A few scraps of wood...

According to our "Raising Dairy Goats" guide book, NO goat should have horns - they are nothing but a dangerous nuisance on a dairy goat and should be eliminated from offspring as soon as possible (by day 5). Unfortunately, the only reliable way to do this involves a slightly barbaric technique of burning off the tiny horn buds on those sweet-faced baby kids. We heat an small "iron" until it's hot enough to brand wood and then press it onto the buds. Supposedly, if done correctly, this does not hurt the kid - it's only burning the hard horn tissue that has no nerve endings.

The key phrase "done correctly" is the stumbling block. Every other spring, this has been a two or three person job, and the task of holding/restraining a rambunctous kid goes to the person who drew the short straw (usually ME!). You must hold the kid's head as still as possible while a red-hot iron is pressed onto it. Guess where your hands are? And guess how still a baby goat is? That is why last year's kids all had a nice set of beautiful curving horns, nice handles for dragging them around. Our current buck has such a set - and I do not like them for many reasons!

This spring, Mike and I knocked out a little box designed to do the tough job of holding a kid during the de-horning process. It made the whole dehorning process so easy and I think we actually did a good job of eliminating the horn buds. We were able to hold the iron in the correct place and for the correct amount of time. And best of all, no one, man nor beast, got burned! This is Go on the left, demonstrating the new kid-restraining box. He looks like a trophy hanging on the wall in the last photo, but he felt just fine!

In other goat news, Rosalie, our other brown Alpine goat decided to surprise me and have her kids early, at least according to my figuring - obviously not early for her. On a sad note, she delivered two kids, but I discovered one had been still-born. Both kids were biggen's, so that might have contributed to the problem delivering two healthy kids. It really was a surprise to me - I thought one of Frappie's babies had gotten into Rosie's stall, but he was exactly where he was supposed to be! He's a cute little buckling, and I've dubbed him Han Solo - since he's technically a singleton. His ears stick out like a true Alpine, unlike his cousins. Go and Happy, both bucklings, and Lucky, my only doeling, all have floppy ears, more like a Nubian.