Great, OK, thank you very much. Thanks everybody for tuning in. What we're going to cover today, I'll just give you a very brief, background to fit in with regard to that.
Then we'll move on to really focus in on disbudding. Whether or not we should even think about disbudding, is that something that's appropriate nowadays? Large areas of the world don't disbud their goats.
In the UK, we've got a legal position on disbudding, which means that it should only be carried out by veterinary surgeons. So we'll talk a little bit about. Why that's the case, and then we'll focus in on the procedure itself.
What are the kind of things we need to have in place to a safe procedure, an effective and efficient procedure. There are complications, as there are with any kind of surgical procedure, so it's best to know what they are, and then we can put about some measures really to avoid those complications. A little bit on the anatomy and landmarks, so we know what we're doing, where we're heading, and we're going to focus in quite a bit on the anaesthesia.
And the analgesia of the procedure. We are dealing with a minor species here in the UK of which there are very few licenced drugs available, and we have strict legal requirements which we need to be aware of as goats are always classified as food producing animals in this country. There are lots of different equipment options out there available for us as well.
So we'll have a look at some of those different options for you and come up with some sort of best practise approaches. And then we'll do a bit of a blow by blow, step through the procedure, what to expect, what we consider, best practise, and then hopefully finish up with some, questions or, or discussion if there's anything, out there you need to know. So firstly, I'm the secretary for the Goat Veterinary Society.
We are a specialist division of the British Veterinary Association, and this year is actually our 40th anniversary year. We're open to all veterinary surgeons and, and vet students as full membership. We also offer associate membership to anybody with an interest in goats, really, whether that be commercial goat farming or hobbyists.
We're all inclusive. We hold around about 2 meetings each year. Our 40th anniversary celebrations are coming up in October.
That'd be great if anybody wants to join us in first. We've got a really good, website with lots of information on there dealing with, issues around great husbandries and great, fact sheet informations on things like biosecurity, particularly around TV breakdowns. We also have a dedicated inquiry email, that's on the bottom of your screen there.
We are all volunteers, and those emails come through, to me. So I try and respond as quickly as I, I can, but obviously, I'm, I'm also running a practise. If I can't help you directly, I tend to forward you, to different GBS colleagues, but we, we aim to try and respond as, as quickly as we can.
Moving on then to tonight's session. First, a bit of information, background to the, to the goat sector. We're actually an increasing goat population here in the UK, gone up 3.2% on 2017 figures.
That figure of 108,000 is up to date as of the 31st of May this year, and that's gone up from around 104,000 where we were in 2015. That's likely still to be quite a significant underestimation, and that's largely because we have a lot of very small herd sizes around the country. And I think a lot of these, these goatkeepers are unaware of the fact they actually need to be registered with, with animal health and have a holding number.
So they don't actually feature in a lot of these stats. There's obviously a seasonal influence as well, when we look at the census data and the seasonal kidding pattern that we have. There are around about 100 holdings in the UK with more than 100 goats on them, but of these, of these units with over 100 animals, they actually contribute around about 60% of the national herd.
So you can see how much disparity there is and how many small holdings there must be around the country. So the UK goat sector as a whole is, is split up into, into three main areas. The largest by far is the dairy sector, commercial dairy goats, numbering around about 60, just over 60,000.
So that's 50 to 60% of the total UK national herd. Somewhere between 50 to 60 true commercial units and an average unit size of somewhere like 600, but some of these units can be up to 3000, even 5000 animals. The meat sector is definitely expanding and anecdotally has increased markedly in the last 3 or 4 years.
Something like 17,000, possibly up to 18,000 now commercial meat goats here in the UK, a mixture of boabo cross, and dairy surplus with an increasing number of cashmere, which are a great dual purpose breed. The fibre sector is smallest in terms of commercial enterprises, something like 5000 to 7000 goats kept for fibre production, but the true commercial units are actually quite rare. Main breeds being Angora, and they are the predominant breed associated with fibre production and a smaller number of cashmere.
The rest of the UK population is made up of sort of the pedigree and show stock, smallholders, and you can also put in there, petting zoos, public attractions and things like that. So tonight we're going to talk about disbudding and disbud or not disbud is the question at the top of this page. As I've said already before, large areas of the world don't disbud goats at all, and that includes a lot of mainland Europe.
And in the UK it is defined as a mutilation, so we need to be giving serious thought as to whether we need to do this. It is quite an invasive procedure, does carry a reasonable level of risk. And certainly, GBS don't consider, disbudding of goat kids to be a day one competency.
This is something that we feel, you should have experience with and should have some training with, which is part of the problem really, with vet school education at the moment in the UK. It's quite unusual for veterinary students to be exposed, to go kid disciplining. Which is very different from the situation that you might.
We have an information sheet on our website, where, that's the link there in the top right-hand side, which discusses the issues around whether or not we should be disbudding in the UK or not, and the types of questions you might be faced with, if you have a goalkeeper who, who asks about the procedure. Not all breeds are common. Dispudded.
It's quite unusual for the meat breeds to be debudded, things like the burber cross. Frequently that's because they're not really going to be around long enough. They're going to be killed out around about that 6 to 9 month age bracket, and we're not going to run into too many problems, we hope in that short lifetime.
Often wild type goats, things like the bagots and things are kept horned. They're usually managed in a much more extensive fashion, so they're unlikely to really cause or get into too many difficulties or problems with their horns. What is the purpose of their horns?
Well, in, in wild type scenarios, we're looking at a defence property certainly against smaller predators. They're very useful in establishing, dominance within, within the herd structure. Goats are very social, but they have a very definite pecking order, and these, these horns do play quite an important part in establishing that.
And certainly when goats are outside in slightly more arid conditions, they do have a temperature control function as well. So why do we tend to disbud, goats here in the UK? Well, I've already said that the largest proportion of our population within the UK.
It is made up with the dairy sector. We're generally keeping our goats in much closer confinement. They're often housed 24/7, and they run the risk of either injuring themselves or others.
Their horns tend to face backwards, so they're quite easy to get stuck in enclosure furniture, parlour infrastructure. And if you have the scenario where you have horned goats in a parlour, for example, they're jostling for permission to get into the parlour, they'll often stick their heads between the back legs of the goat in front and yank backwards, and those horns are just the perfect height, angle, shape, and strength to cause quite nasty goring injuries to others and the like. We also have a situation where you might have horned and horned less goats in the same herd, and that causes us problems, in terms of dominance and bullying, the horn.
Goats are definitely at an advantage when it comes to not ideal to keep horned and hornless animals together, particularly in close confinement. So our management strategies that we have here in the UK for keeping goats possibly don't lend themselves ideally for keeping goats with horns on. The RSPCA do also issue some issue some advice, and the link is down on the bottom right hand side, and they specifically mention that horned and hornless goats shouldn't be kept together.
And also, if you are an inexperienced or have inexperienced goatkeepers on your books, suggest that they purchase and keep only horned less goats from a sort of a safety point of view when you're handling the goats and trying to restrain or do anything with them until you have greater experience levels. So why don't we have poled goats? We do have some naturally occurring poled goats within the UK herd structure, but unfortunately, when we've tried to look at breeding strategies, we found out that the genus associated with poles nursing goats is also, so.
Linked to, you head down this genetic lines for the breeding pole goats, the greater number of intersect goats you produce, and so that's not really an ideal situation. Genetics doesn't seem to be, to be the way forward with us. The legal position in the UK on dysudding, as I've mentioned before, it is a vet-only procedure.
It is classified as an act of veterinary surgery under the provisions of the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1996, and then amended in 1982. Interestingly though, the secondary legislation in the UK does not specifically require anaesthetic to be given, but it must be carried out by a vet in accordance with best practise. And that's why in August 2012, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons issued a clarification statement regarding disbudding of goats, which essentially said that all that only a veterinary surgeon may undertake the disbudding of goats.
Due to the nature of the procedure, and any veterinary surgeon disbudding goats should be administering anaesthetic, which is in, in, in line with best practise. The GBS would take that on a level further now, and we will talk about it a little bit further when we get into the presentation, but we would also suggest and advise that it would be best practise in our eyes that an additional analgesic is also given, similar to the scenario we have with BTVA. Releasing a position stated on the disbudding of cars and additional analgesia.
One thing that we should be aware of is that goats are food producing animals illegally within the UK, and as such that has quite strict limitations on the drugs that we are able to use. There is no legal provision, as I mentioned before, to classify our goats as being Pets. So this legislation means that implications for anaesthetic agents that we use, they must have an MRL set.
They must be appearing on table one of the EU regulations 37 2010. If not, technically you are breaking the law and using them. We move on now then to talk about the actual process of disbudding and the kind of things you need to have in place really to ensure it's done safely, efficiently and effectively.
The age at which we disbud is really quite important, and that's down a lot to the fact that the horn buds are very large relative to the smaller size of the goat kid's skull, and they're very fast growing. So we're looking at an ideal age range to days of age at the outermost, say 10 to 14 days. If we leave it much beyond that length of time, we find that the horny prominences have really pushed through.
They're standing quite proud, and the hornbud area on the skull is very extensive. And if we're trying to then remove that with hot irons, we're going to increase the risk of some of the complications we're going to come on to talk about things like skull fracture or thermal injury and insult to the brain. Dehorning of adult goats, although not strictly part of tonight's webinar, just as a side note, is particularly invasive.
It's very traumatic, and it's very stressful for both the animals, animals, so the vet surgeons and owners who undertake it. In the GVS's opinion, it really isn't something to be undertaken lightly. It's really a sort of a a last resort type exercise if we are dealing with, sort of a welfare issue or an emergency, and, and something to be avoided if, if possible.
So we're focusing a bit more now on the sort of essentials or ideal situations that we need for safety spudding of our neonatal goats. So they are just that, they are neonates. We're looking at trying to do this procedure when the animal is only 2 to 7 days of age.
So it's vital really that they spend as little time away from their mother as possible. They need to get back to their mother quickly, to release their stress, to feed again quickly, which helps their recovery, and their recovery, from the anaesthetic as well. That becomes particularly important, depending on where we are doing this disbudding.
Now, I tend to disbud all my goat kids out on farm that way I know that they're going to be put back with their, their mother's very time away is kept to an absolute minimum. If you've got a certain amount of distance travel to the surgeries, that has implications then on on recovery and support and the stress levels of those neonates. It depends really on how far away, where you're going, and the set up once you're there and how things are recovered.
Obviously, we've got things like milk bottles that we can use to, to supplement in the time that they're away from others. We're looking to be using and sorry to interrupt you, you, you keep me out. Do you think you'll be able to phone in because we we're struggling with the audio quality?
Yeah, I can try that. Bear with me a second and I'll get that. Sorry about that.
Yeah, it's just, yeah, you've just zoned in and out a few times, so. But if you could keep your screen on and then if you, you can then move your screen on your own. OK, so hopefully that is better.
Yeah, that's, that's fine for me. If anybody that's listening, still strongly to hear Ben, then can you just let us know in the the chat box, but we'll just carry on as we are for now then. OK, great.
So sorry about that. I don't know quite what the problem was there. We're talking now about the essentials required for the safe dis budding of Goat Kids.
I'd spoken a little bit about trying to reduce the stress on these neonatal kids and trying to minimise the time away from mother, which has implications in terms of where we're doing the disc budding, whether or not we're doing it in the surgery or on farm. I tend to do all my disc budding on farm and therefore I know that they can go back to mom for recovery pretty quickly. In an ideal world, we're looking to use short acting anaesthetic agents.
They need to be fast acting so that we can get on and do the procedure quickly, ideally with a rapid recovery. We don't want such small neonatal animals with very little fat reserve under general anaesthesia for very long. They're going to be at quite high risk of things like hypothermia.
So we want a rapid recovery and that again dictates some of the issues surrounding our choice of anaesthetic agents. These are tiny little dots really when you think about it. So we need accurate body weights, which is going to have a big implication in terms of anaesthetic agent choice.
How we get an accurate body weight in the surgery, it's probably quite straightforward. You can plop them onto the standard sort of cat scales that most people will have in consult rooms. On farm, what I tend to do is have a sling, which I know the weight of, and I hang a kid in that sling from a sort of a postal scale spring system.
Which gives me a good idea of what those kids' body weight is. The more you do, the more you get your sort of eye in, and I'm now at the stage where I wouldn't routinely take the body weight of every kid that I'm disbudding, but I would certainly make sure that I'd weighed at least a couple from every visit that I do. So I've made sure that my eye is back in on what I'm looking at.
Certainly when we're looking at the first couple of visits that you might do, in, in terms of disc budding, and if you've only got a few individuals to do, say, at the practise, I would probably be thinking of taking the body weight accurately of, of all those individuals. The environment in which we're doing our disc budding, it really needs to be warm, dry, draught free and and clean. And that's relatively straightforward if you're in the practise scenario.
Hopefully your dirty prep room or you're doing this procedure is kept nice and warm and and clean. On farm it can be a bit more of a challenge. So I like to make sure that the pens are nicely fresh bedded with the straw.
There aren't any draughts. We've got plenty of heat lamps available to us. I generally bring on additionally some clean towels and bedding material that I can wrap kids up as well if I'm concerned about the ambient temperature, trying to mitigate these risks of hypothermia.
The type of hot iron that we're going to use, we'll discuss in quite a lot more detail when we get towards the equipment, sections, but that iron needs to be extremely hot. And certainly the sort of standalone copper-based irons that we often use and see need to be glowing sort of cherry red, really. This will enable us to apply that iron to the skull for the shortest possible time with the least amount of force and effort and pressure.
Therefore, we're then reducing the risk in terms of contact time with the hot iron, so we're reducing the chances of thermal injury. We're also less likely to be putting on excessive pressure and increasing our chances of a skull fracture. So the heat of that iron is crucial.
We've talked a little bit about the age that these kids are ideally, so somewhere between 2 to 7 days. And I've mentioned briefly why that is. The larger they are, the older they are, the bigger those horn buds are, the more difficult it is to be able to remove those satisfactorily in a short period of time with minimal pressure.
And that feeds in nicely to the short application of the disc budding iron. The disbudding iron diameter is again another crucial factor. I've said that the horn buds are significantly larger and in comparison with, say, calves.
We're looking at needing a disbudding iron to have a diameter of at least 2 centimetres, and arguably if you've got goat kids at the sort of the older age of your age range, say, you know, 9, 1012 days, it might even be 2.5 centimetres for female kids, possibly 2.8 centimetres for male kids.
The horn buds need to be small enough, which relates back to their age and their size. So basically one application of that disbudding iron. What I mean by that is if you have a situation where the iron is quite the horn buds are quite large, you might find the diameter of your iron, even if it's over 2 centimetres, isn't really big enough, and you end up having to jostle and reapply that iron and sort of.
Elliptical fashion multiple times to try and make sure that you remove all the germinal epithelial tissue and that of course has knock-on effects in terms of the amount of contact time you have, the amount of pressure you might need to put on the skull, and therefore is increasing the risks associated with the process. So ideally keeping them to that small young age will make sure you minimise further risks. OK, so that's all sort of essentials if you like, for, for the safe disc budding.
I've talked quite a little bit about the complications and potential risks of the procedure, and I don't want to, want to be alarmist, but there are some. Any surgery carries them. But if we know what we are, we can put measures in place straight away to try and reduce those risks and mitigate any problems there might be.
One of the things we often get asked about at GVS is, is disbudding and in issues that have arisen, particularly horn regrowth, these so-called scurs or spurs, and that's often the result of, say, a poor technique. Perhaps you weren't quite aware or didn't quite see where the landmarks were that you needed to go. Equally, it could have been that the kids were too old when you were trying to do this procedure.
The buds had got too large. So if we know what the cause is, we can try and make measures in place to try and adjust that. We need those kids at the right age, the horn buds to be nice and small.
Prolonged recovery, often that's associated with our anaesthetic, whether our choice of agent, things like the alpha 2 agonists, which often form a combination therapy, are associated with prolonged recovery periods. Now, if we know this, then we can mitigate that. We're expecting hypothermia to be an increased risk if you've got prolonged recovery, so we make sure we have plenty of towels and heat lamps and gentle stimulus to try and urge those kids to come back around.
Anaesthetic overdose is an obvious one. The importance of getting accurate body weight is obviously crucial there. Fractured skulls.
I have mentioned that in passing a couple of times. It could be associated with poor technique, but probably more likely it's the overzealous use or prolonged application of the iron to the skull. And frequently that's because the actual iron itself is not hot enough.
So if the iron isn't glowing cherry red, if it's that copper iron, you'll find that you're having to put a bit more pressure behind it. You're having to apply it for that a little bit longer, and the skull is so thin in these, in these goats that you run the risk then of fracture. It is thankfully reasonably rare.
Meningitis, encephalitis or neurological conditions, convulsions, seizures, those two next component parts generally feed in together. Again, they're associated with probably prolonged application of the iron. So perhaps the iron wasn't really hot enough when we started the procedure, or perhaps we, we weren't really paying enough attention to how long we actually held that iron on the goat's skull.
And by doing so, we get a lot of heat transfer across the bone and then get this thermal injury of the brain tissue beneath. And that rather gruesome picture to the right hand side is exactly that. You can see where the iron has been placed on the skull above, resulting in this necrosis and damage to the to the brain underneath.
Often you don't see the effects of this type of condition for 24 hours, 36 hours, 48 hours after the procedure's been carried out. The goat kids are undoubtedly dull. They also don't tend to come up and feed quite as readily, and then they start to develop these neurological symptoms.
With any surgical procedure, obviously, death is a risk and a concern, particularly when we're undergoing general anaesthesia in neonatal kids. And that can be associated with things like hypothermia. So maybe that factors back into our sort of prolonged recovery periods with certain anaesthetic doses or anaesthetic agents that we're using.
Perhaps it could be we haven't set up the ambient temperatures correctly. We haven't got enough heat lamps ready if we're doing it on farm in the barn. It could be as simple as that we haven't got accurate body weights and we have overdosed unwittingly.
So all things to be aware of, if we know what we're looking out for, we can find solutions and prevent them from occurring. So now having a scared you all to death, we'll have a look a little bit more towards the anatomy. So I've mentioned it several times already.
The horn bud proportionately is much larger in these neonatal goat kids than in calves. We're also doing this dis budding at a much earlier age than our calves typically calves will be, you know, 4 weeks or, or greater. They also differ from calves in that they have two nerve supplies to the horn.
We have the corneal branch of the lacrimal nerve. We also have the corneal branch of the infratrucular nerve. And this has particular implications for those of us who might be familiar with with disbudding calves and the use of local anaesthetic only to do that procedure.
In goats, they are very susceptible, particularly as neonates, to local anaesthetic toxicity. You've got two branches to cover there, and the analgesic doses that are going to be required to provide to provide sufficient analgesia for disbudding are going to be very close, if not. Above the toxic threshold for local anaesthetic agents.
So certainly, GVS doesn't consider it best practise to use local anaesthetic infiltration as the sole means of anaesthesia and analgesia when it comes to budding of goat kids. We will touch on that a little bit more as we go through when we look at the anaesthesia in detail. So we'll move straight on to talk about anaesthesia.
I've said it a couple of times already, goats are food producing animals and therefore, the cascade applies implicably to our goats. And we don't have any legal methods really of differentiating any type of, of goat, whether it be a pygmy, or not, and never destined to go into the food chain as far as the law is concerned, it could. Therefore, we must have MRL set for any of the anaesthetic agents that we're likely to use.
Therefore, they must be present on table one of the EU regulations 37 2010. Earlier last year, the GVS in a consultation with BVA produced a position statement which we published, which sort of set out the principles behind what anesthesia's, anaesthesia agents you might use for disbudding of goat kids and also what analgesia you might also use. And we did make a stipulation there that we felt general anaesthesia, in addition to, a separate additional analgesia would be best practise for the this budding of goat kids.
With them being food producing animals, it really does limit our legal options in terms of anaesthetic agents. I've mentioned the cascade use already. Obviously, however, we've got different options within each category.
So if you're doing your dis budding within the practise environment, you might be using inhalational agents. That's fine. It's just a question really of making sure everybody is, is comfortable with the health and safety ramifications, and, and scavenging equipment if you're gassing down neonatal kids in the practise.
It's unlikely you're going to be tubing these. Also, you've then got a, a very hot iron in the presence of, of volatile, gases, which has a certain health and safety connotation to it. A lot of the commonly used intravenous anaesthetic agents, which would in theory produce the ideal kind of anaesthesia that we require for budding goats.
I'm thinking now about things like propofol or alfaxolone, don't have MRL sets, so they don't appear on our table one in the EU regulations. In theory, aren't legally usable within the UK, which is a real shame because they're very fast acting. They've got a great plan of surgical anaesthesia, and kids do recover very quickly from them.
But as I say, legally they're probably not an appropriate choice, but that's a decision for the individual prescribing veterinarian. Local infiltration of local anaesthetic agents have touched upon on the previous slide, but just to pick up and reiterate the fact that neonatal goat kids are very sensitive to procaine and lidocaine, and the analgesic dose is very close to toxic doses. Toxic side effects tend to be lethargy, unwillingness to feed, and potentially even in death.
The toxic dose is pretty tiny. For an average 4 kg kid, we're looking at around about 2 mg per kilo, i.e., that's only 2 mLs of a 2% lidocaine injection solution, or 0.8 of the mL of a 50 mg per mL procaine solution.
And if you think that you're trying to cover two nerve roots for each horn bud. The volumes you have to play with before you're getting very close to toxic doses is very small. And for that reason, it's probably not best practise as a stand-alone method of, of anaesthesia and analgesia for disbudding of goat kids.
The alpha 2 agonists I'll mention xyzine is obviously licenced. It's not usually used in isolation for general anaesthesia. It's usually found in combination with other agents, and I'll talk about that very shortly because that's probably one of the safest and most reliable, effective methods of general anaesthesia legal, from a legal standpoint.
The big drawbacks really with the alpha 2s, as I'm sure you know, is they have a relatively long onset of action and a long protracted recovery period. However, go back to the previous slides where we were talking about knowing our risks and mitigating them, we can be aware of that prolonged recovery period and set up measures to try and reduce those risk factors. Alpha 2, I guess, do have the advantage that there is a reversal agent out there, antiamazole.
Unfortunately, that doesn't have an MRL, so it's not technically a legal drug to be used in our food producing animals. It also has the unfortunate side effect that it will reverse the anaesthesia properties of the alpha 2s, but it will also reverse the analgesic properties as well, as small as they may be. So I've talked about an example protocol.
This is actually the protocol that I would use and have used now in practise for the last 3 or 4 years. It combines ketamine, thylazine, and buorphenol, and that solution is given intravenously. I use the jugular vein.
I find that easy to access in our neonatal kids, particularly if you've got somebody holding the kid for you and assistant who's experienced and knows what they're doing, it really makes the job a lot easier. Dose rates are given there on the on the screen for you. I tend to make up a disc budding mix, and that will last me a month before it gets discarded.
And I'm, I guess I'm in a, in a better position that I'll I'll be doing quite a few goat disc buds over a season, and so I'm not actually throwing away very much solution from a 10 mil mix as we make it up. The dose rate is very tiny. It's only 0.1 of a mL per 5 kg intravenously.
So I tend to use these insulin type syringes with the waged on needle. They're a nice, very fine gauge needle. It's great for intravenous injection in our neonatal kits, and you can get very accurate dose rates as a result.
The main drawbacks, again, partly because of the Xylazine component of this, of this combination protocol is the protracted recovery period. Whereas the intravenous injections, things like propofol or alfaxolone, you would expect your kids to be recovering in sort of 23, maybe. 4 minutes, we're looking at a recovery period of more like 1520, even 25 minutes.
So that's quite a significant time period to be under general anaesthesia, particularly if you're doing this in a field scenario. So the importance of mitigating the risk of hypothermia really can't be underestimated. We'll look now at the equipment that's required.
There are lots of different options out there for you. The GVS do actually supply these copper disbudding irons. That's the picture on the right hand side.
And what I've done there is photograph my GVS iron alongside a standard calf disbudding copper iron. The cast despotting iron is the one on the left hand side of that photograph. The goat kid disbudding iron is the one to the right, and you can really get an idea of the of the difference in wide bore diameter.
That's got a diameter there of 2.2 centimetres across compared with the small caudder. And I really like that.
It's got a certain amount of weight to it. It does require a separate heat source, obviously, but it depends really on what you're used to using. I find with the weight behind that iron, I can use virtually no pressure at all to remove those horn, horn buds from nice young neonatal kids.
My colleague in GVS, John Matthews, he tends to prefer using the electric irons. He does most of his inside the practise, so it's it's an easier scenario to get himself fixed up with electric. And other colleagues within GVS are big fans of these gas disbudding irons.
You can actually order these over the internet, and they will come with a goat kid head with a wider diameter. So lots of different options out there for you. The key really is familiarity.
Whatever you're comfortable with using is probably the best tool to use. The heat is obviously crucial. We need to know these irons are hot.
And as I said before, the cherry red colour of that copper gives you a really good indication that you're at the right temperature for dis budding. The head diameter is obviously vital. I've talked about greater than 2 centimetres as a minimum.
You could even, as I've mentioned, go up to 2.5 centimetres for the older female goat kids, even 2.8 centimetres for those male kids.
You need to be able to be dexterous. It needs to be easy to use. I mentioned that I find the extra weight in the copper iron an advantage.
I know some colleagues in GVS prefer the gas irons because they're that much lighter. They feel they're a bit more deft, if you like, when they're twisting. But we'll talk about those ramifications next when we talk about our, our procedures blow by blow.
Other kit which is useful to have on farm when you're doing your disc budding is some clippers and scissors so you can expose the horn buds nicely. I'll talk about that again in a few slides' time. Horn nippers, that's the photograph there in the top left hand side.
These are really useful if you have kids at the sort of the later age range, so sort of 10 days or so, where you are, you've started to get bony horn prominences from these horn buds. If you have those, you won't find that your irons with the recessed head fit neatly and evenly on the goat's skull, so you'll find a kind of rock over that horny prominence, which means you're going to have to require a little bit more force when you're disbudding. You're going to be a little bit uneven, and this is when you start to increase.
The risk of skull fracture or increased contact time with the skull. So by using these horn nippers, once the kid is anaesthetized, you can just level off that bony prominence and ensure that your iron fits neatly, directly and evenly on the skull. Having things like swabs, the insulin syringes for the administration of the accurate anaesthetic, scales if we're on farm and, and we're trying to, to get an accurate body weight, some kind of spray to put on your site afterwards.
Obviously, your anaesthetic and towels for keeping things warm. Right, so we'll think about the actual procedure itself now. You really need to make sure, particularly if you're doing it on farm, that that you give a lot of attention and thought really to the environment in which you're doing it.
Make sure it's clean, make sure it's dry, make sure it's warm. There really shouldn't be any kind of draught, particularly when these kids are, are being recovered. It tends to increase the risk of hypothermia.
I would then stick my irons on to be warming as quickly as possible. The photograph on the bottom left-hand side now shows the copper iron in the process of warming up. This iron is not hot enough.
When it is cherry red, it's very obvious, you know, then you're ready to go. Have anybody that's going to assist you ready, present, and, and up to speed with what's going to happen, make sure they're aware of what you expect from them. And it really helps if they've seen the procedure done before and have helped before.
It just helps, take some of the stress, I guess, out of the procedure. Right, then you're probably ready to anaesthetize the kids, and there's going to be a difference in how you approach this depending on where you're doing it, whether you're doing it in the hospital environment, where you might just be doing one kid at a time or a few numbers of, of kids, and the agents that you might use, anaesthetic agents you might use could be things like the inhalation units. You're unlikely to anaesthetize more than one kid at a time and take that kid right the way through the procedure.
As I've mentioned before, I do mine out on farm. I'm often doing tens of goat kids at a time, in which case, when I'm using the protocol that we've talked about already, the combination of ketamine, thylazine, and buorphenol, I'm already aware that this protocol is going to take a little bit of time for surgical anaesthesia plane to be reached. I'm talking sort of 10 minutes or so.
So what I'm likely to do then is anaesthetize 345 kids at a time and have them falling asleep, if you like, under a heat lamp in the nice soft, clean, deep bedding. And at this point I can often cover them with towels if I need to, if I'm worried about a draught or I think they need a little bit of extra, extra warmth to keep them ready. I'll then clip the hair from the bud area.
Now both these photographs show a scissor clip. I tend, I probably ought to update these photographs. I tend now to use clippers, and the reason for that is that you get much greater exposure of the horn buds.
You can really see where you're aiming for with your iron. You can see the full extent both cranially and cordially of those horn buds, and it's always quite surprising exactly how large they really are. It also helps to remove the excess hair from around the horn bud area, which if you don't remove enough of it, is going to stick to your horn, your disbudding iron.
That will help or will serve to cool down your dis budding iron, and over time it will also damage the end of your dis disbudding iron. It'll start to blunt it away. So it's, it's a great idea to clip that hair away.
It will also produce a lot less sort of burning hair smoke, which is quite unpleasant when you're actually carrying out the procedure. The bottom right hand photo now shows the goat kid where I've had to actually take the nippers and just remove the sort of the horny prominences from the horn buds just so I can make sure that my iron is going to sit nice and flush on the skull and cover the entire horn bud area. Right, so now we're ready to apply the hot iron.
The iron's going to be applied in an even fashion for as little time as possible. Now I'm right handed. I tend to use a circular anti-clockwise, sorry, clockwise motion.
I'm not sure whether that's because I'm right-handed or not, but clockwise is the way I twist. And it's, and, and it's the key really is there is sort of an even pressure. You don't want to be pushing down on on any side more than the other.
And the contact time is crucial. I've written down there that I count, and I still find myself counting now even though I've done lots of these, but I tend to count on 123, off 123, and it's roughly seconds and roughly that kind of time period. And in that on 123, I'm creating a complete circle, and then I'm off 123.
And then if I need to go back on again, I'm counting that on 123, and then off. When we've got our goat kids young enough, then that's a 234 day bracket, you'll often find you only need one application of the iron in that circular motion to remove the horn bud. And you'll, you'll get just the slightest sensation as you apply the iron or a little bit of give as you get through the skin layer.
And as you twist and in that circular, even motion and then remove the iron, you'll see that you should have created a nice circular area where the skin has retracted from the edges of, of your . Iron application and then just use your iron then to sort of flick off gently the central portion of tissue. There's quite a lot of debate in the GVS and certainly online about whether or not to remove that central section of tissue.
I think the general consensus, certainly the majority of GVS members when we've serviced them and surveyed them, would suggest that they removed that, and that's often because they're looking to avoid anything left behind which could increase the infection risk. So what does that look like? So here we've got first one side and then both sides removed.
You can see what I'm talking about by removing excess hair. Now this was just a scissor clip if you remember. And so you've got quite significant charring of hair around the edges on both sides.
I now tend to use a clipper clip, a clipper clip, and therefore you get far less of that sort of charring burnt hair around. It looks a little bit neater, looks a little bit smarter, doesn't smell quite so much, and you can see the edges nicely. As soon as I've removed the horn bud, I'm now applying a cold water soaked swab.
It's just an instantaneous way of reducing the temperature that's likely to be transferred from that skull to the brain. So it's easy, it's quick, and it's effective. Just tamp that on and then you can move forward to apply your topical spray.
It's just having an awareness that one of the risks associated with this procedure is thermal injury to the brain. What can we do to prevent that or reduce the risk? Applying a cold damp swab directly to the, to the area you've removed the horn, but straight away as soon as you have done the procedure really helps to dampen that skull down.
So now we're applying our topical spray. I think a lot of people in practise will use an antibiotic spray, something like a tetracycline. Certainly over the last 3 years I've tended to move away now and use one of these natural antiseptic chamomile based type sprays, very soothing.
They sort of powderize, which is actually a real asset because the powder helps. In terms of hemostasis, so occasionally you will get these small cutaneous blood vessels which will continue just to ooze very small amounts of blood. Well this powderizing spray really helps to stop that, and it's very soothing spray.
I think the trade name is something like DarbyMed SDP, something originally designed for reducing proud flesh generation in injuries in horses. So at this stage is when I would then give my additional analgesia, and usually that's going to be meloxicam, certainly when we've canvassed GVS members, the majority, the largest majority by a long way, we're using farm animal meloxicam, so that's the 20 migs per mL at a dose rate of between 0.25 and 0.5 mLs under the skin.
Also, if you've got male kids that you're just budding and they're to be castrated, I think this is a great time to do that. If under 7 days, you can simply slot a rubber, a rubber ring on at this time. The animal is still in in under general anaesthesia.
They're getting additional analgesia, and then you can move them back under the heat lamps for recovery. And during that recovery, really, we've gotten the assistant there who's just gently, stroking, rubbing, and just providing just gentle stimulus the whole time under the heat lamp, just to get them coming around nicely. And certainly with the protocol that I've described, we're looking at 1520 minutes plus.
And the first thing that they really want to do is get up and have a feed. I think it's a great idea to follow up your disc buds with a progress report. I tend to ask for feedback at 7 days.
I'm often back again at the same units, regularly through the disc budding season, so I'll get to see, the goat kids I've done earlier in the season as well. But this is the same. Illustrated in the photos above 7 days later and you'll see there that the wounds are nice and dry, they're healing nicely.
You can see the edges are nice and tight. I've tended to find in the past with the tetracycline spray applications immediately after disbudding. That you don't get to this stage of healing often until 23, or even 4 weeks after the procedure.
And certainly with the tetracycline sprays, they seem to get quite scabby in nature as they heal over and they get knocked and you run the risk of further bleeds. That doesn't seem to be the case with the sort of powderizing spray. So, yeah, from my own in practise experience, it's certainly something I would consider.
Just to finish off the procedure aspects, I did mention at the beginning of the talk that the GVS don't consider goat kid budding to be a day one competency. And to that end, we're aware that there probably is a shortage of training opportunities, for vets, either as vet students or new graduates. And so we are developing GVS training.
Materials and CPD courses, we're hoping to roll these out over the course of this year, where we've actually got a supply of cadaver goat kids where you can actually get hands-on physical experience of disbudding, goats in a controlled environment, so you pick up that necessary experience. So hopefully we'll have plenty of practitioners out there who have the confidence to do this procedure. So please keep an eye on, on the GBS website.
We're hoping to launch this at the London vet show this year, so that's November, but we'll be putting updates out through our website and and email loops as we go forward. So the GVS, we are aware that there are alternative dis budding methods out there or discussed online and in forums, and I guess probably the one that comes up in conversation most often is this sort of application of the caustic paste, this horneck type stuff used quite commonly in, in the cattle sector. In goats, it's probably not an ideal situation because they're often kept with their mothers.
The mothers are very attentive. I've certainly seen quite nasty caustic burns to nannies tongues when they've been trying to clean off this paste. Equally, these kids have been up and ready to go back and feed straight after the procedure or after a paste has been applied, and you get nasty caustic burns under the under the other or between the back legs.
And so it's, it's not really an appropriate, debugging method, in the UK. Liquid nitrogen seems to be associated, if you look at, look at the various papers out there so far with significant ongoing pain, and to that end, it's probably not a welfare friendly choice in its current guise. And clove oil, there are some reports of clove oil being injected into horn.
Which apparently will, suppress horn growth, but there are some legal issues of its use in the UK. And so at this stage, certainly the GBS opinion is, is, is not appropriate, and none of these issues, should be used. So we, we would recommend, iron disbudding as we've described before.
Here are some references and further reading that might be of interest to any of you. It will be in the presentation notes for you, which I'll supply at some point over the coming week. And thanks, thank you very much for listening.
sorry about the technological problems we had at the beginning and the loss of sound. But if anyone's got any questions, then I'm, I'm happy to try and answer those if I can. Great, thank you very much, Ben, yeah, no sound problems once you switch the phone, so thanks for doing that.
Sorry about the interruption. So yeah, that, yeah, great talk, quite a nice refresher on, really covered everything on. On, what you need to do, the CPD that sounds like a really good idea as well.
Would it be something that as well for small animal vets because I guess, you know, lots of people are now keeping goats as pets and, you know, they just have the odd one and two. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's probably one of our, our main drivers and focuses, if you like, through the GVS CPD provision is that, you know, even if you're in small animal practise, you're definitely not immune from seeing the odd goat, and it's quite frequent that a goat kid will be brought into the surgery, and whoever is left in the practise will be the one who ends up having to do this budding, and it'll be so or that might be the the small animal practitioner who might not see the goat for years.
So yeah, absolutely, it's going to be tailored to, to anybody who, who could come across goat kid disbudding. Yeah, and I, and I guess, you know, I suppose if they're, you know, on a, on a large unit with lots of them and, and horn injuries and stuff, is that really a significant problem? I mean, Do we really need to be dispelling these goats, or?
Yeah, I, I think it's, it's actually quite surprising. So, in, in my previous experience working in the Southwest with some very large dairy goat commercial farms, we would have, you know, 3 or 4 significant injuries per year, from just the occasional goat which had been missed from being disbuddied as a kid and had then gone on to develop significant horns. And some of these injuries are really quite, quite gruesome.
And quite significant. And, and even to the stage where I am now, where we've got occasional smallholders who don't routinely disbarred. They might have only a couple of goats, but the horns are there, getting themselves caught in fences is a problem.
And, and then also using their horns against others in the group is a big problem. So yeah, just last year I saw a really nasty flank injury where they've managed to basically open up from the shoulder blade to the stifle, nasty injuries. Yeah, it's like, well, I guess, yeah, they're probably quite deep penetrating wounds, I guess, as well.
They can be, yeah. Yeah, yeah. OK.
Brilliant. And then, one other question. So, could you do, I'm not sure if you touched it, touched upon it, but, like regional anaesthesia, would you do the, the nerve blocks of, of both nerves or, or is the anaesthesia and just, nonsteroidals enough?
Yeah, so, so we talked a little bit about the use of local anaesthetic and local infiltrations and why that probably isn't an appropriate analgesic and anaesthesia protocol for our goat kids. I, I think you, you could use it in combination, with, with general anaesthesia, but I'd have to question maybe, maybe why if, if, if general anaesthesia is considered best practise and Safe, it's reliable, it's effective, and it's efficient. Are you really adding anything by doing local infiltration or regional blocks?
And the answer is probably not. You're just really increasing the risk of local anaesthetic toxicity or potentially, you know, increasing the time that they might be anaesthetized and the fasiness which is required. So yeah, I, I know people do it, and I think if you've got experience with doing it and you're happy with it, that's great, but it's probably not necessary.
Yeah. And well, yeah, and there's absolutely no way that you can just do it under local anaesthesia alone, so. No, I, it wouldn't be something that we would recommend.
No, no, lovely. OK, I think we just had one question come through or a comment, you have one client problems with the pet goats jabbing each other with horns. So she stuck tennis balls on the end with some boss stick.
Yeah, but it cut out the injuries. So thank you, yeah, yeah, I've seen that on a, on a couple of petting petting zoos actually on public attractions where they've had pygmies and they've, they've put these sort of soft balls on the top. Great.
It doesn't stop them from getting themselves caught in fences or or enclosure in. But again, that can all be managed by sort of management and enclosure design. So yeah, definitely, definitely not always the answer to this, but when you need to, you need to.
Yeah. So yeah, I think you're putting quite a strong case that it probably should be considered rather than not. So, so that's great.
Well, yeah, so thanks again. Really, really great talk, really interesting, certainly refresh my mind. On some goat, goat anatomy as well.
So yeah, thank you very much, Ben. Thanks for everybody listening, and well, we'll hopefully see you on another farm webinar soon.