Dehorner suggestions??

[evermoor]

What does everyone use for dehorners?? We got a butane hand held one from the farm store. However it seems that either I am not burnering them enuf or the thing doesn't get hot enuf. Several of the heifers now have scurs or lopside horns. I have reverted back to my electric one except that the have to be almost an inch because the hole on the burner is so big. I hate doing them when the calves are this big, but I also hate the scurs or having the vet gouge them off?? I had a similiar experience with the Buddex electric one also. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Ronney]

Evermoor I can't help you with this one as all my cattle have horns and when there is a problem with them it is usually as adults and I get the vet in anyway. However, I know of many people who use both butane and electric successfully. Is there somebody at your farm store who knows about these things and you can have a talk to them, or maybe a local farmer or even the vet - our vets use them. Apart from anything else, you've invested money in these things and you want to know if it's you at fault or the gear. Not only that, eventually your possibly going to have to get the vet in to remove horns that could end up growing back into the skull so that's even more money.

Hopefully somebody here may be able to advise you.

Cheers,
Ronnie

[dosthouhavemilk]

I've noticed that our vet assistant (who disbuds both our calves and our goats) uses the same electric burner for both. He has made an adjustment to the burner. It has a smaller diameter metal pipe fitting on it. At least that is what it looks like. I know some goat suppliers sell adjustment fittings so you can do goats horns.
The school had a new vet disbud their last two heifer calves. Big mistake. Young vet, not real experienced (they also had him dehorn mature cows). He didn't have the extra piece and those calves heads look horrid..no telling if he got all the base or not. :no: Aparently the adults were just as slow and he didn't have enough strength and ended up needing assistance.
Their comment to me...If you can get Joe, wait for it.

[opus]

We just use horn irons and heat them in the branding pot

Here's a picture...sort of: http://milneweb.com

We just branded Thurday and took a video and grabbed this frame out of it...just for giggles.

Anyway, thats how its done out here.

[DaleK]

I use a Rhinehart electric dehorner with the smaller insert so I can usually do them by 3-4 weeks old.

[JeffNY]

When we had ours burned off, we wait till you can see these tiny buttons, basically smaller than the burner's hole, bot visible. When we did so we had a ---- near perfect dehorning. I've seen some do it before they see any sort of horn, and some people miss. Our Brown Swiss was missed just enough, her horns aren't big but are slowly growing. We will likely leave them as is, not going to try to dehorn her with the giatine (they are way too laid back, risk factor). But remember this, if they are slightly bigger when they have tiny buttons, whats worse? Fighting the calf, or the pain/blood from the gougeing process?



Jeff