Banding horns and scurs ?

[farmerjane]

Ok so I have done some reading into banding horns and I haven't found anything on long term hornlessness (sp). Only that it works and the horns come off, so has anyone done it and aside from the horns obviously coming off, do they stay that way or do you get scur growth ?

My two new goats are half nubian and have very small horns still, unfortunatly they wern't disbudded, so I need to do something about this.

[Alice In TX/MO]

I've had mixed results. Some grow scurs. Some don't. It's REALLY hard to get the bands low enough and have them STAY!

[farmerjane]

What do you do about the scurs ? I am afraid of ending up with something wors than scurs .

[Alice In TX/MO]

Actually, the two goats with this problem usually rub them off on trees periodically. They grow back, rub off, grow back........

[farmmom]

Scurs can also be trimmed if your goats will let you do it.

[farmerjane]

I have one with a scur/stub it is wiggly and rather large, could it be banded or should it be left alone ?

[AnnaS]

I have some scurred does, because I'm really, really bad at disbudding. I have banded the scurs and don't see much regrowth at all until the does are heavy in kid. Whatever those growth hormones are, they grow everything. After banding, the scurs are small enough so I can pull them off with pliers if they start to grow back.

In my experience, banding has a very sensitive period where touching the banded scur causes extreme pain. I feed those goats separately during that time.

[OneCuteShasta]

I found this website that gives good instructions on banding horns, but I haven't personally tried it. http://www.barnonemeatgoats.com/bandinghorns.html

[farmerjane]

Originally Posted by OneCuteShasta

I found this website that gives good instructions on banding horns, but I haven't personally tried it. http://www.barnonemeatgoats.com/bandinghorns.html

I seen that site, and what is way out of my league. I could do it the way they show on the other site, I think it was great goats or something.

[manygoatsnmore]

If you burn the base after the horn comes off, that should eliminate scur regrowth.

If the horns are small - say less than 1 1/2" long, you can probably use the disbudding iron to take off the horns. They won't look flat to the head like when you disbud a young kid, but if you burn around the base and on the horn itself, then flip the burned horn off and cauterize again, you can get the horn down to where you can fit the iron tip over it and burn it really well. Give it a month or so, and the horn falls off without bleeding and leaves a clean head. I've done it for a friend and it gave her a pair of kids with perfect heads. Didn't seem to stress the kids any more than early disbudding, either.

[hoofinitnorth]

As manygoatsnmore describes, this is how we have burned older kids that had not been properly disbudded or had scur regrowth. We ended up with nice, clean heads on most of them, bucks included. A couple had little points that we didn't extend far enough (that teardrop buck horn shape) and they have just little bitty nubs that grow and fall off and never really get bigger than about 1/8".

I have two bucks that need to have something done with them. I bought them as mature bucks and they have HUGE scurs - almost like horns. They were a couple inches long when they came to me. Last year we cut them off without much trouble but we did not burn as we should have. We didn't want to stress them out anymore and we were just "done". Bad move. Now we have to do it all over again and this time we will burn them... or have the vet surgically dehorn them. Poor things.