Banding Horns

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Stocker Steve

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We tried "dehorning" some cattle this week using the Tri bander latex bands for the first time. A couple questions:

- Is there an ideal age or size for the approach?

- Due to the taper in the horn, we could not get the bands to stay farther up the horn than about 1/2" from the hair line. Is this a trick here?

- How long does it usually take for the horn tips to drop off a 5 wt. animal? I realize the time will vary.
 
good question Steve, i'd also like to know.

I banded a few about 5 years ago, but with varied results. The ones that did lose their horns had some awfull looking regrowth.

Also as the horns died they breaked off resulting in quite heavy bleeding. Not more than conventional dehorning, but the difference for me is that when you dehorn you know you will have bleeding and can monitor it. When he horn breaks off in its own time you don't know when to monitor specially if they graze a large area. I wouldn't recommend this method, or any other method of dehorning in the spring or summer.
 
KNERSIE":1frbimbs said:
good question Steve, i'd also like to know.

I banded a few about 5 years ago, but with varied results. The ones that did lose their horns had some awfull looking regrowth.

Also as the horns died they breaked off resulting in quite heavy bleeding. Not more than conventional dehorning, but the difference for me is that when you dehorn you know you will have bleeding and can monitor it. When he horn breaks off in its own time you don't know when to monitor specially if they graze a large area. I wouldn't recommend this method, or any other method of dehorning in the spring or summer.

I've never tried it, but if you can't get that band of skin at the base you are not really doing a very good job.

I do have a question. Why not spring or summer?
 
The reason why not spring or summer... there are flies. Usually in winter flies aren't much of a problem.

When the horn breaks off it will bleed, the blood will attrack flies, they will lay eggs, the eggs will hatch and you'll have maggotts in the wound.

Like I said earlier, you will not know when this is going to happen, so you might find out too late.

Maybe I didn't do a very good job of banding the horns, but I assure you its easier said than done to get the band around that ring of skin at the horn base and to get it to stay there.

I burn the hornbuds with a gas dehorner working with lighter fluid and to me its a far better way of dealing with horns. The heifers I tried to band was bought in and the horns were about 4'' long at the time.
 
KNERSIE":5jprn52g said:
The reason why not spring or summer... there are flies. Usually in winter flies aren't much of a problem.

When the horn breaks off it will bleed, the blood will attrack flies, they will lay eggs, the eggs will hatch and you'll have maggotts in the wound.

Like I said earlier, you will not know when this is going to happen, so you might find out too late.

Maybe I didn't do a very good job of banding the horns, but I assure you its easier said than done to get the band around that ring of skin at the horn base and to get it to stay there.

I burn the hornbuds with a gas dehorner working with lighter fluid and to me its a far better way of dealing with horns. The heifers I tried to band was bought in and the horns were about 4'' long at the time.
Thanks for the reply.
That brings up another question. How soon can you burn the horn buds? I have heard a lot of diferent openions. And I have seen a lot of botched up jobs because they did not burn all the way around or not deep enough. I have always cut them. But I beleive there may be less chance for infection by burning.
 
You can burn as soon as you can feel them. I usually burn the first time they come through the chute. If your iron is really hot and you burn each bud for about 10 seconds twisting back and forth while doing so you can't really botch it up.

A well burnt bud will have a bronze colour around the base.

I even burn horns up to 1.5'' long. Just cut them with pruning scissors and burn around the base making sure you burn a wider area than the actual horn base. This is obviously not the prefered method as its always better to burn them as young as possible, but especially when using a heterozygous polled bull on horned cows you often get horn like scurs that doesn't show themselves till much later. These are the ones that often get missed and have to be cut and burnt later.

I usually apply gention violet or After-Mule to the burn wound, but its not really neccesary.

Remember the hotter the iron the less painfull to the calf.
 
We still have a few calves every year with horn buds, I burn them off at branding time so calves are about 3 mo. old and if you can't feel the bud by that time - there isn't one. I've never had a problem with scurs - like has already been said make sure the iron is really hot and twist it around to complete the circle while applying a fair amount of pressure and the skin around the base of the horn will turn a bright gold/copper color.
 
We use a dehorning paste at the same time we tag the calf, just a few hours after birth. We clip the hair off of the horn bud and put the paste on circiling the bud completely. It use to come in a bottle that you could squeeze on, but it has been taken off of the market. The other stuff we now use is in a jar and we apply it with a popsicle stick. Too much can burn right into the skull. Highly corosive. Keep off your skin. Wash off with vinegar.
It is rare that we have a horn grow after using this, unless the paste is somehow rubbed off.
 
I spoke with the gal at the Calibrate 800 number. She pointed out that you needed to get the band above the hair line to do a good job and that there was a "ridge" there to hold the band in place...

So we ran a group of rough cutter bulls back through the chute. We first tried the wire saw as Benz recommended but our saw was ****. The bulls with curved or (6 to 8 inches) long horns seemed to work well with the bands. My daughter called them burretts. The shorter horns had too much taper to hold a band in place and we gouged them out the old fashioned way. :D
 
We had a couple banded horns fall off this week. The Callibrate gal said it takes up to 50 days to get this to happen. Hopefully we will not have an unicorns when we are done.
 

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