DeHorning -Did my vet messup? Warning Blood

[MaryF]

Took two 1-1/2yr old heifers in to get them dehorned. One looks good. The other...well is making a big mess. She has be sperting blood since. The vet said not big deal. Well it has been 4 hours and here is what the two look like now:



Warning blood below:








Here is the one that looks good:





And here is the one that is making the mess.





Should I do something or is it not a big deal like the vet said?

[JeffNY]

How much is it bleeding, or is it still bleeding? If the 2nd picture is just after, I can understand. But if that happened after he left, and it is bleeding. Call him/her back, and have him remove the arterys he missed. Our vet is very thorough, and takes a dehorning iron, to stop the bleeding (cortrizes, sp?). One thing that can happen, even if the bleeding stops on its own, is some regrowth of the horn. Generally if there is blood to that area, it can regrow. However if it was just after he was done, it is understandable. But judging by your concern, it sounds like the wound is oozing blood?

Edit: ahh two different animals, thought it was similar. K! Same questions as above, ignore the before/after (thinking those were shortly after the dehorning, to when he was finished).

We had someone miss an artery after dehorning, she did look like that, if not worse. They came back, and took the remaining artery out, bleeding stopped.

Jeff

[agmantoo]

If you will cover the wound with some spider webs it will clot.

[MaryF]

The pics are 4 hr after dehorning. Right after dehorning the second heifer was spraying about 3 ft from her head. Ved said no worry... It is no longer spraying but was sperting.

After making some calls, went out and put on some flower(dont have any spider webs). That seems to have slowed things down a bit. Hopefully enough to get the blood to clot. It is now over 5 hr after dehorning

[MaryF]

How much is she bleeding???? Well it is enough to drip from her chin about one drop every 3 - 5 seconds.

[MaryF]

That is a relief... My inexperience making me overreact...

[Teacupliz]

You can also use flour or blood stop. I dehorned mine calf myself.. It was easy and only too a minute.. No blood. Us a disbudding iron. Much easier then baby goats. THe calf was quiet.

Liz iN NY

[jerzeygurl]

Thanks for posting the pics. Im glad ive left our girl's horns on. but we will probably do the bulls when we get one.

[Mama C]

I used to work on a dairy farm and we had a cow like that from time to time. She would spray blood till the next day as once it slowed she would bump it and get things started again. But nobody was overly worried and they were always fine. It was a real eye opener for me so I know how alarmed you must feel.
Hows she doing now?

[Celtic Herritag]

Do you have a heating iorn, or some other cauderizer? Or do you have a friend that has one. The vet didn't cauderize the horn buds, (which bleed like hell) which is bad practice, not nessicarily harmful to the animal but it causes problems obviously now and later as Mama C mentioned. If you have a hot iron clean the wounds as best you can and then burn the skin on and around the horn site(put them in a chute/headcatcher if you have one or trailer them to one.) You can use blood stop powder or just dirt, but the former is prefered, to get it to stop bleeding long enough for you to cauderize the wounds. Good luck with it if she starts acting weak or her gums pale call a different vet immediatly, but I doubt she will lose enoguh blood to cause a problem.

[MaryF]

Well, it finally stoped bleeding. What a mess!!!!! I have blood on my truck, trailer, barn, stalls,,,, i think about everywhere!

We used the flower then got some blood stop. I hope she does not open it back up agian.

I am going to start monitoring her temp to watch for infection... Hopefully the worst is over.

Thank you all so much for your help.