Removing horns

This is our Ruby, last calf from Ruth, our beloved first dairy cow. Ruth is no longer with us, but we’re hoping Ruby will carry on her gentle demeanor and make us a great milking cow. Since we plan to keep her around for a while, we made the decision that these horns needed to go. She was learning to use them more and more and I did not want to be cracked in the face with one of them at some point. We’ve heard about scooping the horns out (ouch), we’ve heard about cutting them (ouch, ouch), then we heard about banding them. We figured it was worth a shot and if it didn’t work then we could look into the more invasive options. This is the “before” picture back in the fall. I didn’t start the process then because I didn’t want her to have to deal with the flies. Timing is important, you want to miss the flies but also miss the deep freeze. In hindsight I should have started the process back in the fall knowing it would take about 4 weeks for the horns to come off and the flies wouldn’t have been an issue.

Instead we waited until there was a wee bit of snow on the ground (waited too long), but that also meant no flies. The timing wasn’t too bad, we had a few nights that got down below freezing, so I just brought her in the barn on those nights. The technique is pretty simple. We put her halter on and tied her head up high in the red cattle chute you’ll see in the last picture. All the cows are pretty acclimated to the chute, they get fed alfalfa treats in there a lot so when we need to utilize it, it’s not a big scary thing. Once we had her secured, we clipped all the long hairs around the base of her horns. Then we put a green castration band all the way down to the base of the horn where it’s a little squishy. Just above that we put electrical tape to hold the band in place and prevent it from sliding up off the horn. In this snowy morning picture, you can see a bit of the tape hanging off behind her left ear. Once the tape is on for about 2 weeks, you don’t have to worry if the tape comes off; by then the castration band has made enough of a dent in the horn that it won’t slide off on its own anymore. She kind of bounced around and threw her head up in the air for about 10 minutes after we let her out of the chute and then just went back to life as usual.

About 3 weeks in I came out one morning and she had quite a bit of blood down the right side of her head. I was very grateful for no flies then. She wasn’t eating like she had been so I separated her from the other cows and babied her for a few days until her behavior was back to normal. During the “babying” period, her right horn started tipping. I never touched it, just let it happen on its own.

It was so loose that when she flicked her ear back and forth a couple of times, the horn just came off. I retrieved it and was surprised to see the green castration band still attached! This was in early December.

One thing I really liked outiside of this being so simple (and free) was that she didn’t associate us with any discomfort she had other than the initial clipping and banding. I’m sure it wasn’t comfortable, but way less traumatic than cutting or scooping. She’s not nearly as cocky with her head now as she was before. She dropped to the very bottom in the pecking order of our 6 cows though, so I still baby her when I can, which I don’t mind a bit. This is the finished product. I’m very pleased.

Ta-dah! This is the red cattle chute I mentioned earlier in the post. Nothing fancy, but very handy to have around once in a while. Our little bull calf got banded in there as well (testicles not horns).