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Our first experience disbudding/dehorning calves terrorised us as much as the animals that were being treated. There has to be a better way we thought! Breed only poll animals was the suggestion however we found that this not only limited our opportunities purchasing genetics/breeding stock moving forward but it also would mean culling most of our current herd to achieve all poll breeders.
The old adage a stitch in time held the answer for us, the brief window in time where you can disbud a calf before the buds or developing horns attach to the skull. Disbudding a calf prior to approximately 6 weeks old is the only really humane approach to bovine horn management.
Living on a remote island comes with an additional layer of difficulties when it comes to animal husbandry, the logistics and costs associated with veterinary attendance is mind boggling. We had to come up with an easy solution to be able to perform disbudding on our calves which can be a real pain in the arse or disaster if your patient doesn’t stay still.
We researched the market for calf crushes, watched many youTube videos and could only find extremely expensive calf crates or fence mounted ideas that didn’t offer any efficiency or work flow solutions. Trying to catch a calf to get it into a crate is a challenging prospect, they are fast little buggers for sure and did we really want another expensive large piece of clobber sitting around rusting that takes two men to lift, definitely not.
Our idea was that we just wanted to bring our animals through the yards and through the crush as per our normal workflow needs.
This need to be able to perform animal husbandry easily and humanely on our calves in our standard cattleyard/crush set up propagated the idea for our new design.
The calf head restraint that we have designed and patented will simply clamp on to an existing cattle crush gate or if you have the ability to drill two holes it can bolt on, easily installed and removed, light enough to be carried by one person but extremely well built and durable. Every aspect of this calf head restraint has undergone extreme testing in a coastal environment with only the best products used in its manufacture. This restraint will handle bovines basically from birth to 12 or more months of age and on our farm we have used it with our alpacas to boot. Its inherent design is completely adjustable for height and holds an animals head dead still so you can perform any number of animal husbandry procedures.
We can honestly say this head restraint not only works but its bullet proof! It may sound a bit pretentious but if you use a vet and they don’t have one then you’ve got to ask the question, why not!
