Alright, this is how I disbud, others may do different. I use a rhinehart x30 I don't just burn till I see a copper ring, I burn until I see a copper and white ring: Then I pop the cap off: Both done. If I see any bleeding or oozing I just put the iron back on for a bit. Once all done I put some blue kote on to prevent infection.
Why do you pop the cap off? How old is that doe/buck? Is that a little horn growth I see on the undone side in the first picture... just trying to imagine it in my head.
I usually don't wait till they have hard horns, but this was Bonnie's kid so I wanted to wait until I thought he could handle disbudding. He was Born 3/18 Usually I do buck kids at about 3 days-1 week old. I pop the cap off to make sure it I burned it enough, plus I feel that leaving dead skin/horn sitting on top of their skull is just asking for infection. Since I have started pulling off the caps I've had zero infections. You will see tomorrow.
I am bumping this up because it's kidding season!!! And all those bundles of joy are going to need their horns burned.
Great pictures Ashley! Erin, once you disbud, the horn cap is basically just sitting on the head, you just grab the little cap and pull up and it just comes right off, no extra pain or anything. Just make sure you don't pull if off if it's attached to skin or something, you'll have to slowly take it off. It's very easy. I left the caps on kids the first year I disbudded and some of them had bad scurs. Last year out of about 70 kids (burning and popping caps off), 5 bucklings got very tiny scurs.
Great pictures! I have always heard that you have finish up by burning the tip of the horn bud. Why is that?
I disbudded my girl when she was 5 days old. I wondered how long it takes before I know if any scurs are going to grow. She is 18 days old now and it looks the same.
My first Nigi's (doe's) that I disbudded, each got one tiny little scur on one side and it wasn't until they were over a year old, maybe even closer to 2, before you could see it. It's about 1/2inch in size. @ Ashey or Kaylee- I haven't been able to "pop" the caps off as cleanly as this shows. Everytime we make sure to pull/scrape it off, but it's still kinda 'stuck' on there...not necessarily attached but just stuck. Maybe I'll try harder when I do the newborn kids next week...now that I have a pic of what a clean disbud should look like. We haven't really had 'scurs' on ours though, but we do burn twice on each side too, but boy I'd love to be able to pop those scabbies off nice & clean like this pic shows. Thank you so much for this update! See we can all learn something! :thumb:
I've noticed it's harder to pull the cap off if the iron is not on long enough. That's one of the ways I tell they are burned enough is by the cap (along w/ the ring and all that ). The cap pops off really easy with a good burn.
My friend who is a big breeder uses gloves when burning, she then puts a bag of ice on the babies heads, and then rubs some aloe vera gel on. Does this seem like a good idea?
I did the ice thing but I used snow in a wet cloth. I thought about using aloe vera but I thought leaving it to dry up would be better. Just my opinion.
If the cap does not come off easy I burn longer or hold teh iron sideways on the cap so it burns it more and it comes off easier. After I burn I always spray blue kote on the caps. Helps everything dry up and heal up faster imo. I never put ice on their heads... but that's just me.
I use the cold wet cloth to cool their heads. I just touch the head off and on with the cold wet cloth, I don't hold it on steady. Don't know it that is a good idea after having such intense heat on their heat.
