I use the paste with quite good success and if its done in the first few days (must not be after 7 days old) in many cases the only discomfort the calves seem to feel is towards the end of the 30mins you need to leave the paste on, and some really do object to being restrained as they must not be allowed to rub the paste off.
I do sometimes get some regrowth sometimes maybe a year after and if I want to be 100% sure I get my brother to dehorn with the iron, he normally does then around a month old and I have NEVER had any regrowth from ones he has done for me.
the reason I use the paste is that I don't like to ask to many favours and also you never have any problems with flies if you do it properly.
We have tried paste a few years ago,regrowth was a problem.The calves would rub it off or you put too much on and it dribbled and burnt the skin around the horn bud.
After using various vets and other people who claim to have done lots of dehorning, also getting lots of regrowth to a point of wondering if we ever did dehorn that steer with 4" horns,we use a fellow dexter keeper who has done lots of commercial cattle,fingers crossed it seems ok.I would prefere an animal with full horns over one that has horn stumps due to a bad job.With our show cattle we need a good tidy finish.
Mark
So far I have had good results with my vet using the dehorning iron. I wait until the calve's horns are the size of my thumbnail and then the vet uses a general and a local and puts the hot "iron" over the little horn. He burns in quite far and quite a large area of skin comes off. I had this done last month in fly season and just kept spraying the wound for a day and a half with the blue boron spray. The wound dried really quickly. The worst part was, the vet gave too much general and the poor calf slept for 6 hours!! At least it was easy to put the spray on...
