbud close to 50-80 head a year now. I do not enjoy it and I do not look forward to it, but it must be done for our purposes. It is the same reason we disbud our cattle.
It is also why I am blessed to have used a polled buck who produced a number of polled offspring for us. It cuts down on the numbers needing disbudded.

jennigrey · #68 04/06/12, 01:58 PM

Someone mentioned the cost of fencing horned versus hornless and that's certainly very true. If ours didn't have horns we could get away with field fence. However, I try to stop the flow of any kind of animal across the farm so I use the 4x4 sheep/goat OR the 2x4 no-climb horse mesh for all our fences, and would do so regardless of whether our goats had horns or even if we didn't have goats at all. I mostly use the 2x4 no-climb horse because I like to be able to rotate horses into any enclosure.

Our goats are solely for the purpose of defeating brush, so they have horns. When I have occasionally had to confine them to the paddock that comes off the side of the barn, I have seen the Alpine wethers beat/saw at the side of the barn with their large ridged horns to make splinters comes lose to nibble at. Even with a manger full of hay. They can be pretty destructive. But that destructiveness plays in my favor when they are penned up with a blackberry thicket.

I have our goats and horses together currently but the pony and one of the wethers like to agitate each other and I'm afraid the pony might lose an eye, so a separate goat paddock is in the making.

goatkid · #69 04/06/12, 03:20 PM

No horns here. I've had horned does in the past and they posed problems with my setup. Some of them got caught in the cattle panels. Another, a Boer X named Peaches didn't get stuck in the fence, but she rammed my dairy does with her horns. One doe wound up with a big hematoma on her side right before a goat show. Peaches was our last horned goat and she was sold to a Boer ranch that had horned goats.

Zilli · #70 04/06/12, 04:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oat Bucket Farm

We have had a horned goat get stuck in the fence.

This.

I had a Saanen doe get her head stuck in the fence and her crying got two of my dogs wound up and they attacked her, causing injury to her left front shoulder.

First and only time the dogs were aggressive towards the goats (and, no, I didn't shoot them). The doe did recover, after a vet's visit, and went on to live a long life.

This same doe, gentle as Saanens usually are, actually accidentally nailed me with her horns when I was bent over looking at something - she came up under me and lifted her head up and got me pretty good under the chin. Nothing intentional about it - it just happened.

I do, at this time, have a few with horns because I had some "stuff" going on when they were babies and didn't disbud them.

My preference is and always will be for my goats to be disbudded.

"SPIKE" · #71 04/07/12, 07:51 AM

No horns here. I think it is easier for everyone when you are dealing with milk goats. I have a small family of nubian. My buck is somewhat friendly, but he will do a head hooking motion ocassionally and if he had horns it would be more of a problem for me.
If I had a herd that ran "out on the range", I might leave everyone horned so they could protect themselves better.

SPIKE

parrotman · #72 04/07/12, 10:40 AM

Horns here. I tend to like factory installed equipment.

thaiblue12 · #73 04/07/12, 11:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by "SPIKE"

If I had a herd that ran "out on the range", I might leave everyone horned so they could protect themselves better.

SPIKE

Don't let horns give you a false sense of security. They are a prey animal and flight is natural to them, not fight. 99% of the time they are going to run, and a mountain lion could careless if the goat stands there with a nice set of horns, deer have larger horns and they still take them down pretty easy. I think it is extremely rare that they stand up against a single predator and most times the predator unless young, uncertain, ill or some other issue is still going to get them. They will run behind and hamstring them, or grab them by the throat, horns aren't going to do much.

My horned goats with kids or not still snorted and ran with the rest of the herd to the safety of the barn when they see a coyote or a pack. My Boer snotty doe outweighed them by over 100 lbs, was not scared of dogs and could easily knock the snot out of a coyote but she ran like prey animals do, she knew it was a different threat and she hoped her kids kept up, they did. Mine hit my LGD, stare at snakes, watch coyotes run by and know the LGD will take care of it but if one comes near where they are grazing, forget it!
Horns do nothing if a predator has them by the throat.

Good fence, LGD, or other guard animals work well and some have used fainting goats to keep their more expensive goats safe. I personally could not do that so I have LGD.

It is a personal choice to have horns, leave them natural and etc like I said to each his own; but I would not leave them on for some type of predator protection. If they consistently fought off predators with their horns then they would not be prey animals

CaliannG · #74 04/07/12, 01:16 PM

Thaiblue is right...."defense" is not a very good reason to keep horns. And besides, I have seen disbudded goats face down predators effectively. That more depends upon their terrain and situation, as well as the number of predators. Then again, there is the individual personality of the goat and herd.

Horns don't provide defense from a hungry predator....at BEST the provide determent from a predator who is not so very hungry, and might think that the horns are more risk than they want to take today. But a hungry, determined predator, or a pack with confidence in numbers, or the young and stupid, are not going to be deterred by an impressive rack.

That being said, the only thing that goes after THESE goats are leopards:

horns or not...ours are horned...you? - Goats

Interestingly enough, after temperament and production, THIS is the conformation I want in my herd:

horns or not...ours are horned...you? - Goats

And an artist's rendition, because the darn things don't pose properly for pictures:

horns or not...ours are horned...you? - Goats

Notice the straight, level toplines, or, in some animals, just slightly raised hindquarters? The small, refined heads, the long, but powerful legs, the curved necks? The very elegant lines, but still a very sturdy animal? This is what I want my Alpines to look like, because this conformation is solid, sustainable, and last-but-not-least, beautiful.

Then, of course, there are those gorgeous horns.