Dehorning my holstein calf

Monday I put rubber bands on Buster's, my Holstein calf's, horns.  Donna helped me.

First I had to immobilize the calf.  I used my calf table as I am not sure if the calf was big enough for the regular head gate to hold him well.

Then Donna used an electric razor to remove the hair from around the calf's horns.

I used the same bander tool to put the bands over the horns as when I band to castrate steers.  The problem I had this time was that the bands wanted to roll down and off the horns.  To solve that problem I used a small file and filed a groove around each horn where the hair ends.  After all one doesn't want to remove the horn too close to the skull.

The calf wasn't bothered by my filing on his horn.  I didn't want to file too much as I can imagine too much would become raw.  Once I had a small groove I slipped each band into place.  The area where I filed the groove, while very firm to hard, was not hard, hard where no hair grew.  I waited a bit and the band settled and compressed into the groove for a firmer fit.  While my filing didn't bother the calf, as the band began to constrict against his horn, the calf began to react.

Once I was certain the band would not roll off on its own I released the calf from the calf table.  The calf then walked around shaking his head.  He would lay down and lay his head on the ground for a while.  Then he would get up and walk around shaking his head before laying down again and rubbing his head on the ground.

After I bit I let him out of the corral to be reunited with the rest of the cattle.   I checked up on him three hours later and he was walking around grazing on grass and no longer shaking his head.  Today I checked on him several times and he seems fine.  Understandably he was wary of me when I approached close enough to make sure the bands were still on his horns.  They were.  I think he is now comfortably numb from the bands.  Now I wait to see how long it will take before the horns fall off.   The previous time I dehorned a calf with bands, the horns were much larger and it took almost eight weeks.  I expected that it will not take as long this time.