goat horns removal

[driftwood]

my son has one goat that keeps getting its horns caught in woven wire fence,,,,can he just take a hacksaw and cut them off..????

[Backfourty,MI.]

There will be a lot of blood & it will really hurt the goat & be traumatic for him. I wouldn't do that to an adult goat.
A better solution would be to use a piece of PVC pipe & duct tape it to each horn, a stick will work too.
Or a piece of garden hose cut to fit between the horns but pushed on each end & then duct taped on, depending on how his horns are growing the PVC might be better.

[copperkid3]

In a word: NO!

In a few words of explanation: Horns may look & feel like dead bone,

but they are living tissue with blood vessels deep within and if you just

start cutting willy-nilly . . . Did I mention the BLOOD?!!!!

Neither you or the goat will be very happy with the results.

There will be others to come along to give better advice in how to deal with the problem.

[Alice In TX/MO]

Do a google search on PVC pipe goat horns.

[Chaty]

You can use the bands that you use to wether a goat or a Angle grinder spins fast enough to cauterize it. I personally would use the bands and in about 4 week they usually come off. With a little blood lose. I have done both and like the bands better.
I disbud mine when they are little, but if you band put a stick at the ends of the horns that is wider than the horns and duct tape it on that way it cant get its head through the fence till the horns come off.

[chamoisee]

Don't use a hack saw. It takes too long. Use a Saws-All, and cauterize well with a red hot dehorning iron after each horn. You will need one person to hold the goat's head still and pressed to a log or wood table, etc, one to straddle the body, and one to man the saw. The people with the saw and head need to have nerves of steel, and none of the three should be squeamish about blood, of which there will be a lot.

I don't recommend doing full sized buck horns with this method, have done does and kids before. You can search under my user name for more posts abotu this method, and details.

[wintrrwolf]

Even if you take a hacksaw or saws-all and cut the horns shorter and cauterize to keep em from bleeding all over the place, the horn keeps growing. Which is why vets burrow out the horn base (creating a hole) on cattle that were not dehorned young (so i was told).
I have heard shaving the base and then putting 2 or more bands there will slowly cut into the horn base and then you could cauterize and this should keep the horns from growing...during this process the upper horn will get weaker and if goat head butts or gets horn caught on something might come off to soon and you will have a bleeding goat.
Have used the PVC pipe duck tapped across the horns to keep horned goat from getting stuck in fence, even put pretty fake flowers on the ends other goat nibbled those off, and the goat with attached PVC would rub her head on trees to get the pipe off but it did hold for 3-4 days before needing more duct tape.

[Doug Hodges]

Removing horns on a grown animal is surgery. I assisted a vet removing horns from young bulls. He went below the skin to cut it off and stitched it back up. As others have said, it is a lot of blood. If I remember right he tied off the blood vessels.

[chamoisee]

The horns I removed did not grow back. I cauterized the base really well. And yes, it is surgery, and yeah, lots of blood. Not for the faint of heart, but better than an otherwise good doe going to waste.

[Suzyq2u]

We've used a PVC 'stick of shame' on one of ours with great results.
No issues with the fence now. I couldn't imagine removing them on
an adult O.o

[Awnry Abe]

Yes, but you'd be better off cutting the horn off at the neck.