Horned steer - done

The last horn is off the steer.  Monday, June 1, when spraying the cows and giving the shots to the calves Donna and I noticed the steer's horn was tilted up.  A closer look revealed that the horn was close to coming off.  While the horn looked very loose and that it would fall off anytime now, once we were done with the cows and calves I decided to run the steer into the head gate and pull the horn off.  The steer looked like he might have a slight headache and the sooner the horn was off the sooner the healing would begin.

Herding the steer was the hard part.  Once he realized our attentions were on him he ran to stand right next to Buddy.  Getting the steer away from Buddy without riling Buddy up took some caution.  Once we got the steer out of the south part of the corral and into the main corral - and the gate shut before Buddy could join us - the steer ran all over but into the loading corral.

Once I got the steer into the loading corral he quickly ran into the head gate hard enough to trigger it and lock it.  And I thought this part would be the hard part.

Once the steer was in the head gate I easily pulled the loose horn off.  The 'stump' was red with blood but no blood flowed.  It appeared a small amount of blood had run when he first knocked the horn loose.  Definitely less blood with this horn than the first horn.

I sprayed some gentile iodine on the horn's stub as an anti-bacterial agent.  Then I released the steer and let him back in the part of the corral with Buddy.

The horns were banded back on April 3.  http://tallpinesranch.blogspot.com/2015/04/tagging-and-banding.html
The first horn came off April 28.  http://tallpinesranch.blogspot.com/2015/04/dehorning-one-horn-off.html

I would use bands again to de-horn cattle.  I would put the bands on sooner if I could, to speed up the process.

The first horn's stub is healing nicely.