Disbudding is disgusting
I helped a friend and his family disbud some calves one afternoon, the process involves holding the calves with all your might while someone injects them with a mixture of drugs, including an anaesthetic I believe. Then, taking an extremely hot metal tube type device that resembles hair-curlers, you put them end-down over the calves young budding horns and push into their skulls, burning through the hair and skin and popping the horns out of their head.
It took the strongest one out of all of us to do this as it's quite hard, after all you're trying to hold a kicking calf having his fucking horns twisted out. the smell was foul, almost like the smell of a horse getting re-shooed but ten times worse. The horns were just sitting on the straw by our feet, too hot to handle and it looked like someone had dropped a box of stinking popcorn. Gross.
( SauronWibble I'll hold it, you lick it..., Wed 30 May 2012, 15:25, Reply)