Dehorned animal bleeding

keepalive213

Just had the vet out an hour ago and she dehorned a18 month old heifer for me whose horns were almost growing around into her head. Cut em off with a wire.

She put a heavy elastic around the horns to cut down blood flow and told me to leave it on for 24 hrs. The vet wasnt gone out the gate when the heifer had the elastic band off. shes dripping blood now, an odd spurt out of one side too.

I rang the vets they are telling me to put it back on, they say even if I dont it should be ok anyway. She'll only have it off in ten mins again thats if I can get it back on a wound up animal anyway.

Should it stop on its own?

Mooooo

keepalive213 wrote: »

Just had the vet out an hour ago and she dehorned a18 month old heifer for me whose horns were almost growing around into her head. Cut em off with a wire.

She put a heavy elastic around the horns to cut down blood flow and told me to leave it on for 24 hrs. The vet wasnt gone out the gate when the heifer had the elastic band off. shes dripping blood now, an odd spurt out of one side too.

I rang the vets they are telling me to put it back on, they say even if I dont it should be ok anyway. She'll only have it off in ten mins again thats if I can get it back on a wound up animal anyway.

Should it stop on its own?

Did the vet not pull the veins with a scissors type thing?

keepalive213

Mooooo wrote: »

Did the vet not pull the veins with a scissors type thing?

No.

The last vet a few years ago used a big snips and and then pulled the veins.

This vet put cocktail sticks in the holes.

Who2

Keep an eye on the animal from a distance. Getting them worked up will not help your case. They usually stop in a few hours.

Lady Haywire

If it's only an odd spurt it'll stop on it's own but as above don't stress her. It'll only cause the blood to flow faster and allow no chance of healing. Just keep an eye on her.
Those elastic things are a bit hit & miss in my experience, only ever twine used here.

annubis

had one a few years back that the vet dehorned with the wire, said her vein didnt need to be clamped, she kept bleeding afterwards, just this little spray of blood, it kept coming, eventually that night i was getting worried and had to get another vet back to tie up vein, she wasnt too happy with the first chap who was from same practice

grassroot1

Tie it tight with square baler twine around the base of the horns it will stop it straight away. You will need someone to help you to keep her still.
What the story with the cocktail sticks is I have no idea,seems a great route for infection.

keepalive213

Op here

Its not spurting anymore. One horn seems to have stopped completely, the other is still dripping slightly. I'll take the chance and leave her till morning, hopefully it'll be ok.

Dakota Dan

I thought April was the month for dehorning.

valtra2

I usually use cable tie. Don't have many just the odd missed one

keepalive213

Dakota Dan wrote: »

I thought April was the month for dehorning.

If you read the original post you will see why time was off the essence.

Sheep breeder

valtra2 wrote: »

I usually use cable tie. Don't have many just the odd missed one

Agree cable tie and spray with alum or get a couple of cob webs and place to help blood clot,

greysides

Another option is to cautherise with a disbudding iron.

keepalive213

greysides wrote: »

Another option is to cautherise with a disbudding iron.

Are you suggesting I should have acted in a more timely manner?

Never wrestle with pigs

keepalive213 wrote: »

Are you suggesting I should have acted in a more timely manner?

It'll be grand

Aravo

If you can count the drops, don't worry. I too would be a fan of using a hot iron to seal where the blood is dropping from. Last resort though. Maybe put her out near crush facilities, so you can keep an eye on her, less likely to be rubbing against things.

Mooooo

keepalive213 wrote: »

Are you suggesting I should have acted in a more timely manner?

He's saying you can stop the bleeding with an iron. Heat will seal the vein

croot

grassroot1 wrote: »

What the story with the cocktail sticks is I have no idea,seems a great route for infection.

I had a guy years ago that did a few for me that were missed as calves. He used the wire and broke cocktail sticks and stuck the pointy end of the stick in any bleeding vein. Ended up loosing a lovely weanling bull from it. He was fine at night but I found him stretched in the morning.

greysides

keepalive213 wrote: »

Are you suggesting I should have acted in a more timely manner?

No. I'm suggesting that the disbudding iron can be used to stop the bleeding from the dehorning. The flow may need to slowed a bit first by pressing in on the spot where the vet gave the local as the blood flow if too quick can take away the heat before it can coagulate the blood proteins.

keepalive213

I checked her there a while ago and I think the bleeding has all but stopped, no dripping or spurting. Thank **** for that.
The yard is like a scene from a horror movie, sprays of dry blood everywhere.
Not really impressed with the vets methods tbh.
All's well that......

Limestone Cowboy

annubis wrote: »

had one a few years back that the vet dehorned with the wire, said her vein didnt need to be clamped, she kept bleeding afterwards, just this little spray of blood, it kept coming, eventually that night i was getting worried and had to get another vet back to tie up vein, she wasnt too happy with the first chap who was from same practice

Paying handsomely for incompetence

Muckit

If animal is spurting, then never had any luck with dehorner stopping things. Cable ties just tweaked enough. Take off 2 days later

sonnybill

Vet here years ago had the big blunt shears yoke .. Did six cattle for a fella, running down the road afterwards spraying from both sides and tourist woman let the window down to look at the cattle ... Big mistake ... She got coated inside in the car before she could roll the window up inside in the hire car !!

Aravo

sonnybill wrote:

Vet here years ago had the big blunt shears yoke .. Did six cattle for a fella, running down the road afterwards spraying from both sides and tourist woman let the window down to look at the cattle ... Big mistake ... She got coated inside in the car before she could roll the window up inside in the hire car !!

Bet it looked like a scene from Braveheart.

patsy_mccabe

I can see the dehorning of older cattle being banned in the future. I'd say the only reason they havent banned it to date is the animal rights groups are total unaware of it's existence.

Mooooo

If done correctly there should be no issue. Agree it should be done as calves but there can often be some missed and summertime would be risky to do them

Water John

The blunt shears is better as it crushes the veins, no need to pull veins. Also quicker.

Attie

Water John wrote: »

The blunt shears is better as it crushes the veins, no need to pull veins. Also quicker.

Deteste them feekers😭

keepalive213

Its a necessary evil sometimes. That particular animal I had bought at 12 weeks old and had been told she had been done at a few weeks.
Its bad form not to do them young.

Muckit

patsy_mccabe wrote: »

I can see the dehorning of older cattle being banned in the future. I'd say the only reason they havent banned it to date is the animal rights groups are total unaware of it's existence.

Yes start penalising the suckler farmer if they're not done as calves!! l really dont want the job!

croot

Muckit wrote: »

Yes start penalising the suckler farmer if they're not done as calves!! l really dont want the job!

The original suckler welfare scheme had it as one of the T's & C's. Then they changed it to the current pile of piss BGDP and it was dropped.

grassroot1

Nearly all cattle breeds have a polled strain now.The best time to dehorn a calf is when you are serving the cow.
If icbf wanted to measure something worthwhile they might start genetic tests for the polled gene in all cattle..

TwoOldBoots

Sounds like a rough farmer to be dehorning an animal at 18 months. Work of a brute.
The vet doesn't sound any better, he should have been straight back into the yard to sort it out. He needs reporting too

Lady Haywire

TwoOldBoots wrote: »

Sounds like a rough farmer to be dehorning an animal at 18 months. Work of a brute.
The vet doesn't sound any better, he should have been straight back into the yard to sort it out. He needs reporting too

The odd animal can be missed, sorry we're not all perfect farmers. And read the thread correctly before you critisise, the horn was about to grow into it's head, the OP had bought this animal in as a calf & told it was dehorned already.
I've one horn to get taken off a 3yr old, I'm a horrible, horrible person for not being able to do her when she was at the outfarm with no crush and then not wanting to do her until she was calved. :rolleyes:

keepalive213

TwoOldBoots wrote: »

Sounds like a rough farmer to be dehorning an animal at 18 months. Work of a brute.
The vet doesn't sound any better, he should have been straight back into the yard to sort it out. He needs reporting too

As said already maybe you should have gone further than the first post in a thread before making ill informed and incorrect assumptions.

charolais0153

Lady Haywire wrote: »

The odd animal can be missed, sorry we're not all perfect farmers. And read the thread correctly before you critisise, the horn was about to grow into it's head, the OP had bought this animal in as a calf & told it was dehorned already.
I've one horn to get taken off a 3yr old, I'm a horrible, horrible person for not being able to do her when she was at the outfarm with no crush and then not wanting to do her until she was calved. :rolleyes:

If she bought it as a calf wpuld they not have seen the buds....

keepalive213

charolais0153 wrote: »

If she bought it as a calf wpuld they not have seen the buds....

Some attempt was made to debud them but they were obviously not done properly so the answer is no, at approx 12 weeks there were no signs of horns.

TwoOldBoots

keepalive213 wrote: »

As said already maybe you should have gone further than the first post in a thread before making ill informed and incorrect assumptions.

Funny how there's always an excuse for that type of behavior to animals. I'm not a fan of that style of farming, it's acts like that give farming a bad name.

Lady Haywire

TwoOldBoots wrote: »

Funny how there's always an excuse for that type of behavior to animals. I'm not a fan of that style of farming, it's acts like that give farming a bad name.

Would you prefer the horn to grow into it's head? Horns that grow downwards are not a pressing issue to most farmers as they can't use them to bully other animals.

TwoOldBoots

Lady Haywire wrote: »

Would you prefer the horn to grow into it's head? Horns that grow downwards are not a pressing issue to most farmers as they can't use them to bully other animals.

No I prefer to make sure all calves are debudded. It's a brutal act to cut of horns on an 18 month old animal. No excuse really for not having it sorted sooner.
But as I said before, the brute farmer will always have an excuse for not having it done

keepalive213

TwoOldBoots wrote: »

Funny how there's always an excuse for that type of behavior to animals. I'm not a fan of that style of farming, it's acts like that give farming a bad name.

Ah you're some man for the winding, dont you know theres a fodder crisis we cant be feeding trolls as well.
I see you haven't been using these forums for very long so ill give you a heads up. The farming sections are probably among the most peaceful and civilized on boards, maybe try to fit in instead of trying to cause trouble.

pingg10

keepalive213 wrote: »

Ah you're some man for the winding, dont you know theres a fodder crisis we cant be feeding trolls as well.
I see you haven't been using these forums for very long so ill give you a heads up. The farming sections are probably among the most peaceful and civilized on boards, maybe try to fit in instead of trying to cause trouble.

Have to agree lots of useful information and help in the farming forum .
Lots of differing opinions but rarely the usual insults you see in most other threads . Always the odd animal not dehorned properly when young once its done correctly usually fine after a few days.

Base price

Most years we would buy in numbers of runners/weanlings that have gone past debudding. We leave them as they are and the following Spring arrange a time with our Vet to scull them. The Vet injects them with lignocaine/adrenaline and either sculls or supervises the sculling.
We use tyre tubes to stop the bleeding and remove them the next day. We've seldom had any issues with animals after the event other than a type of sinus infection. However we would never scull if the weather forecast was due to be wet/with a chilling East wind.

blue5000

Mod note We are all well aware in the farming community that this is a sensitive issue. The OP asked for help after a job carried out by a vet went wrong. There is no need for people to come on here and get personal about it. Attack the post, not the poster,
blue5000.

greysides

keepalive213 wrote: »

Just had the vet out an hour ago and she dehorned a18 month old heifer for me whose horns were almost growing around into her head. Cut em off with a wire.

She put a heavy elastic around the horns to cut down blood flow and told me to leave it on for 24 hrs. The vet wasnt gone out the gate when the heifer had the elastic band off. shes dripping blood now, an odd spurt out of one side too.

There seems to be some criticism of the method of skulling used here. Using a wire is a normal method of skulling. It's even the preferred method in some parts. The theory being the heat generated cauterises the wound and prevents any bleeding. It works a treat, when it works. In my hands it usually doesn't so you need to make other provision for stopping the bleeding. Which the vet did by using a band, another accepted norm. That the animal got it off too soon was bad luck, possibly aided by not enough of the horn left to hold it properly, I don't know about that. But things don't always work out as you'd like when you're doing a job like that. It's easy enough have the wire go a bit close to the head especially if the animal is struggling.

The horns are said to have been curving around into the head. When they are like this it may well have been impossible to get a guillotene on them. It also makes getting the required angle of a saw cut quite difficult too. Get that angle, in 3D, wrong and you'll have a large ugly hole to heal over. It will though.

So in those circumstances using wire wasn't a bad choice. Not being left with enough horn to anchor the band, if that happened, is just one of the things that can go wrong when you're doing in real life rather than behind a keyboard.

An animal bleeding after skulling is not that unusual. It's an accepted risk of doing the job. How it's handled is what's important.

The best prevention is to try to have as few as possible to skull at that age but there will always be some. Thankfully it's getting less every year. I don't see the vet having done anything of the way here. Bad luck happens.

keepalive213

https://ibb.co/he58jc

Beforehand.

TwoOldBoots

keepalive213 wrote: »

https://ibb.co/he58jc

Beforehand.

And the after pic???

Lady Haywire

keepalive213 wrote: »

https://ibb.co/he58jc

Beforehand.

Ach I hate when people half-do dehorning like that, it looks burnt but the bud is only damaged so it grows weird. Snail horns are the fúcking worst, seem to bleed more too. Fair play on spotting it going into her head!

Water John

Yes, they bleed more as you have a number of secondary veins rather than a couple of primary ones.

keepalive213

TwoOldBoots wrote: »

And the after pic???

https://ibb.co/kknikH

TwoOldBoots

keepalive213 wrote: »

https://ibb.co/kknikH

I thought there was blood everywhere, that doesn't look like much after all.
Still not a nice thing to have to do