Should your goats be dehorned?

Most goats naturally have horns...unless they are polled. Polled means that they have the genetic that makes them not have horns. Polled goats are great if you want goats that do not have horns and do not want to deal with dehorning them. I will caution you about having some goats with horns and some without. Goats fight/head-butt each other and the goats with horns could cause injuries to those that do not have horns. Give them a even playing field... all have horns or all dehorned.

This post will not tell you how to dehorn goats as we do not dehorn our goats and do not have experience doing it. We have dehorned our calves so we do understand the process and also understand that you have to be more careful on goats then cattle. We like our goats to have horns and have not had much issues with them having horns. Occasionally they get their horns stuck in the bushes and vines. So, it is really up to you if you want your goats to have horns.

Dehorning can be an intimidating thing to do so if you do not feel comfortable doing it don't. Find someone who has experience to teach you or go onto YouTube and find a good video that shows how it is done. If you hire someone to dehorn your baby goats make sure they have good references. There have been many people that state that the person they hired or their vet (some vets do not have much experience dehorning so be careful) messed up and now their goats are growing weird horns.

You could use collars for your goats if they do not have horns for easier holding and leading your goats around. We do not have experience with collars but I imagine they could get their collars stuck in stuff too. I would advice not to use collars on goats with horns as the collar would be a easy way to get other goats' horns stuck on them.

Like I said all of our goats have horns. Horns make great handles for holding your goats (grab low close to their head). If you are a small goat farmer like us you probably do not have a goat handling system. Horns help us when holding goats for deworming and general heath checks. We have had a few get stuck with their horns. But only two main ones that we remember, the one was stuck somehow in-between some trees/bushes and the other was in the electric temporary fence. We were actually down in the pasture when the one got stuck in the trees and we helped him out right away. If we had not been there he probably could have figured it out himself. The one that got stuck in the electric fence is ironically named Lucky and was not so lucky that day. She was stuck with the fence around her horns and face and was getting shocked from the electric. We were not in the pasture at the time be herd her or someone else yelling and we went down and helped her out.

Even with those experiences of our goats getting stuck with their horns, we like our goats to have horns. However, you might consider dehorning or getting polled goats if you have young children working with them or if you have other animals in with your goats. We have chickens in with our goats and have not had any problems with them beating up the chickens.

So, the whole horn or dehorning question is totally up to you but now you know what we do and how that has worked out for us. Let us know in the comments some of your experiences and preferences of horned or dehorned goats.