FURTHER READING
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, by Jacob Wolki "Yes Sir"
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, by Jacob Wolki Breakout Bull!
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, by Jacob Wolki Cutting a Bulls Horns
Cutting a Bulls Horns
- , by Jacob Wolki
- 7 min reading time
I never expected to be a “Nguni Stud” of sorts. Claiming to be a Nguni Stud would be offensive to the real studs operating in Australia, most notably Henham Nguni by Edwin Rous, who we have had the pleasure and privilege of purchasing most of our Nguni from.
But the reality is that this beautiful ancient breed is just finding its feet in Australia. I’ve heard it estimated that there are only around 400 purebred females currently in Australia.
So when I have a bull calf born, we leave it intact and wait to see its potential.
Johann Zietsman, a brilliant cattleman from Africa, writes extensively about practical tips to select for vigorous, grass efficient and fertile cattle. One of his mantras is to only keep bulls for breeding from cows that have had their 2nd calf by their 3rd birthday.
This ensures that you are selecting for an early maturing female and then she proves that she can back it up.
Gugu is a 10 year old Nguni cow that I purchased a few years ago from Ed at Henham.
Just last week, she delivered her 9th calf.
She’s never seen a vet, never been wormed, never had a bad birthing outcome and has never left a calf behind. What more could we ask from a cow?
Her 8th calf was a lovely coloured bull calf that we affectionately named Marbles. His bloodline has a brilliant track record, he has a lovely calm temperament and is beautiful, to boot.
A few months ago a farm that I’ve connected with on Instagram asked if we had any Nguni genetics to offer. I wasn’t planning on selling Marbles, but I have too many bulls as it is. (3 mature and 3 young ones!) So, I offered Marbles to them, to cover their small herd, and they snapped him up.
One request we discussed was that I trimmed the tips of his horns. I would never agree to dehorning an animal. Horns have tissue and blood in them, up to a point. Think about a dog's toenails, similar concept.
You can take the tips off which will remove a potential pointy and more dangerous part, without harming the animal.
I agreed to do this and anticipated doing it myself, but I got cold feet. I really didn’t want to ruin Marbles’ beautiful appearance with a lopsided pruning job on his wonderful horns!
So I called a local Ag Vet to come and show me how it’s done.
We got Marbles into the yards, which was easy as he is so nice to handle. Once we put him into the crush the vet pulled out his trimming tool, a piece of coarse wire that she would saw the tips of the horns off.
We discussed how much horn to take off, primarily wanting to remove the sharp tip as this is the more intimidating and risky part. We decided on about 20mm. Marble’s horns are quite thick at the base and taper slowly. We agreed that 20mm off the tip would remove the sharp bit we needed but also wouldn’t likely be enough to cause Marbles to bleed or have any discomfort.
The vet started sawing. It was very quick and although Marbles was tossing his head a little bit, his tail was happily swinging in the crush - happy and positive body language.
Before long the horn tip fell onto the ground, and some very thin streams of blood starting squirting out of Marbles' cut horn.
The very thing I tried to avoid by getting the vets there, had happened. I picked up the tip of his horn and had a look. I could tell by inspecting this that we were only millimetres off from the mark. Marbles seemed remarkably at peace with the whole situation, tail still happily swinging from side to side.
We assessed his other horn and started again, this time cutting off slightly less. It was a success and we avoided any blood and the tip came off even quicker, as it was slightly narrower where we cut.
Fly burden on open wounds can be a real problem, especially in an Aussie summer. They love an open wound, bringing irritation and maggots with them.
My vet had a debudding tool in the car. These are little tools that heat up and are used to remove the buds - the beginning of horns - in dairy calves, after anesthetic is administered.
She heated this up and just touched the tip of Marbles’ horns to stop the bleeding, it worked quickly. She then applied some aerosol to clean the small wound and provide even more protection against the attraction of flies.
So, my goal in asking vets along was to avoid hitting the blood barrier and to end up with nice & neat, symmetrical horns.
Neither of these outcomes were achieved, but I’m still glad I had the vet along. I’ve never trimmed horns before and judging by the experience, if I did my best I also would have created the same situation and wouldn’t have had the tools or experience on hand to quickly and efficiently clean him up and send him back into the paddock.
I understand that this maybe isn’t the most palatable reading for some readers. Some people may scratch their head and wonder why I’m sharing this, when it obviously isn’t the best “feel good” story. I think it’s important to continue to be open and honest, and to take our community along on our journey.
Your Farmer,
Jake
PS - this happened approximately 2 weeks ago now, and I’m just sitting down to finish writing this blog. You’ll be happy to know that Marbles’ horn made an almost immediately recovered with no fly burden or observed discomfort.
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