If there’s one thing people like in this world it’s a good debate, and the homesteading world is no different in this respect! The goat keeping world is just full of opinions on all manner of subjects, but the one that seems to get people riled up the most is the subject of goat horns.
If you are new to goats, you may need a little help with the lingo. I use the terms de-horning and disbudding interchangeably in this post. Both simply mean the removal of horns. The most common method these days is to use a special hot iron like this one. *affiliate link* Yes, I own one. No, that doesn’t make me particularly proud.
Before we continue, let me state my position on the topic. First of all, this is a no-judgement goat zone! After one rather disastrous experience with disbudding baby goats, we have decided that it is not something for us. I do, however, completely understand why some people choose to do it. I hope to present you with pros, cons and useful links so that you can make an informed decision when it comes time to decide what is best for your herd.
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We don’t disbud goats on our homestead.
Let me tell you why.
Our first year with goat kids we followed the advice of a well-known and respected website (one that I still respect!) and purchased an iron for disbudding goats and calves. We gathered tips from some local goat owners and also watched videos on YouTube. It looked unpleasant, but not terribly difficult.
People will tell you left and right that the goats really don’t feel much or that they are just scared, but let me tell you, the sound of week old baby goats screaming their lungs out was more than I could handle. It hurt them. It hurt me. My children cried.
We finally stopped the proceedings with only 3 out of the 4 goats de-horned.
Or at least we thought we de-horned them. The little nubs that they had been sporting popped off and they wore the classic burned circles on top of their heads instead. A neighbor looked at our handiwork and assured us that we had gotten them. We felt good that at least we had succeeded on those 3 goats.
That is until their horns grew back.
The worst part for me is that they didn’t just grow back normal. They grew back in a sad and twisted condition.
Poor sweet Ivy will always have crooked horns now and it is our fault. That makes me sad.
Another goat we had for awhile had been disbudded by a more “professional” goat owner before coming to us, but even he developed unsightly “scurs” at a young age. Scurs are basically the sad remains of horns that continue to grow after disbudding. They usually have to be clipped back and can be a real source of problems, not to mention the fact that they just plain look weird!
So, here at Green Eggs & Goats, we no longer disbud our goats. In fact, we have learned to embrace the goat horn!
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Goat Horns – Pros:
(Please note that I have taken great care not to refer to them as “horny goats.” Oops. I think I just did. Oh well, it was classy while it lasted! Can I just call this section “Why we like horny goats?” Ahem. Nevermind.)
- Handles. Horns give us something to grab onto if we need to catch a goat, especially if the goat isn’t wearing a collar!
- Cooling. Horns contain lots of blood vessels that help to keep a goat cool, a factor that I think is especially important in our hot Alabama summers.
- Aesthetics. Goat horns are beautiful, regal and stately.
- Devils. Goat horns help us remember that my favorite little beasts aren’t actually that far removed from the devil himself. (OK, this one is a joke. Kind of.)
- Risk. You run the risk of killing your goat in the disbudding process or causing serious brain injury. It just isn’t worth it in my book.
- Defense. Goats use their horns for self-defense. They have few methods for protecting themselves. It seems selfish of me to rob them of this one.
I have read many pro and con articles over the years, and here are a couple that are also in favor of leaving horns on their goats.
- Why We Don’t De-Horn Our Goats – by Our Mountain Hearth – this is a very through and well thought out piece on why the author chooses not to de-horn. I shared it on our Facebook page a while back though, and it really brought out some differing opinions. Good stuff!
- To Disbud, Or Not to Disbud – by Chickens in the Road – they had more or less the same experience with disbudding that we did and decided it was not a procedure they could feel good about performing.
- Finally, the good folks at Onion Creek Ranch also believe, as we do, that it is usually more humane not to de-horn a goat.
Now, as I said before, this is a no-judgement goat zone as well as a place of learning, so I want to let you know that there are also many good reasons why people choose to disbud their goats.
Tesla is currently the only de-horned goat on our farm. Luckily for her, she is entirely ornery enough to hold her own without the help of horns!
Goat Horns – Cons:
- Safety. Many people feel that they are simply safer around a goat with no horns. They have legitimate worries about being gored by a horn, or perhaps losing an eye. (I will just say that the worst goat-related injury I have sustained thus far has been when I was accidentally butted heads with a de-horned goat. Ouch!)
- Showing. I don’t show my goats, but my understanding is that dairy breeds have to be de-horned to be shown in competition. I personally am not one for beauty pagents, human or otherwise, but if you are into that sort of thing, you will need to ditch the horns.
- Getting stuck. OK, I can’t argue the fact that our horned goats have occasionally gotten stuck in the fence, and that this likely would not have happened if they didn’t have horns. If they are stuck too long, a goat can go into shock and die, so this is a very real threat. To reduce the chances, we now buy “goat and sheep” fencing when we need to make a repair. This fencing generally has holes that are too close together to get stuck in. If that isn’t an option for you, or if you are gone a lot, you may need to seriously consider disbudding.
- Fighting. Goats can injure each other by head butting and fighting. Horns can increase the risk of injury, so some people choose to de-horn for the sake of reducing possible injuries.
Now, although I don’t agree particularly with the process of disbudding goats, many of my fellow goat owners do, so here are some differing opinions on the matter.
- Fias Co Farm is one of my go-to resources for goat information. This is one of the few areas where we disagree, but she makes a very fine argument for disbudding goats and it is worth the read. She also shows how she does the procedure.
- Weed ‘Em & Reap also has an informative tutorial on how to de-horn a goat.
So there you have it. The moral of the story is that some people like horny goats and some people don’t. That’s just the way it is. It does seem that everyone in the goat world has an opinion on the subject, so let me just warn you that if you ask about de-horning in a public arena, expect people to express strong opinions. These may include, but are not limited to fact spouting, horror stories, name calling, smear campaigns, fist fights and general talking behind your back. Of course, without those things, our great debate would just be a civil discussion, and where would the fun be in that?!?
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So, where do you stand on the great goat horn debate? Take the goat by the horns and leave me a comment to let me know!
Marcus Kristoffersen, our wonderful exchange student took all the pictures in this post. Thanks Marcus!
Here are a few goats books that might want to add to your library:
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***This post contains affiliate links. That means that a percentage of the purchase price of items bought through these links goes toward keeping this blog up and running and food in the goats’ bowls, so thanks!***
Hi Heather – loved this post, and it was really timely for me. I recently adopted 2 pygmy wethers, my first foray into goats, and I adore them. The thing is, 1 of them has horns, and the other one doesn’t. They’ve mostly managed to work it out with no mishaps – even tho it scares the crap out of me when they rough house! This is the thing……Totes (the one with horns) can “hook” the other goat (Ollie) and me with his horns – he got me around the ankle last night and down I went. I do not believe he is being mean, and we were actually playing when he did it, but it did make me catch my breath. Anyway, to the point……I’ve seen pictures online of folks using tennis balls with holes in them to “top” horns and then wrapping the horns in duct tape…..seems brilliant at first, but……aren’t horns living body parts, and don’t they need to breathe (or whatever)? So……I’m thinking of trying this with Totes, but use Vet Wrap instead of duct tape…..at least that breathes and doesn’t have a harsh adhesive. Do you have any thoughts….pros and/or cons? thanks much – and i do looooovee your posts and blog! Tammy
Hmmmm…..I honestly haven’t really considered the breathablity of the horns before. I do know that lots of dairy cow owners glue those “kong” dog toys to their cow’s horns, so I guess they don’t worry about it. I would think that safety would be the #1 concern. Perhaps something temporary while they are being trained on appropriate behavior would be a good compromise. You could always try the vet wrap and see if it stays on! (And don’t forget to report the results!) 🙂
I’ve seen goats with wrapped horns but I do believe you need to be very careful if you do this. It is my understanding that goats can over heat and become ill or worse if their horns are wrapped and they can’t regulate their body temperature. Horns are indeed”living” there is a huge blood supply in them just touch your goats horns and you will feel the warmth. Good luck ?
hi Heather,
Thank you for being willing to address such a controversial subject. I am of two minds on this. Let me first just say that I pay my vet to disbud my kids under anesthesia $30 a pop. This has been my uneconomic solution to the problem for now. I would love to not disbud at all for all the reasons you mention. Sometimes they have to be done twice due to the re growth you mentioned and there will still be scurs. But if I did stop disbudding I would never sell another kid to a good home. All goats with horns around here go to the sale barn and are sold at meat prices. Many will be tied to a stake in the 100 degree heat to eat weeds. I don’t want that for my kids. Between disbudding and banding I have almost given up my milk goats. If you want milk you have to breed and if you breed you are responsible for the quality of life those kids will have. I have not found the definitive answer yet but thanks for hosting the discussion
You make such great points! Where I live, it seems like many people don’t disbud, but I still have trouble finding quality buyers for my goats when I need to thin my herd (as I do now.) I *just* wrote this in a listing: my #1 priority is to find good homes for my goaties. Second priority is to get paid (or something interesting in trade.) This is where a lot of my goat ownership stress comes from! Well, that and fencing. 😉 Thanks for taking the time to comment!
Good Morning,
Love the post!
We are the Kiessling family. We are the proud owners of 5 goats – 3 does ~ Toggengbergs. Two of them came de-horned..:(. And one of does is the babies & she does have her horns…:) We also have 2 bucks. One is a wether Togg – he came with a messy de-horned head…:(. And the other buck is a Nubian mix. And he is why we decided to stay with horns. His previous owner told us all about what their horns are for. So, we kept them. His is by far the most orneriest goat we have had – but we love him. Can’t figure why he does not like me….:( But oh well. We have had him since he was a baby…;)
Anyway, the Lord put the horns there for a reason – can’t see why we should cut them off…:(
Have a blessed day, the Kiessling family
10 years of 4-H goats and another ten later in life. In the 4_h time we built a disbudding box. My father was a carpenter with a bandsaw so it had a nice curve notch for the neck and a curved block to hold the head and a lid to close to hold them inside. We also mastered the quick orbit of the hot iron around the root of the horn bud rather than pressing down on the bud and cooking the brain. We had very few scurs and they were like fingernails.
I did witness some disasters. One was the supposedly brilliant idea of burning the bud with caustic instead of the hot iron. Take away the hot iron it stops burning the caustic does not stop burning until all of it is consumed which resulted in horrific scars. The other was a kid scratching the scab off with her hoof and getting tetanus and dying a painful death.
The solution for us was careful selection and breeding so that most of our goat were naturally hornless.
Thank you for all of this information. I really like that this is from a stand point of ‘been-there-done-that”. I also appreciate that you list the pros and the cons instead of ‘this is my opinion and that is that!’. I have never seriously considered owning goats myself but when I saw a link to this article is was curious, as I assumed that there were breeds of goats that were horn-less, and it was sort of a 50-50 between them and “horned breeds”. My two cents on the matter is that if I ever did find my self in a position of owning kids, I would not de-bud them because it is painful, has risk of injury or death, and my not even work. I do agree that the de-budding pros are valid, so I would imagine that an alternative could be to “clip” or “file” the points off of the horns. Can anyone with experience tell me why that would or would not work?
Once the horns begin to go, you really can’t cut or file. We had a wethers with scurs that were like curved ram horns.
When we had to trim the horn – since it would grow into the top of his skull- we always had to be careful to not take too much off because of the vein. It would also take 3 of us. 1 with the cutting implement, and 2 restraining him.
There is a vein that supplies blood into the horn, as this is a goat’s main exhaust system. So, you may be able to
nip the tip off, but only with restraints.
In my opinion, make the choice before they’re born and stick with it. As we get more goats we’ll have a show string and an Au natural herd. We have also made the decision to keep the horns on the wethers we’ll sell as we live in the Southwest.
ENJOYED EVERYONE’S POST. I have a Saanan /Alpine billy that came with horns, my two does La Mancha came without. So far it has not been a problem. My does are bred and yes I have struggled with the do I or don’t I . I am not comfortable with the debudding process around here, and it appears that the goat community here is 40/60 for it. Where I live we do have coyotes so I am comfortable with horns as a form of protection, Have to agree Nature gave them for a reason.
Hi, Heather. I really don’t like dis-budding my goats either, and I do see the issue from both sides. I have 5 goats right now. My buck has his horns, and one of my does does as well. I think their horns are beautiful, but I have also learned to avoid the horns when I am in the goat barn! Both of my wethers and my other doe are all de-horned. Originally, we did it because our son showed in 4-H, and show goats have to be dis-budded. No one wants to see a child or another goat get injured at the fair. Daisy, one of my breeding does, ended up losing her horns because she got them stuck in the fence. She panicked, pulled her head out, and she broke her horn off at the base. She had to have an emergency procedure to save her life. Goat horns are so viscous, they can bleed out in nothing flat. Now, because we breed goats for show, we dis-bud the babies before we sell them. I hate it, but we have to do it. In the last few years, we have taken them to the vet to have the de-horning done because they can be anesthetized, which seems more humane.
I really liked your post and I also like horny (um, I mean horned) goats. Of course, I only have 3, they are my pets and I don’t have to worry about lost production. If I had an actual herd of dairy producers, I might think differently. I don’t have the issue of them getting caught in the fence because my goats are trained to an electric fence. And I have to stress *trained* because each one eally does need to be trained to the fence, another luxury I might not have if I had 10 or 20 or 50. But they are so smart and they learn fast. I don’t think any of them was zapped more than 3 times before they learned to stay away from that thing for good. I’d like to add a couple items to your list of reasons to keep them. Goats use their horns as tools. They can move things, break branches, scratch their backs…all kinds of useful things, including pulling boards off of their shed (a favorite of my husband.) And, I’m sure I just imagine this, but goats love their horns. My little wethers are all about those horns, very proud of them. Would they really know it if they had been dehorned? Do dehorned goats look at horned goats with envy and resentment? I sincerely doubt it, but they sure like to proudly use the horns they do have.
Those are all excellent points Alison! I’ve seen my goats move things like Christmas trees exactly where they want them by hooking in their horns. They do make great tools. Well, except when they tear up their sheds. That part made me LOL!
Heather,
Thank you for your post. Your message was a rare one to find in this arena. I am a new goat owner, and new to livestock of this size.. I have two wethers I use for my own personal landscape control. I have trained them from 2 months of age for over a year now. I have always been aware of the danger their horns poised, to myself, others and the boys themselves. Even so I have never considered removing them.
First of all, they were well established horns at 2 months when I got them. Removal at all seemed cruel and unnecessary at that point.
Secondly, it is a natural part of the animal and therefore in my mind a useful part of the anatomy of the goat. ( Castration off the table in this argument.)
Finally, they are functional for cooling the animal, a source of protection from real predators, and they just make the goat look right.
When I first looked into getting Oscar and Felix I did not find much informational support on keeping horns. Your post is a honest message of the positive aspects of horned goats. Thank you.
Bold, Beautiful and Horny all the way!
Jodie, with agreement from Oscar and Felix
Old Homestead Farm
Just now going your site and love it! We only have the two goats, but I’m sure glad Joy-Joy doesn’t have horns. Her Nick name is brat-brat. I have learned never to turn my back on her. Molly, however, is a love, but I’m still glad she was disbursed. I feel that it’s just much safer for both the goats and their people if they don’t have horns. They are not necessary in captivity.
A great post! All of my goats have horns, even my big buck. I agree twith you hat the babies feel pain during disbudding, although I’ve seen it done and they recover quickly. It just isn’t for me, although I understand why people do it.
However, dehorning is outright horrifying. The actual, developed horns are cut away leaving the sinus cavities exposed, with so much pain and a huge risk of Iinfection. Most vets won’t even do it here.
Thanks for a thoughtful discussion!
Great article! This debate is one I am split down the middle on. I don’t currently have goats, but when I did we had to disbud them because they were dairy goats, and had to be.
I became very good at it, but we did have a couple of goats that had scurs after our first attempts. That’s not pretty at all. I’m not squeamish about it at all so that wasn’t a factor for me.
When I get goats again, I will probably reconsider for my keepers. But to sell them around here – they pretty much have to be dehorned.
My question would be how dose not dehorning effect your ability to sell kids and dose it then effect the market price you get for those kids?
And for reference I would be selling meat not milk kids ( I am guessing in makes a difference)
I don’t disbud my goats, either, and here is why. The first year we had kids, I hired a woman recommended by my vet to come disbud my two healthy vigorous kids. She came with her own hired hand as a helper and did the procedure exactly as it is described on various websites. I watched because I thought I needed to learn to do it myself. It was so horrific that I cried on aoff for the rest of the day (and I am not normally a crier). One of them got infected and when I took her to the vet,he told me that it looks like the iron slipped and almost put her eye out. She almost died, never fully recovered, she was weak and her growth stunted. I honestly think it gave her brain damage. I vowed to never do that again. It was beyond cruel.
Yes, it’s harder to sell dairy goat kids with horns, especially the Bucks, but so far, we’ve been lucky to find buyers for all of them
Loved the article. A long time ago I bought a buckling who’d just gotten dehorned and after a few months he grew back the horns, or I should say HORN, just like your story. He had one twisted, long, grotesque horn out of his head until the day he died, so I’m agreeing with you on your sentiments of leaning towards no dehorning although no horns can be nice!
Thank you for the article, God bless.