Tons of Sh!t and Disbudding Goats

Today was very productive.  It started off with some bad news.  Hammy Fae's boyfriend, Major, is going to be at his other girlfriend's house for the next two weeks and Hammy is coming into heat now.  That means we will not be able to breed her this cycle unless we find another boar...and pay for his services.

But, while we were talking to Major's owner, J asked if we could rent his dump trailer for the day to haul manure.  The guy was fine with it and we asked if maybe we could just trade out the $100 we paid to have Major's services for the rental of the trailer instead.  He agreed.  So now we have a dump trailer for the day but will have to find stud service elsewhere.

We picked up the trailer and headed out to a horse boarding facility that needed to unload some of their manure.  The owner was able to use his bobcat to load us up.  Within the three hours he was going to be available, we were able to pick up, bring home and spread three full loads - about 10 yards of sh!t in all.  In addition to that, we got to talking with the owner and he may end up purchasing 40 ton of hay from us this season.  He also said that we are welcome to come back for manure anytime.  We would like to return monthly and use it on the field, in the garden, and for our own compost.

After we unloaded the manure...a tricky manuever including me driving and J pushing the controls then yelling at me to go forward when the manure started to slide out...J took the ditch witch and spread it out over the entire garden.  It was enough to give a nice light coating to the whole thing.  He then used the spring harrow to drag it in a little bit.  Tomorrow we will disc it in.  Then this weekend, we will rent the tiller and till it in.  Hopefully, this will add just enough nitrogen to the dirt to make it healthy to grow in.  Most of the manure pile was almost a year old, but it was mixed with some newer stuff too.  I think that as long as we don't spread too much over the garden (keep the ratio of dirt to manure heavier on the dirt side) we should be fine.  A lot of the pile had already turned to a nice mulch.

Toward the end of the day, a friend of mine came over with her de-horning iron.  The nubian cross babies are just two weeks old and we really needed to get their horn buds taken care of.  She was nice enough to be willing to show us how and coach us on the second kid.  She did the doeling, Stitch.  It really wasn't as bad as I remembered.  Then I did the buckling, Max.

The process for disbudding a goat kid is an evil one.  There are NO nice ways to do this, with maybe the exception of sedating the kid through the entire process. 

1.  First, you shave away the fur around the horn bud.  This helps to alleviate the smell of burning fur as well as make it easier to see the horn bud.  You can usually hold the kid in your arms to do this part.  They don't like it, but it doesn't really hurt.

2.  We found that placing the kid between your legs and then kind of sitting on them with their head sticking out in front makes the most sense when holding.  If you have three people, a second person can hold the head still while the third uses the iron.  If not, the person sitting on the kid can hold the head still on their own.

A sketch of a disbudding iron.

3.  Making sure that the iron is super hot (test it on some wood), you place the ring of the iron around the horn bud (the tip of the bud going into the hole in the iron).  Slowly rolling pressure in a clockwise motion, you burn a ring around the horn bud.  Have the person who is holding count to five slowly.  If you are using the iron and you count, you will go too fast.

4.  Remove the iron and check to make sure that there is a solid copper ring around the horn bud.  If there are spots that have not turned copper, reapply the iron to those places for 2-3 seconds more.

Copper rings mean you're done.

5.  You may be able to pick the center of the horn bud off at this point.  If not, use the side of the iron to burn the center for a couple of seconds and try to remove it again.  When the center peels off, you should see a white circle.  Ours had a little bit of goo and blood.  We just cauterized it with the iron for a second and it was fine.  Once we were done, we placed the babies back in with mommy and within an hour they were bouncing around like nothing ever happened.  The resilience of a child.

There's no need to blu-kote the wound.  I guess it's sterile without medicine.  We noticed this evening that the little girl had a bit of hay stuck to one spot.  I'll watch it and may end up spraying it just to make sure it doesn't get infected.

Honestly, it was a bit like going to the dentist.  You dread it all the way up until the moment you have to do it.  Then once it's over, you cannot remember why you had gotten so worked up about it in the first place.  I'm sure that by the time we have to disbud again next year, we will be dreading it again.  No fun for anyone, but a necessary evil to keep a horn-free herd.