For those who may be interested- banding horns

[powell7311]

So here is my experience so far with banding horns. I have an older Nubian that has been in trouble with one too many people from her guarding the barn. She is the world's greatest guard dog! No joke! If anyone strange, or even someone/something she doesn't like comes into HER barn, you better watch out! To me, she is very loving since I bottle raised her, but to others.. ehh not so much! I decided I needed to do something about her horns when the neighbors small dog came over she she put a horn in its gut, the dog ended up going head over hills and I thought she killed it.

Anyways, back to banding. I put regular castrating bands on April 19th, and one fell off exactly one month later. I added another band to the second horn this evening, since it hasn't came off yet. She had little to no blood, and doesn't seem like it bothers her at all. I added Wonder Dust and Wound-Kote to it to keep the flies away. Thats what the purple stuff is in the picture. I added pictures since I couldn't seem to find where anyone else has posted any of the after shots. I also posted some so you can see how big the horn was before it fell off. From my experience, I would definitely let others know of this method. I am very pleased with the outcome, so far.

[desertshi]

Awesome! I think I might do that too! How far down is that? is it actually down on the fur or is it just as low on the horn as you could get it? Did you saw ridges in to hold it down there?

[francismilker]

Thanks for the pics. I'm waiting now for some 4" long horns to come off that have bands placed on them. I didn't get them disbudded in time and don't want horns on my future milkers.

[powell7311]

No, I didn't put any ridges. Actually, I just put them on as low as I possibly could and they stayed there, never rolled up the horn.

[Creamers]

I have an older Nubian that has been in trouble with one too many people from her guarding the barn. She is the world's greatest guard dog! No joke! If anyone strange, or even someone/something she doesn't like comes into HER barn, you better watch out!

ha ha - I can vouch for this - I met this doe, and she means business when guarding her barn!

I think it turned out really well!

[Cheribelle]

Thanks for posting this. I didn't have any luck, may try it again.

[hardworkingwoman]

Wow this is great! Thank you so much for posting this!!

[kmorisett]

Is it recommended to give a tetanus shot like it is in cattle when you band dehorn? These were regular calf size bands, right?

[Cheryl aka JM]

can we see pics of the one that is still on so we can see the band placement exactly?

will this stop new horn from growing or do you know? I'm wondering if she will start scurs now?

[Ellie Mae]

thanks for posting, gives me the motivation to try again.

we banded two of ours with notching and both of them got those suckers off, twice!

we did notice that the notched spot had moved up and figured we should wait as the woman who showed us how to do it said it only works if they are done growing...it's been about six months since we last tried.

we have two doe's with horns and one has decided to start using them on the others, we can't allow her to do that of course....and short of keeping her penned up by herself, we took action...
she looks like "my fave martian" now, we put tennis balls on the ends of her horns and wrapped them up with duct tape.

I haven't had such a good giggle in a long while!

everytime she went near another goat, their hackles would stand on end and they would get a look of confusion and terror and bolt, so of course the little alien looking goat would run right after them trying to keep up!
this went on for hours,
omgosh was it hilarious!

[mpete]

Great job! Kinda funny how she guards the barn!
I have banded many goats... I will suggest that you burn the left over area because there can be whats called an "exposed nerve". The first time I thought I may of had one of those I thought that after awhile it would heal up like the scab does, but it doesn't. The doe ended up loosing about 25 lbs. before I figured out what it was. After I burned her she went back to normal... just a fyi!

[powell7311]

Originally Posted by Cheryl aka JM

can we see pics of the one that is still on so we can see the band placement exactly?

will this stop new horn from growing or do you know? I'm wondering if she will start scurs now?

Im not sure if she will grow back scurs or not. But if you look at the first picture you an kinda see the green band on her other horn. I can try to get some pics of that tonight and will upload them on here as well. I used normal castrating bands.

[RedSonja]

Thanks for the pictures, very interesting. My one goat with horns needs to lose them, but I sure don't want to have them cut out. I've decided I'm going to band them as soon as she freshens (today is day 150-ish and she's acting like she's in early labor so *fingers crossed*). She caught one horn in the wall of the barn last summer and ripped the end off, that was traumatic for her and us to deal with. Blood and screaming and ugh. And the last week she's become such a little witch, with pregnancy hormones and all, that I promised her she would go in the freezer if she didn't turn back into my sweet little bottle baby after giving birth. I've been adding a couple of extra consonants to the end of her name lately (Little Bit, use your imagination ) She butted my 15 month old son for no reason what so ever a few days ago, didn't hurt him just scared me more than him. But the horns gotta go. I will try to remember to take pictures of the process too.

-Sonja

[rabbitpatch]

This was my very first goat - her previous owner banded her horns and one had already fallen off when I got her (ignore how rough her coat, etc. looks...I was too stupid to recognize that when I got her).
http://i642.photobucket.com/albums/u...ts/Millie4.png

This is what her head looked like the day the 2nd horn let loose:
http://i642.photobucket.com/albums/u...illiehead2.jpg
If you look closely, you can see the piece of tissue that is still connected. I wasn't sure what I was looking at, whether it was skin or vein or what, so I was reluctant to cut it at first. I thought if it were just dead tissue, it might dry up and fall on off after a couple of days. It didn't and I did clip that piece to take off the dangling horn. I felt so sorry for her...she had a very sore head for quite a long time. A vet recommended spraying it with screw worm spray to keep the flies away and that seemed to work pretty well. It scabbed over and seemed to heal okay but it was a nightmare of an experience for me. Especially since she got sick and died a short time (maybe a month) after the horn incident. I think her illness was probably unrelated to the horn (unless it was brought on by stress) but still. It all happened so close together, it just became a terrible, nightmare of an ordeal.

[Alice In TX/MO]

http://vaughnshire.com/agrarian-life...th-goat-horns/

http://www.barnonemeatgoats.com/bandinghorns.html

[Cheryl aka JM]

Originally Posted by RedSonja

Thanks for the pictures, very interesting. My one goat with horns needs to lose them, but I sure don't want to have them cut out. I've decided I'm going to band them as soon as she freshens (today is day 150-ish and she's acting like she's in early labor so *fingers crossed*). She caught one horn in the wall of the barn last summer and ripped the end off, that was traumatic for her and us to deal with. Blood and screaming and ugh. And the last week she's become such a little witch, with pregnancy hormones and all, that I promised her she would go in the freezer if she didn't turn back into my sweet little bottle baby after giving birth. I've been adding a couple of extra consonants to the end of her name lately (Little Bit, use your imagination ) She butted my 15 month old son for no reason what so ever a few days ago, didn't hurt him just scared me more than him. But the horns gotta go. I will try to remember to take pictures of the process too.

-Sonja

Sonja~
If you do I'd love to see pics~ but I think you should seriously consider waiting until October or November. When my vet did the heifers horns he was very worried about flies and had me wait~ that was much more gruesome than this looks~ but I do see quite a bit to attract flies there.

[powell7311]

Originally Posted by Cheryl aka JM

Sonja~
If you do I'd love to see pics~ but I think you should seriously consider waiting until October or November. When my vet did the heifers horns he was very worried about flies and had me wait~ that was much more gruesome than this looks~ but I do see quite a bit to attract flies there.

I would suggest as well to wait til fall time. Less flies and heat. Its just now starting to get warm here so hopefully her other horn will come off soon.

[RedSonja]

Originally Posted by Cheryl aka JM

Sonja~
If you do I'd love to see pics~ but I think you should seriously consider waiting until October or November. When my vet did the heifers horns he was very worried about flies and had me wait~ that was much more gruesome than this looks~ but I do see quite a bit to attract flies there.

Ah, yes. Hadn't thought about the flies. Guess I will have to put up with her prongs for a few more months yet. She's been a pain in the butt (literally a few times) lately but I wouldn't want anything to happen to her.

-Sonja

[freedomfrom4]

If they were burned after the horn fell off would that prevent the fly problem? I need to do something with 2 bucklings. I missed the window for dehorning and thought oh well cause I wasn't planning on keeping them much passed breeding, but human kids faces and horns don't go well together.

[francismilker]

I use electrical tape over the top of the green cheerio band to keep it from rolling upwards and off. So far, this has worked well for me. They don't manage to get the band off their horns although it's not the easiest to hold a screaming goat still enough to do a very effective tape job. The tape must be stretched tight as it's wrapped in order to stick to itself well.