local anaesthetic for dehorning

[townfarmer]

I have a couple of 7 month old steers that I'd like to dehorn. I plan on using our scoop dehorner to do this. This is my least favorite cattle husbandry task. I'm wondering about using some local anesthetic to block the cornual nerve around the horn. It looks simple enough to administer the local from videos and pictures that I've seen. Has anyone had any success with local anesthetic for dehorning?

Thanks in advance :tiphat:
Andrew

 

[Supa Dexta]

Mandatory here now as of Jan 1st. For dehorning after bud attachment, or castration after 9mo age (going to 6mo in 2018)

I haven't had to do any yet, but I'll have to find out myself what to use. For now I switched to paste at birth, and banded nuts then anyways.

 

[Aaron]

Depending on the size of the horn, it will likely be beneficial. One year I did all of my dehorning with anesthetic and came to the conclusion that is was most beneficial with older animals, especially in cases where they had to be sawed-off with OB wire.

Mandatory here now as of Jan 1st. For dehorning after bud attachment, or castration after 9mo age (going to 6mo in 2018)

I haven't had to do any yet, but I'll have to find out myself what to use. For now I switched to paste at birth, and banded nuts then anyways.

I have watched the vet do a local for castrating an older calf and can guarantee that is a practice that will never become mainstream in the industry. You need more than one person and each testicle has to be done, so it makes castrating the worst/slowest job of all.

Of course, in the grand scheme, "the Code" changes nothing for most smaller operations. Unless of course you always invite a party of bureaucrats and vets to oversee your skills in working cattle. Those are likely the same people who make sure they have a building permit before they build an outhouse in the backyard.

 

[Bigfoot]

You might look at some of the horn banding threads here. i was skeptical, and tried it. It's all I plan on using from here on out. Painless, bloodless, and effortless.

 

[Caustic Burno]

You might look at some of the horn banding threads here. i was skeptical, and tried it. It's all I plan on using from here on out. Painless, bloodless, and effortless.

Reason I went polled years ago I hated dehorning and Lord knows we used everything under the sun to cut them off. People would faint and have fits at some ways we used years ago.

 

[townfarmer]

Reason I went polled years ago I hated dehorning and Lord knows we used everything under the sun to cut them off. People would faint and have fits at some ways we used years ago.

That's the plan is to use polled Devon genetics. Unfortunately a lot of polled Devon are heterozygous polled. I'm hoping I wont have to do too many after this.

You might look at some of the horn banding threads here. i was skeptical, and tried it. It's all I plan on using from here on out. Painless, bloodless, and effortless.

If I thought that de-horning was going to be a regular thing for me I'd definitely invest in a banding device. I'd heard mixed reports but good to hear you've had success.

Depending on the size of the horn, it will likely be beneficial. One year I did all of my de-horning with anesthetic and came to the conclusion that is was most beneficial with older animals, especially in cases where they had to be sawed-off with OB wire.

I've heard similar theory to that from a research study based on cortisol levels in calves post de-budding and de-horning. The results indicated that the older the calf the greater the effect of local anaesthetic.

Mandatory here now as of Jan 1st. For dehorning after bud attachment, or castration after 9mo age (going to 6mo in 2018)

I haven't had to do any yet, but I'll have to find out myself what to use. For now I switched to paste at birth, and banded nuts then anyways.

I'm sure that legislation will be coming here as well. In some European countries it needs to be performed by a vet.

Thanks for the replies

Andrew

 

[greybeard]

You might look at some of the horn banding threads here. i was skeptical, and tried it. It's all I plan on using from here on out. Painless, bloodless, and effortless.

Are you using the green cheerio type bands or the heavy Tri Bander bands on the horns?

 

[Bigfoot]

The tri bander kind. I'm certain the green cheerio kind would work. Seems like they'd be more prone to roll off. I also gorilla tape mine on. 3m electrical tape first, and the duct tape over that.

 

[Lucky_P]

Have had maybe a half-dozen horned calves born here over the past 20 years...I know quite a few of my cows are hetero polled, and some of the Shorthorn bulls we've used over the past 7-8 yrs are known (or are now known to me as) hetero polled.
Have used the green Cheerio bands to take horns off once they get to about 4 months of age. I do a cornual nerve block before band application (2 or 3 bands per horn, and tape to hold them in place) - and the calves still do some head-shaking and pawing for a few minutes afterward. Calves have had 2 doses of Clostridial bacterin containing tetanus toxoid before I band horns.

Cornual blocks are easy to do, and as SD indicated, they're required in some countries - and eventually may be here, as well.