The Not So Fun Stuff - Disbudding

[Nanno]

I feel so lucky that I'm friends with a local woman who is an exotic animal vet, but she also raises goats. She uses drugs to knock the babies out when she's disbudding and I thought that was a great idea. They aren't chewing cud yet, so it's not as much risk as when they're older. She only charged me for the drugs themselves, and since I also teach her and her kids riding lessons, we were able to swap services instead of exchanging money. The goats were out for about five minutes while we disbudded and tattooed, then she gave them the wake-up drug to bring them round. There was some brief head-shaking and minor crying (cured immediately by a drink of milk and comforting from mamas), but not the horrible screaming you get with conscious disbudding. I really liked doing it that way and I feel extremely fortunate that we have that option.