Dehorning calves can be a painful process. Blocking the cornual nerve with lidocaine numbs the horn bud area and controls the pain associated with dehorning/disbudding. In this movie, Elizabeth demonstrates how to block the nerve and dehorn a calf using a butane dehorner.
Hello and welcome to today’s session of caf management tips brought to you by milk specialties global i’m elizabeth calf specialist for the team and today our topic is lidocaine blocking and dehorning of baby calves when performing a lidocaine block you’ll need a 20 gauge 1 inch needle 5 cc’s of a 2% lidocaine you must maintain a prescription from your veterinarian
For the lidocaine i like to secure the calf by backing him into a corner or gate and using my legs to immobilize his head to the best of my ability immobilize his head with my forearm and you can feel a bony ridge right above his eye you follow the ridge a third of the way up from the eye and toward the horns is where you inject the lidocaine and you will deposit
The entire five ccs in that location and black both sides allow about five minutes before you attempt to dehorn to allow the liar cane to take full effect for today’s demonstration we’ve chosen to use a butane dehorner and we have already given the caf iv flu mist them for pain control that was prescribed by our veterinarian you will feel for the horn bud we have
Clipped the area for our demonstration today so we can further demonstrate where the horn bud is in this calf it’s only a week old it is very small and here is where it’s located will apply the butane lighter to the horn bud for approximately 10 to 15 seconds and allow the horn bud to fall off and then go ahead and apply the butane dehorner for another five to ten
Seconds to ensure that we have a proper burn and our horn bud is removed and we’ll go another five seconds or so and as you can see with the caffeine lidocaine blocked the pain was controlled thank you for joining us for our dehorning tips we hope you join us again
Transcribed from video
Calf Management Tips: Lidocaine Blocking & Dehorning By Milk Specialties Global Animal Nutrition
