Disbudding/Dehorning and Antler Removal Flashcards
Why disbud?
- Prevent injury to animals
- Prevent injury to people
- Remove damaged horn tissue
- No need for horns
Definition of disbudding/dehorning
- Removal of or destruction of those structurs from which teh horn will grow or is growing from
- Horn bud
Parts of the horn proper
- Corium
- Cornual process (becomes the cornual sinus)
- Cornual diverticulum
What is the goal of disbudding?
- Destroy corium from which horn and cornual process develop
AVMA recommendations
- Remove when it’s young
- Done at earliest age possible
- Use a local block (lidocaine is inexpensive)
- NSAID
- Benefits animal and producer
Three reasons to disbud at a young age
- Reduces stress
- Less development
- Fewer complications
When to debud a calf?
- First months of life
When to debud a goat?
- First several weeks
Complications of cutting into cornual sinus
- Communicates with the frontal sinus
- If you cut that open, risk of sinusitis and exophthalmia
Cornual nerve block location
- Underneath the frontal crest
- When we’re blocking out, we want to block halfway between the base of the horn and the lateral canthus
Types of dehorning methods
- Caustic paste
- Dehorning iron
- Horn gouge or tube dehorners
- Barnes dehorner
What nerve do we block for disbudding a cow horn?
- Cornual branch of the infratrochlear nerve that comes off of CN 5
- Lidocaine plus NSAIDs (flunixin or meloxicam)
- Longest pain control if you use NSAID plus local anesthetic
Caustic paste
- Alkaline compound (calcium chloride)
Advantage of caustic paste
- Destroys corium and horn bud
- Quick and less painful
Disadvantage of of the caustic paste
- Paste into eyes (keratitis) or onto udder of cow (dermatitis)
Clove oil
- Clove oil used to disbud goat kids
- But not used in the US
Dehorning irons goal
- Destroy the developing horn bud and corium
Dehorning irons length of time
- Put in place for 3-5 seconds
- Block them out first
- should look like leather
Cryosurgery
- They do it here
- Uses liquid nitrogen
- Can use a cotton ball, a sprayer, or something to tap it to
Barnes dehorner
- Gouge like device
De-bulking
- Line of cut
- want to get under the line of hair
Anesthesia for older cattle
- Local nerve block
- NSAIDs
How do you block the cornual nerve?
- Go perpendicular toe the crest
- Put it in under the frontal crest and inject as you pull it back
Tongs for dehorning
- Put these underneath the frontal crest
- This prevents them from bleeding all over
- If they start bleeding you can push underneath the frontal crest
Methods for cutting off a horn in an older cow
- Large Barnes dehorner
- OB wire (which he prefers)
- or a giant saw (he doesn’t like this)
- Keystone (large guillotine)
How to stop bleeding for dehorning?
- Blood stop powder
- Or you can tie a figure 8 with baling twine over the horn base and take it off in a bit
Cosmetic dehorning
- Charge people a bunch
- You undermine and cut off the horn
- Undermine the skin and suture it back together
- Not a fan
5 Post-dehorning
- Control bleeding
- Fly control (don’t do it during fly season; use a fly tag)
- Clean environment
- Feed hay on ground (don’t want to feed in hay nets or get into the surgery site)
- Examine animals frequently
How long for a horn to heal after dehorning?
2-4 weeks
Blood from the nose after a dehorn meaning
- Some hemorrhage
- Animal had a dehorn and bled through the nose
- Blood in the frontal sinus that bleeds out through the nose
What causes scurs?
- Incomplete removal of corium
- Horn grows abnormally
Treatment for scurs
- Often just a cosmetic thing
- You can just use OB wire to cut it off
What do you risk if you wait to dehorn a goat?
- Getting into the open frontal sinus
Why dehorn a goat?
- Horned animals may be not allowed in shows
- same as for cow dehorn
Why leave horns on a goat?
- Packers often prefer horns
- Aid in cooling
Which two nerves do you block for goats and cervidae?
- Two nerves innervating the horn
- Cornual branch of the lacrimal (in the eye
- Cornual branch of the infratrochlear (L shape behind the zygomatic arch)
Lidocaine toxicity in goats
- Historic, anecdotal?
Dosing for lidocaine in goats
- <10 mg/kg
How to avoid lidocaine toxicity?
- Avoid massive local infusions
- Dilute lidocaine (he does dilute to 1% and use 3 cc; 0.5 cc per spot
Scent glands on goats and disbudding
- Often remove the scent glands when your disbudding
Handling a goat
- Use a goat box
Method for disbudding a less than 1 week old goat
- Careful electrocautery
- Dehorning iron
Method for disbudding a greater than 1 week old goat kid
- Cut bud off and cauterize with electrocautery
- You want a really hot iron
- Doesn’t have to be consecutive burning; you can let it cool in-between
- 3 1 second bursts
Older goat dehorning pain control
- Usually have to sedate and also locally anesthetize
- General anesthesia
- Xylazine, butorphanol, etc.
Methods for removing a goat horn
- Obstetric wire
- If they don’t get into the sinus they will just cauterize
Post op care for removing a goat horn
- If you get into the frontal sinus you have to bandage it
- Cannot leave it open
- 4-5 days
- Total healing may take several days
Gouge or Barne’s dehorner in a goat
- DO NOT DO IT
- This is how you kill a goat because you will fracture their calvarium
Dehorning complications
- Thermal meningitis, brain necrosis
- Sinusitis
- Frontal bone necrosis
- Loss of social status
- Decreased milk production
- Scurs
Sinusitis
- Suppurative infection of one or more para-nasal sinuses
- dehorning more than disbudding more commonly
Which sinus is most frequently affected by dehorning?
- Frontal sinus
What issue is most commonly associated with maxillary sinus?
- Tooth issue
Clinical findings of sinusitis?
- Drainage
- Anorexic, febrile
- Nasal discharge (Pus coming out of the dehorning site)
- Head tilt
- Percussion is dull
- Exophthalmia - chronically
- Bulging - chronically
- Diagnostic tap/radiographs
Trephination
- Drilling a hole through bone into the frontal sinus
- Can use it diagnostically and therapeutically
Frontal sinus (anatomy)
- Rostral limit is an imaginary line drawn through the middle of the orbits
- Medially there is a complete bony septum
- Caudally there is the pole
- Laterally - extends to the point just rostral to the external ear
- Main and turbinate portion
- Communicates with the nasal cavity through the ethmoids
Compartments of the frontal sinus
- Post orbital diverticula
- Cornual diverticula
-What will happen if the post-orbital diverticulum ruptures?
- Exophthalmos
Treatment for sinusitis secondary to dehorning
- Examine the dehorning site (make sure there is not a sequestrum)
- TPR
- Possible culture and sensitivity
- Systemic antibiotics
- NSAIDs
- Flush sinus cavity with peroxide and betadine
- Trephination to establish ventral drainage (rare now)
- He likes to squirt mastitis ointment (cephapirin that is for lactating cows and squirt it into the sinus)
Nose ringing reasons
- Method of restraint for bulls
- They respect it
- Humane but safe
- Also prevents suckling
What material are nose rings made out of?
- Typically brass because it’s not tissue reactive
Nose ring application
- Block them out with lidocaine in the internasal septum
- Go in front of the cartilage in the tissue between the two nares
- You can push through with a trephine or a blade
- Good restraint is important
Deer antlers
- Shed in the fall and winter
- Grow (spring like flowers) yearly
Velvet antler
- Cartilaginous, pre-calcified growth stage
- Has vasculature and nerves
Antler material
- True bone vs horn which is like a nail
- It’s a bone that gets shed every year
- Pedicle is the permanent structure that attaches to the bone where it grows from
How much calcium salt needed to grow antlers?
- Need 50+ lbs of calcium salts
In which species do the females have antlers?
- Caribou and reindeer
How can you inhibit antler growth in deer and elk?
- Castration before first antler growth
What happens if you castrate a deer in velvet?
- Permanent retention of velvet - will not shed
What happens if you castrate a deer with the hard antler?
- Immediate drop of antler, replacement to velvet stage next year, and persistence
- Pedicles fall off too
Nerve supply for cervid antlers
- Nerve supply similar to goats
- Block in the front of the globe and at the zygomatic arch
- Specific nerve block or ring block when in velvet
- Not necessary AFTER the velvet
Chemical and physical restraint for deer antler removal
- Carfentanil and xylazine (naltrexone and yohimbine for reversal)
- Ketamine and medetomidine
- BAM (Butorphanol, azaperone, medetomidine)
- Want them in a controlled space
Analgesia for antler removal
- See previous notecard
- Nerve blocks
- Surgery and hemostasis
