Rural delivery: Farmers still stuck on the horns of a dilemma

By CLIVE DALTON*

Teats on a bull were supposed to be the most useless item on a farm. They're not - horns on all cattle are.

They cost the beef industry a fortune through bruising meat, damaging hides, injuring stockpeople, truck operators and meat workers.

They restrict the number of animals carried on trucks by forcing horned and polled (non-horned) stock to be kept separate. And they wreck the wiring during stunning before slaughter.

The only possible value they have is for biodynamic farmers to fill with cow muck and bury to make soil nutrients - not a large market!

We need to rid horns on all cattle. We've talked about it for decades and got nowhere.

We got close once when meat processors were going to refuse to kill horned stock. But a "procurement war" broke out and works would kill anything. This seems to be the situation today.

Primitive cattle needed horns to fight off predators and to sort out social rankings. Bulls needed them in their fights to decide who was king and do all the mating.

These jobs are redundant, but we still have folk who like horns on their cattle and aim to keep them.

The holstein friesian is in greatest need of polling as they make up 54 per cent of the dairy herd and most of the export beef of dairy origin.

The battle to banish horns always grinds to a halt with breeders and breed associations where horns are a recognised part of the breed - this covers the majority of the two dozen breeds we have in New Zealand.

None of these groups are currently making a constructive effort to genetically poll their breeds - which is the only way to go.

The classic big-horned breeds are the highland, texas longhorn and the horned hereford - the latter I have often been told perform better than polled herefords. But the small horns on other breeds can do as much damage, sometimes even more.

The hassle and cost of dehorning cattle is an added expense for farmers, so it is often avoided.

Under the present code of welfare for cattle (waiting to be updated), you can chop the horns off cattle up to 20-months-old with saw or guillotine and no anaesthetic. After 20 months you need a vet and anaesthetic - which costs money.

Whoever decided on 20 months nobody knows.

They must have had divine guidance that it was not painful before that age, but was okay afterwards!

What great brain worked that out?

So what can we do to keep the pressure on to rid us of horns? Do not buy horned cattle, especially if you are on a small block with few handling facilities.

Tell your stock agent you never want them on your property. This especially applies to dairy weaners - two-thirds of which are not dehorned by rearers.

If you find your stock have started to grow horns, get them removed by a veterinarian as soon as possible, using an anaesthetic. Don't let your helpful neighbour loose with his guillotine!

When choosing a bull for crossbreeding - always use a polled breed like angus or polled hereford. Their first-cross offspring will be polled.

Keep putting pressure on your breed society to get out of the dark ages and seriously start polling the breed.

We know heaps about the polled gene and where it is on the cattle genome - genetic engineers could have it fixed in no time.

* Clive Dalton is technical editor of Lifestyleblock.co.nz